My Letter to the Office of Civil Rights in Boston

Dear Keisha Edwards,  JFK Boston Office Of Civil Rights

I am appealing to your humanity to please read this and if you cannot help me to show it to someone at the OCR who will. In GOD’s NAME  I am suffering from an extreme traumatic reaction to what they did to me, both at the IOL, which case you dismissed, and from my recent stay at New Britain General. How can your office simply ignore this sort of abuse, especially when I tell you that it is routine and SOP there, even though what they did to me may have been worse than the norm by virtue of its excess.

Michael E. Balkunas, MD, chief psychiatrist of the W-1 unit of the Hospital of Central Connecticut in New Britain, deliberately misdiagnosed me, who have been on Social Security Disability and SSI since 1980. I was admitted to his unit with a decades long dx of schizophrenia, as well as PTSD since 2009 (largely due to in-hospital care-provider abuse of seclusion and restraints), but he immediately secondarily  (though he made it clear that he considered it primary) diagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder, against all the evidence, which he took pains to gather from my family and outside providers. I believe he did this in order to justify treating me with isolation for three weeks, an inhumane Behavioral Treatment Plan, multiple uses of four-point restraints and ordering me forcibly dragged into a horrific supermax seclusion cell, into which I might have to run to avoid being propelled there bodily by the guards (who were actually given carte blanche as the RNs informed me to inflict physical pain in order to subdue me quickly, because the nurses themselves were not permitted to lay hands on a patient!).Once there, I was then stripped naked of all my clothing "for safety's sake.” 

In the Supermax cell, HOCC's invarying protocol demanded that no matter how calmly or how voluntarily I went in, I would be injected with three "punishment drugs,”  drugs which at times were not on my normal list of medications, e.g. Prolixin, which I haven't taken for decades and to which I have a terrible reaction. My Advance Directive, which I gave them on admission, states that i was not to be given any such “typical neuroleptic” like Prolixin/fluphenazine because of this reaction..Also, despite my repeated assurance that I would "take my punishment drugs” voluntarily and without resistance, I was often pushed onto my face, prone, on the mattress, and held down by several guards until I couldn't breathe, and forcibly injected.

Note that although the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid require "imminent danger of causing severe bodily harm to self or others, or even property"  before any patient is put into seclusion of four point rsrtaints,  I was routinely secluded, stripped naked by male guards, and four-point restrained in a spread-eagle maximum exposure position, for being a nuisance and a disruptive presence to the appropriate unit "milieu." Once, when I told the guards these requirements, the "rules" for secluding a patient, they seemed surprised...and even reluctant to continue, though of course they had to follow orders and did so. They were always willing to inflict pain on me to ensure my rapid compliance, even when I verbally assured them I would do so. 

You may be surprised to hear that in point of fact, when I actually was in acute danger of self-harm, due to command hallucinations, and was observed by many nurses slicing my face with a sharp piece of plastic, drawing blood that streamed down my face and left open wounds, this behavior was actually ignored and even savagely mocked! So it was clearly not the case that their secluding me or stripping me had anything whatsoever to do with concerns for my physical safety...

In addition, Dr Balkunas, quite despite his apparent belief in the accuracy of his diagnosis of a personality disorder, never treated me for it, not with anything but antipsychotic drugs. Although he charged Medicare more than $300.00 per session each morning,  he saw me for a one-sentence  “How are you?” drive-by Q and A each morning. He largely ignored my presence on the unit. Worse, whenever I was put in seclusion or four -point restraints I would BEG for my 1-hour face-to-face interview for evaluation of the appropriateness of the intervention, but they routinely denied me that right, saying that they had 24 hours before I needed to see anyone…!

His whole rationale for committing me to the State Hospital was that "antipsychotic drugs take time to work", so I will send you there until  yours do...Mind you, he never changed my meds. so I stayed on the same meds and the same dosages I came in on and that i had never stopped taking,so what was it that he thought “needed to work? Just torture? 

Please help me, I cannot go on this way. NO ONE in Connecticut is charged with assisting me. NO LEGAL Agency has  any interest in me…NONE. Believe me I have tried for years to find some help with this sort of abuse, but there is absolutely no one. Not even the Dept of Protection and Advocacy for the mentally ill or those charged with protecting the elderly!

Sincerely,

Pamela S Wagner

PLEASE NOTE that I have trouble speaking, and while I can take a phone call i am using text to speech software. This is effective but it takes a little time for me to type and allow the iPad to speak my words. PLEASE be patient if you call me in the next day or so...

