Made it to the sixth treatment today. I reached out to the doctor and he stated that it is not the TMS that’s making me more depressed. It is just the normal course of my depression. He stated that he emphatically believed that I would be feeling this bad without the TMS, if not worse. He also stated that it is too early in the treatment for the TMS to be expected to be making me better. In other words, it’s too early to tell whether or not the TMS is going to work for me. Sigh.

He did state however, that if I am not seeing any improvement by the end of next week I maybe should consider ECT. When I get very depressed, as I am now, I don’t tend to speak up for myself a lot. Even so, I just don’t feel ECT is right for me. I did bring up the thought of having seizures, medically induced or not, is very troubling to me. He (the doctor) tried to reassure me that it was not painful that I was would be sedated and it would last less than five minutes. That didn’t decrease my apprehension at all. I do not want ECT. It is not right for me. Even so I am proceeding with the TMS.

Today’s treatment went without incident. I am concerned as to whether not I will be able to make it to tomorrow’s treatment due to the severity of the depression which gives me an extreme amount of fatigue as well as very little motivation to do anything. I do want to complete the TMS treatment partially because I want to know whether or not it works for me. I have fears that it will work for me and fears that it won’t work for me.

If it does work for me, I am concerned about how that will change everyone’s expectations of me, and whether or not I will be able to meet their new expectations. Of course, if it doesn’t work for me then I’ve exhausted my last resort. What more is there to hope for? So, you see, it is difficult for me to deal with either way. I am hopeful that this outlook being so negative is based in the depression and is not reality. But I can only go forward from here and see what happens.

My faith in God is helping me to get through this. I am grateful for His help, and I am grateful for some of the gifts He has given me. Chief among them would be my friends and my dog. And it may sound superficial but I am also very grateful for air-conditioning. I tend to get very ill physically if I get overheated and so air-conditioning makes my life tolerable and for that I’m grateful.

I did connect with my therapist today. I was relieved to hear her voice but also somewhat disappointed because none of her suggestions really seem to help. It did help knowing that she was there and she cares. None of the more practical suggestion she had actually help me with my depression at all. That is not normally the case. Normally after speaking with my therapist I feel heard and listened to, validated and we generally work to form a plan together on how to proceed from where I am, wherever that might be. And she did try to make this conversation like the previous successful ones. Nothing that she suggested we try to plan seemed to really work well for me. Again, I am guessing that that’s just due to the severity of the depression. Hopefully I will be able to make it to treatment tomorrow and I will try to update this post as well then.

I hope this ongoing post is helpful to someone at some point.
Please remember that this is just my experience and everyone is different. Keep that in mind. TMS is effective more than 50% of the time, as of 2018, deep tms is said to have some positive effect in 65-70% of patients with many patients completing treatment depression free! Or so they tell us. 😉