Happiness Through Magnets

I don't know if this is related to my mental health problems but I have always had trouble with just not understanding something that is so obvious to what seems like everyone else. Most recently I had the realization that eating healthier food makes me feel good. Somehow I've gone through my whole life without putting that correlation together.

I am now 20 TMS treatments in and officially in the part where patients typically start feeling improvements and to be completely honest I'm really not. I've had some changes, I definitely have more energy and I think I'm feeling more things, but my overall mood is about the same as when I started.

I went out to lunch with my family yesterday and I was just as awkward as always. I know not to expect miracles but maybe just some change? The first restaurant we tried was so tiny and so crowded that I would have had to leave and wait outside if we all hadn't decided we needed to go somewhere else. During lunch some of the things that were said affected me emotionally in a way that stayed with me throughout the rest of the day.

However, maybe crying because of these feelings last night is a step in the right direction. I think it's been years since I let myself cry and getting it all out can be a good thing.

Using the official Taskmaster mood scale my mood has definitely increased since last week, up to 20 laughs today. Unfortunately that's about what it was two weeks ago. According to the TMS doctors I'm about at the point where people start to feel better and I think I am but I have such a hard time objectively measuring my mood.

Part of the problem I have is I honestly can't remember what it feels like to be truly happy. For me, depression isn't so much constant sadness as a lot of feeling nothing with negative emotions sometimes pushing their way in. I've felt nothing for so long that it's difficult to name what I am feeling. I have been feeling a lot more, sometimes so much that it's overwhelming, but in the end it's very much a positive change.

I had to meet with a psychiatrist yesterday and NOT the one with the dog. If that wasn't bad enough she kept trying to rate my overall mood and what I wanted my mood to be in numbers. I tried to explain that it doesn't work for me to measure in numbers, they just don't mean anything to me. But she persisted. And shockingly did not seem to intuitively understand my mood rating system that uses knitting instead of numbers.

Lowest Mood: No knitting or crocheting.

Low Mood: Knitting something basic that doesn't require a pattern (scarf for example)

Average Mood: Starting new projects, knitting with an already made pattern

Slightly Above Average Mood: Crocheting something new

Best Mood I Get To: Creating a new knitting pattern

Using those depression surveys to measure how I'm doing has never worked for me. It's so subjective and really depends on how your feeling in the moment. A 4 on one day may be completely different from a 4 on another day. I've never found any of the surveys they have you fill out to be helpful in tracking my mood. So I've turned to more objective measures.

Taskmaster is a comedy show from the UK and it's one of my favorite shows of all time and currently just started a new season. It's one of the few things that can actually make me laugh as well. Laughter is something that really depends on how severe my depression is so I think it's a good way to track if I'm doing better. Also Taskmaster is pretty consistent in quality so any increases in laughter is most likely to be because of me rather than the show.

I think?

Today was my 9th treatment and I think I'm actually starting to feel some kind of improvement. We redid the measurements today which worried me because it made me so nauseous but I ate breakfast today and didn't have any trouble. They had some trouble getting my finger to twitch, I felt defective for awhile. I never twitched my finger on my own though, despite what my people pleasing tendencies wanted.

(This is just my personal experience, I can't guarantee it'll be the same for everyone)

Even though you're sitting in the open it can still feel claustrophobic. I'm doing deep TMS which means that a helmet is strapped to my head that is all attached to a pretty big machine. It feels a bit like having a small MRI machine stuck on your head. Any discomfort passed pretty quickly but it was a big unpleasant.

2. The treatment doesn't hurt but you definitely can feel it. I don't know how to describe what the sensation is because it's such a strange and new feeling. I think you get to a point in life and you think you've felt pretty much every kind of feeling, but this was completely new and a bit discomforting.

3. The first session where they map your motor cortex is intense and with me made me severely nauseous. Part of the reason was because I hadn't eaten breakfast (my appointment was at 8am, since when do I eat before that?). But I think it would have happened no matter what. Everyone is super nice and I was able to take a break and get a soda which helped a ton.

4. There are side effects. The one I've experienced most is skin tingling. The annoying part is that it's the same kind of tingling I feel when I miss a dose of Ativan so at first I thought my medication had stopped working and I was going through withdrawal. But I didn't actually feel anxious and when I looked up possible TMS side effects I found paresthesia is one of them. Knowing about all the possible side effects in advance would have helped.

After a 4 month wait and a second submission to the insurance they finally approved me for TMS treatment! I just had my first treatment and it. was. wierd.

A warning for anyone who is about to have TMS, EAT BREAKFAST before you have treatment. My sessions are at 8am and since I never eat that early I didn't eat before going in which was a mistake. During the first part where they measure your motor cortex I got so nauseous and had to stop and get a soda before we could go on. Luckily it got better because for a moment I was worried it would be like that the whole time.

Mental health care is so slow. To be fair, physical health care seems to take forever as well, but when it comes to emergency and crisis care, help is usually immediate. If you have a broken bone, even if you require surgery, you will most likely be "fixed" and back home within 24 hours.

When it comes to emergency mental health care there is nothing comparable. Expressing suicidal thoughts will get you intervention though it treats you more as a criminal than a patient. And even with inpatient care it can take weeks to get any kind of follow up.

During my most recent crisis I was fortunate. I already have a psychiatrist at one of the top mental health institutions in the country and was able to get on the shorter wait list for a partial hospitalization program when medication, biweekly therapy, and monthly psychiatry appointments were no longer enough.

The partial program put a lot of emphasis on what was happening after discharge. I had an intake interview with the transcranial magnetic therapy team the Monday after I left and because getting into the partial program was so painless I made the assumption that starting TMS would be as well. I was so naive.

It's now been a month since my initial consultation and I've had to resubmit the paperwork once because I didn't remember my medication doses from a decade ago. Who remembers that?!?