TELEPHONE: 860...

ALSO you might be interested, Dear Reader, in my Google + review, written shortly after that hospital stay of Dr Michael Balkunas. Either the link or the review itself should appear here.

https://plus.google.com/109362057307724485552/posts/ak5CU7s3qL1

 #Torture

 

Just wanted to link this to my recent blog post in which I fake thank the doctor for his torturing me at New Britain General Hospital this past spring 2014 and then accusing me of lying to him about what was happening there...since he was not on the unit most of the time, he never knew!

Pamela Spiro Wagner

 reviewed:

Dr. Michael E. Balkunas, MD

100 Grand St, New Britain, CT 06052

Michael E. Balkunas, MD, chief psychiatrist of the W-1 unit of the Hospital of Central Connecticut in New Britain, deliberately misdiagnosed me, who had been admitted with a decades long dx of schizophrenia and PTSD since 2009, with the secondary diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, against all the evidence, which he took pains to gather from my family and outside providers. I believe he did this in order to justify treating me with an inhumane Behavioral Treatment Plan, four-point restraints and the use of a horrific seclusion cell, into which I might run to avoid being dragged there bodily by the security guards. I was then stripped of all my clothing "for safety's sake." Once there, procedure demanded that no matter how calm, how voluntarily I went in, I would be injected with three "punishment drugs" which at times were not even on my normal list of medications, e.g. Prolixin, which I haven't taken for decades and to which I have a terrible reaction. Despite my insistence that I would "take the punishment drugs" voluntarily, I was often pushed onto my face, prone, on the mattress, and held down until I couldn't breathe, and forcibly injected.

Note that I was never secluded or four-pooint restrained for "imminent danger of causing severe bodily harm to self or others, or even property" as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid require, but for being a nuisance and a disruptive presence to the appropriate unit "milieu." Once, when I told the guards the "rules" for secluding a patient, they seemed surprised...and even reluctant to continue, though of course they had to follow orders and did so. They were always willing to inflict pain on me to ensure my rapid compliance, even when I verbally assured them I would do so.

Also, Dr Balkunas, quite despite his apparent belief in the accuracy of his diagnosis of a personality disorder, never treated me for it, not with anything but antipsychotic drugs. In fact his whole rationale for committing me to the State Hospital was that "antipsychotic drugs take time to work", so we will send you there until they do...Mind you, he never changed my meds. I stayed on the same meds and the same dosages, of the very same ones I came in on, the entire time I spent there...

Dr Michael Balkunas and the entire W-1 unit staff of Hospital of Central Connecticut (New Britain General Hospital) need to be re-educated, or better yet, lose lose their jobs and their licenses to practice.

Read more

1

1

Pamela Spiro Wagner

5:50 AM

 

 

Here is the link to the blog post http://pamelaspirowagner.com/2014/10/23/thank-you-michael-edward-balkunas-md-for-everything/

THE BITTEREST PILLS ARE ANTI-PSYCHOTIC DRUGs but if they work...

and they really work for you, then don't listen to me, keep taking them and the more power to you.

Do you work at a job and earn a living while you take anti-psychotic drugs? Do you support a family or take care of one while your wage-earner partner can keep her or his job without worrying about your sanity? Good, then the "anti-psychotic" pills you take (or I'll add in for good measure, god help us all, the "anti-depressant" pills) are doing what we were always told they were supposed to do. Or if you don't work or care for a family, if not, do you at least live a fulfilling single's life, with good capable friends and family and a worthwhile occupying activity that keeps your mind free of craziness and despondency the preponderance of the time? Terrific!Then those pills, whether they be antipsychotic or anti-depressant pills actually function and you are one lucky dude or chick. I say to you, whoever you are, All Cheers and GO FOR IT! Please do not worry about anything further I say in this or any other blog post. Whatever I write from here on in, whatever I say that you do not agree with, IT IS NOT INTENDED FOR YOU. Why? Because by your report, YOUR PILLS WORK and they do a bloody good job of it. So who's to tell you to change anything? You have no complaints and aside from the possibility that your brain might sustain a little shrinkage, if  research about such things proves correct, you have nothing to worry about. In truth, most aging brains shrink and sustain bits of damage along the way. Lots of things can happen...most of them not drug related at all. One simply cannot worry about a "what if" future, when the present is so bright.

