When a Major Depressive Episode Doesn’t Get Better.
So an MDE can pass. With hard work through therapy and mental health management, patience and excellent support systems you can come out the other side of an MDE a little worse for wear, feeling kind of tattered and a little hesitant to re-enter the larger word, but it’s possible.
After a decade and a half of managing my mental illness I know what a “reasonable” amount of time for an MDE for Me is. I also know what it feels like when they start to lift. Sadly, I also know how it feels when it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse before I can function again. This is what that feels like…
For the older crowd, it’s like in The Never Ending Story, how Fantasia starts to disappear as The Nothing takes over and erases everything. For the younger crowd, it’s like in Inside Out when Riley’s “Islands” all lose power, go dark and start to crumble. It’s a scary feeling that’s for sure. Because I just seem to lose access to parts of my brain that I know were there before, I lose skills and processes I’ve had for years. I feel barely any joy, mainly just darkness. Like, during my worst times but on a good day, I can probably still smile, probably still laugh, I can definitely fake a laugh. But it’s very surface level. There’s no deep sense of contentment, joy or happiness. It’s like life is a funny meme and I write LOL on everything but I’m not really Laughing Out Loud. I become super irritable. I can hear two notes of a song and it rubs me the wrong way before I manage to turn it off. This is part of what’s called misophonia and it’s exhausting. My husband breathing too loud makes me want to scream. Tv ads, well, you don’t want to hear the language that flies out of my mouth at those.
So the mood problems are unbearable enough but when my cognitive functions start to fail, that’s when it’s hardest. I struggle to form sentences. Words go missing, and others repeat. I forget my train of thought as I’m talking, I won’t just forget the point I was making, I’ll forget the whole topic. The whole conversation up to that moment. The other day I couldn’t remember if 1/3 or 1/4 was bigger. Basic adding started to get hard, like two single digit numbers, and I can usually do that in my head. Gradually I can’t anymore. Short term memory is terrible. And forgetting things stresses me out, it takes extra time, I worry what I’m forgetting and how important it might be. Sleep routine goes to hell, I become nocturnal but I’ll only be awake 6-8 hrs, so I have trouble taking meds at the right time. I live with my husband but my lack of routine becomes so off kilta I can go three days without seeing him for more than a few minutes as he goes to bed and I wake up. (He has to work, I certainly can’t).
Fortunately for me, we have private health cover (in Australia) and I can admit to a private hospital where I do therapy courses, and most critically I get Repetitive Trans-Cranial Stimulation. A large and powerful electromagnet is put over my head and turned on and off many times over a period of 20 minutes, six days a week for 20 sessions. The magnetic field is so strong it stimulates my brain, lighting it up, activating stem cells growth and helping me to create or re-create pathways. This is my treatment of choice when an MDE won’t budge and instead goes into the scary stage. I’m so grateful I have access to this treatment and wish everyone had the same opportunity I have. I hope more people learn about it, ask for it, access it and share it. Because it’s been the only way out for me and I don’t know where I’d be without it.