Posted by SLS on January 18, 2007, at 6:15:27
In reply to RE: I am not going to post on ECT anymore, posted by Karen44 on January 17, 2007, at 21:55:22
Hi Karen.
I was going to lobby to offer ECT success stories and scenarios by which some people mistake residual depressive symptomology for memory impairment, but it looks like you have thoroughly investigated the treatment. So, I won't do that. :-)
> I am well aware of the risk, more than anyone might realize.
I'm sure you are also aware of cases where people undergo close to 100 treatments without sufficient cognitive impairments for them to detect subjectively. These are the lucky ones.
I had a course of bilateral ECT 15 years ago. I did experience the commonly reported loss of detailed memory of events surrounding the period of treatments. However, I can't say that my memory or cognition is any more impaired for having had ECT. My depression (bipolar) produces significant memory and cognitive impairments. They existed before the treatments. They exist now. I could easily have allowed myself to blame ECT for them had I not had the full understanding of this.
I dated someone who went through an unsuccessful course of ECT and complained that it messed up her memory. I still don't see that it made any difference, but, of course, I'm not inside her head. However, when I asked her why she had to drop out of college for depression, one of her reasons was that her memory was so bad.
I hope you are one of the lucky ones. One of the things we don't really know is what the ratio of lucky/unlucky is. Perhaps you know better than the rest of us. In any event, GOOD LUCK!
By the way, what type of ECT have you decided upon should go in that direction?
- Scott
poster:SLS
thread:723441
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070113/msgs/723542.html