So I repeat, IF you happen to be one of those lucky ones I have described and actually have no complaints, IF, better than that, if you find that your anti-psychotic drug or anti-depressant pills work terrifically well, you have had no relapses, suffer no terrible trade-offs in terms of side effects, then stop reading this blog post right this minute. Why? Because I have nothing to offer you and nothing to say to you. Okay? You don't need me, and you won't want to hear what I am going to say to the others of us out there whose experience has been somewhat to radically different.

But this is a SHOUT OUT to you, there, who don't like your drugs and don't want to take them. Or find them minimally helpful, or wonder frankly whether they really do any of what the docs tell you they do,  forewarned is forearmed...This post is going to be about the charade of anti-psychotic drugs, for the most part, about the fact that they do not in fact function in the anti-schizophrenia fashion that you have been told.  (I likely won't have the time or energy at this point, being on AP drugs myself, to get into the appalling farce of what are called anti-depressants...You could turn to MAD IN AMERICA by Robert Whitaker for a take on those -- just check out his chapter on Prozac for a taste...) It isn't that AP drugs do nothing at all. They do attack the brain's neurotransmitter levels, in some fashion or another. And not just the vaunted dopamine and or serotonin levels either. No, most atypical antipsychotic drugs have effects on histamine, glutamine, noradrenaline and acetylcholine and likely a whole host of other brain chemicals we haven't even scratched the surface of, in the sense of knowing their function in the brain, or in any part of the brain for that matter.

Do you know, did you know, that the Dopamine Hypothesis, the fundmental reason why there are antipsychotic drugs out there now in so many burgeoning numbers was always bogus? It never held water, ever. There was NEVER any reason to believe that dopamine caused schizophrenia, or that a dyspfucntional level of dopamine lay behind the majority of schizophrenic symptoms. It was a bold-faced and bald-pated lie, that's because it is as old as the hills and as tiring. You don't have schizophrenia the way one has diabetes, because you have a chemical imbalance in your neurotrnamitters that these neat little AP drugs resolve and rebalance. Sorry, folks, but that has been baloney ever since we all started developing parkinsonism and KNEW, just KNEW that something was terribly wrong with these miracle drugs that made us feel so terrible.

Did you know that it used to be the criteria for a true neuroleptic, the only way they knew they had a functioning adequate drug, was because it successfully induced parkinsonism in patients. That is, if it induced adequate BRAIN DAMAGE, then they knew it would "work" against schizophrenia. Because the theory was, both in ECT and insulin coma,  as it was in early AP drugs like Thorazine and Haldol that you had to induce brain damage to get a therapeutic effect in the illness. Crazy no? No, not at all, not when you stood to make ZILLIONS and Gazilliions of dollars on these drugs. Not only could you treat a hospialized crazy person with these drugs, and make them "better" and push them out of the hospital, but you could set up a plan for future care, AFTER CARE, that specified that JUST like diabetes, a person had to keep taking these drugs. You never just recovered from an illness like schizophrenia, no. The drugs were miracles yes, but not like antibiotics, They never cured you. they just were a treatment that you had to keep taking. The Gift that keeps on giving...at least for the Pharmaceutical companies who dreamed up the protocol. If they could get a person onto the AP drugs, once, and mandate legally or via a persuasive mental health system that the patient stay on them for life, well then, what a system, and what a money maker!

Oh my eye! What a load of hog wash. All they ever did was dream up neuroleptic ("brain seizing") drugs that physically subdued people and made them more amenable to nursing. So the hospital nurses could be more nursey nursey and kinder, and more kindly disposed to patients who were now drooling and dulled and seemed much genuinely sick, and the patients could be seen as more ill and less hostile and unpleasant to be around, less difficult to treat qua patients..

