Mar 17, 2018 at 09:43 AM
I'm finally in remission and I am putting my life back together. I've been cycling between severe and mild depressive episodes for years, with the occasional mixed episode, and I am finally stable. It had gotten to the point where pdoc and I were discussing ECT. He even referred me to the psychiatrist who had done it for me in the past.
We decided to try another anti-depressant while waiting for the consult. It was 40 mg of Fetzima, a newer SNRI. And it worked wonders bringing me out of my depression. It got to the point where I was starting to get hypomania. I saw the specialist and we decided that the ECT was no longer necessary and he recommended adding a mood stabilizer that was not an anti-convulsant so that I could have ECT with it as need. Last time I had ECT, I had to go off my mood stabilizers since they inhibited the seizures, and I ended up in a mixed episode. My pdoc put me on 40 mg of Latuda.
I'm doing really well right now. I've gotten active again on PsychCentral, even moderating again and I am restarting the Bipolar Support Chat which I lead in the past. I am going to Peer Connections group with the local CMHA (Canadian Mental Health Association.) I'm moving back into my condo, from my parents place and I am going back to work in April. I may even go and get my Health Care Aide certificate.
I am doing really well, and I had gotten to the point where I didn't think it was possible. I was very passively suicidal and now I am happy to be alive.
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It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
---"Address before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society". Abraham Lincoln Online. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. September 30, 1859.
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