But it was a strange transformation, because the more sick the patients were made by taking these neuroleptic drugs, the less they were treated like the troubled and suffering PEOPLE they were to begin with. Once a patient, they assumed that role, and the whole cycle began and has never stopped to this day. "Schizophrenia is an illness just like diabetes." That was the canard I was told in 1980 -- we are still being handed the same disgusting lie! -- when I was first officially diagnosed with the condition, or told the name to my face at any rate. "You'll never recover, and you will likely have relapses, but you won't be a back wards patient if you take these pills like a good girl, and do as I tell you. No schizophrenia isn't a death sentence these days but it IS a life sentence..." So what did I do? I swallowed my 500mg of Melleril, yes i did, and I told the doctor I was feeling much better, yes I did. Because frankly I didn't know how I felt and I felt OBLIGED to tell the doctor what he wanted to hear. How else was I going to get out of the hospital and get off those horrible pills that made me put on 20 pounds in three weeks and made me feel so dull and sluggish and tired all the time? Besides, how could I possibly, in those conditions, KNOW how I felt, when the nurses themsevlves colluded to tell me how much better I looked and was doing? I knew I couldn't read or think for myself any longer. But they told me that that was my negative symptoms and had nothing to do with the drugs. It was a problem I would have to come to terms with by talking with a therapist...which was a good thing, that they suggested I see a therapist. Back in those days, it was often frowned upon that ANYONE with schizophrenia actually do any talking to anyone at all. After all, if you talked about yourself or your illness, you might upset yourself or the whole applecart...You might actually go crazy again, you were that UNSTABLE! No talk therapy was usually frowned upon for "schizophrenics." It was seen as not good for them, and destabilizing. What we needed was daily meds and mouth checks and maybe day treatment with a hours job to do each day, like capping test tubes for the lab to keep us busy. Lucky was he or she who could function as a bus boy or table setter. Most of us barely made it to day treatment on time, before sacking out on a couch somewhere for a long snooze to let the morning's dose of thorazine 1000mg or Melleril 800mg wear off a little before coffee hour or lunch time.

Some of us actually turned blue on high doses of Chlorpromazine, and she eventually died, at the age of 28. There was a lot of relapses and some suicides, but NO ONE actually went out and got a job and quit the hospital and got better. No, because the whole damned system was set up in such a way that once you were set up on anti-psychotic drugs, with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, you were put on social security disability payments for life,..and drugs for life followed, and the trap ensued that meant your whole life was a rolling down hill of poverty and more drug taking and relapses...until maybe something amazing happened to get you out of the systematic rut the psychiatric system had placed you in.

MAYBE you found someone you fell in love with, someone who not only would take care of you, but who hated to see you dull and passionless and sexless on the drugs and encouraged you to SLOWLY wean yourself off of them. And maybe it happened to a few of us that it was a success, because love can really conquer all, even the notion that schizophrenia is a life-long hopeless illness. If you got off the drugs in the right way, slowly, and stopped seeing the doctor who told you you would definitely relapse, maybe just maybe you didn't. Maybe your sex life came back and you found out it was better than Haldol and thorazine, and better than being dulled by the system's poverty and being sick. And once in a while that person's husband was so loving and encouraging that they got married and moved away and she stayed well enough to take up a hobby that turned out to make a little money by itself. So she turned it into a business, and miracle of miracles, she didn't fall into the trap of SSDI  after all but stayed well without the AP drugs and became a businesswoman without enough time to think about being schizophrenic again...

But alas, that didn't happen very often. Not nearly often enough. There were far too many tragedies compared to the rare success story. Too many people getting diagnosed with schizopohrenia, and then when the fads for multiple personality disorder came, with that, and all the other fads that had to happen because the drug companies had drugs that they needed to sell use on people and they had to have diagnosese to fit the pharmaceutical picture so they could sell the drugs they had on hand. ADHD, autism are only the latest two...

But I digress, I digress, so let me tell me my own story, if I have the time and energy.

I got sucked in. I did. I was hospitalized in 1980, and even before them. But in 1980, as far as I can now recall, I was up late at night, for the third night, in the hospital kitchenette in an absolute sweating panic about my hands. Why? Because I had this strong delusional belief that they were not my own, but that my twin sister had taken them over and controlled them. I could feel them, and in a sense I could see this process happening. And I heard voices telling me that I was in danger. A nurse came in, and asked me why I was up, and in a panic, i told her. I said, somethings wrong with my hands! They aren't mind, my sister has control of them! And I can't sleep, I can't sleep!

Now, the nurse was a kind woman and I think she meant to help, but she couldnt do anything for me but tell me she would call the doctor, who came, in his fashion, running. I was sweating bullets by then, sitting at the empty lunch table, mumbling about my sister and my stolen hands. What could he do, given his own pharma-company training, but offer me some drug assistance and promise me that it would help, that it was what I "needed" in the throes of my illness?

I believed him, I did. And when he came back the next morning, after I had been dosed three times that night with increasing amounts of Melleril until I finally slept, he pronounced that I suffered from the mental version of diabetes. schizophrenia...The rest, well, if it isn't everyone's history, it is a version of it. And  it involves SSDI and even SSI because I had never been able to work a full time job even before then. And none of the many drugs I took after that ever did anything for me but disable me more than before. And I would stop them and be hospitalized again with what they now suspect is withdrawal psychosis, or could have been. And I would be started back on the drugs, or a long-acting injection that was supposed to prevent hospitalization. It never did much good...I was a basket case, a basket case. I never washed or changed my clothing, or even took off my shoes, not even to go to bed. NO I wore those hiking boots for a good year and a half before they even saw me take off the socks I wore underneath them...

So how much did the AP drugs help me? And when they started to restrain me for paranoid fears and trying to escape a locked unit, did I then say Enough is enough,  you cannot torture me, I have schizophrenia? No, I accepted mechanical restraints for three days at a ttime as a form of treatment. One doctor actually told me that schizophrenics don't respond badly to being tied to a bed for a long time, it helps them, he said, by reducing stimulation...So they did that, and they kept me in seclusion for weeks at a time...until finally I would cry Uncle and take the drug they wanted me on, and go home again, prepared for the next certain relapse, because what else was there....I had a life, yes, but it wasn't much. It was just hospitals and restraints and drugs that never helped me and cruelty from nurses that didn't know they were hurting me. And doctors who were damaging me without thinking twice about it. And I didn't even have the mental wherewithal to know that the drugs were the prime offenders. The PRIME offenders.

It is now 5:30am and I have been up all night. My shoulder hurts, from where i have a slightly torn rotator cuff and frozen shoulder tendonitis... I don't have a bed, only a recliner I should not sleep in...I am a mess, and  I am also NOT going to continue to take my Abilify and Geodon much longer...I cannot. I cannot. I do not know what will  happen, but I am too afraid of what will happen if I take it, to take them, though I have never felt they did me more harm than good. I just don;t know what real GOOD they do me.

More later, or on another day. Sorry this was so impassioned.

.

ECT (Electroshock Treatments): Humane or Inhumane?

In April 2004 I came home after a three month stay and ECT in a Connecticut hospital. This is my account of it in two relatively brief blog entries plus the comments that accompanied it. I did not enter the comments that preceded it, which came in the wake of my long absence, but they were many.
-----

After three months of an in-patient stay, I am thoroughly sick of hospitals. In an out of restraints and room seclusion innumerable times, on one-to-one with a sitter for weeks, having more than 13 ECT treatments, half by court order and deemed necessary by my sister and conservator, it was a miserable time all around right up to the last day there. I emphatically do not recommend it! I would like to get back to regularly blogging, but for now simply want to announce that I am home and ready to resume where I left off. I did do a radio interview by phone while at St Raphaelís, with Bill Lichtenstein's INFINITE MIND series (*in 2008 BL's series was removed from NPR after discovery of a hidden conflict of interest between the main psychiatrist in it being paid by drug companies and the promotion of certain drug-related psychiatric prescriptives, which could no longer be seen as unbiassed or objective). You can find it by doing a google search for Infinite Mind, then once at the Welcome screen, doing a search for FOUR LIVES and clicking on the link that allows you to listen on-line. Any feedback from listeners will be greatly appreciated. My twin sister and I are featured in the second half of the hour-long show. But for now, here endeth my 14th blog entry, short as it is, with promises to resume at greater length ASAP. Glad to be home and back on-line!
____________________________

I had a chaplain friend in the hospital who said that saying Fuck God was at least a relationship, and a meaningful one. Hope this doesn't overly offend anyone. But read the poem and you'll see how I mean it.

BURNING BRIDGES
By Pamela Spiro Wagner

"Fuck God," you say, the worst thing
you can think of, and "Jesus F. Christ!"
when everyone knows what blasphemy
the F stands for. And because the lightning bolt
doesn’t strike you down as you’ve been
promised, you decide he, or she, if God,
doesn’t much cut it in the omnipotence
department. You would smack anyone else
who said such a thing, meaning
you, yet God doesn’t even send a thunderclap
or an ominous massing of clouds
off to the northeast just to remind you
Who’s Who.
So now you stand sheepishly
in church between the pews while others do
things you’ve completely forgotten, mumbling
the Lord’s Prayer which is all you have not,
and pray no one you knew as an atheist
sees you with your head in a hymnal.
God you swore off as a militant teen and are ashamed
to be seen going back to just for succor
in a time when all your friends
nod at you in the street but won’t stop
to speak except to explain prior engagements
like the house fire they’re running
towards or from, or the big C
they had an MRI for with ambiguous results.
Even death won’t shake them
from the strenuousness of their disbelief.
They’re convinced God is for children and idiots
with substandard IQ’s or people who need
their heads examined. So in church, kneeling
because others are kneeling, you examine
your head for shit-for-brains
when through the open door tumbles
a small bird, landing on your shoulder,
in its beak it bears a twig,
and in its eyes a look you almost recognize.



ANOTHER ADDITION to Blog Entry:


My chaplain friend says I am courageous to dread ECT as much as I do and yet submit to it, but I’m going to disappoint her in that, because despite being court-ordered to treatment sessions, I’m quitting any but the most forced participation and even that I shall do my best to sabotage. I can’t tolerate it any longer; it is a torment going to sleep and an even greater one waking up in enormous if amorphous distress and confusion, and it later fills my days with nausea, headache and olfactory hallucinations. I simply cannot see how unlimited once-monthly sessions can benefit me, at least not any more than they supposedly already have. And the dread discolors my days for weeks in advance. I don’t care that it’s the best they can offer me right now: I don’t want it and don’t feel I need it or that the benefits outweigh the costs and/or uncertainties. And if they try to send the police after me (since I shall neither arrange a ride nor the required daily companion) I shall simply eat a large breakfast, effectively sabotaging any efforts on their part since I know they cannot give me anesthesia on a full stomach. That is how I thwarted them in the hospital when I wanted to refuse: I’d simply grab some food from the kitchen and quickly down it before they could stop me, and that short-circuited the day’s treatment session.

If I have to, if things start breaking down seriously, I can take a low dose of Zyprexa, which though it induces weight gain, is preferable to ECT’s horrors. And there’s no proof that I shall need that at all, since I am quite compliant on my Geodon and several mood stabilizers. I just can no longer live in this constant state of dread and fear, not when I know how to alleviate them and when I see little use in allowing such a state to continue.

Let me describe a session for you, just in case there are those of you who have never experienced it before.

First all of all, no food or drink after midnight (effectively after dinner) and no anti-convulsants the night before, no medications on the morning the treatment is scheduled. Nothing by mouth at all. Then you arrive at the clinic and the first thing they do is give you a shot of Robinal to dry up any oral or bodily secretions that might interfere with the ECT session in some way. If you’re lucky, they can take you in a half hour later. Then you get up on the stretcher and lie down with your head on this little pillow and they start searching for an appropriate vein into which they will direct the anesthesia. Meanwhile, they squeeze some electrical jelly onto a headstrap and tighten that around your forehead. They place some electrical detection pads and leads on your chest as well and once the IV is inserted tell you you’ll be going off to sleep soon. Then you smell/taste something awful as the anesthesia briefly registers before you lose consciousness. Nothingness follows, until the nurse shakes you awake telling you it’s all over, the treatment has been done and you’re almost ready to go home. You’re moaning, half asleep still, and uncertain the worst is past, and it takes you some time before you’re conscious enough and steady enough on your feet to get down off the treatment table and toddle on through to where your companion is waiting for you. Several times I’ve retched immediately, though not every time. I know I’m never quite sure I’ve actually had the treatment or if they are still making me wait for it, interminably and cruelly. The anesthesia smell follows you for quite a while, and though they counsel one to eat a light breakfast, eating is the last thing on my mind. All I want to do is lie down and sleep off my headache and queasy stomach. I don’t feel immediately better as they claim I look (I think that is wishful thinking on their parts) and in fact I’m not sure I’ve felt better at all after session #13 or so. I’m not convinced I wouldn’t have gotten just as much better with some closer nursing contacts and some kinder people to talk to during the last 3 months.

Anyhow, that's my brief synopsis of an ECT treatment session. I know it doesn’t sound so terrible, but to me it is frightening in the extreme and I want no more part of it. If EP-MRI’s were available I’d jump to use them as they’ve been shown to be far less invasive and just as effective (at least according to a Scientific American article last month.) But so far no one’s offering them. So I’m stuck with either accepting or rejecting ECT and my choice is now to reject the treatment as not worth the cost/benefit ratio. I know some people will disagree strenuously, but they are they and can tolerate what has become intolerable to me, and of little obvious benefit. God bless them. They are perhaps better people than I am, but I’ve reached the end of my rope and the end of believing that this is something worthwhile doing.

seeLink to Wordpress Wagblog post on ECT