Posted by Pfinstegg on December 9, 2002, at 13:19:59
In reply to Re: Emotional divorce » Pfinstegg, posted by Dinah on December 9, 2002, at 7:49:04
Oh, good, Dinah. I 'm afraid my style of relating tends to be to try to always come up with answers to complex questions which don't really have any neat answers, but, beneath that, what really means a lot to me is to make emotional connections to people like you on the boards.
I am amazed at the degree of understanding and support I have found from posters here- you among them. Not to mention the sheer amount of up-to-date knowledge. I know I would never have found out about TMS for depression with DST non-suppression if it were not for the posts here. To my present psychiatrist, TMS was something which two patients of colleagues had had with good results, but something she knew very little about, and did not feel informed enough to recommend. I got enough information from this board, plus Medline, etc., to recommend myself for it. Even if I don't turn into a complete suppressor again, even becoming a partial suppressor would be a big gain.
I keep looking for articles about the whole topic of depression and HPA axis dysregulation, and found such an interesting one from Tokyo recently. It was about a 52-year old woman who had been bipolar for 20 years. With psychotherapy plus treatment with carbemazapine, she got a full remission. What fascinated me was that they continued to follow her thyroid and cortisol status for two years after remission, and found that her thyroid and adrenal glands slowly reverted to complete normality. I have not yet found any article where treatment is combined with long-term endocrine follow-up in this country (US), but it seems like such a reasonable thing to do. I have decided to insist on TSH, T3, T4, DST suppression and 24-hour cortisol tests on a regular basis as a part of my treatment.I thought, initially, that my insurance would not pay for all of this, but it actually has, so far. On the other hand, TMS, not being FDA-approved, won't be covered by insurance. Right now, TMS studies at Harvard, Emory and Pennsylvania are not taking new patients. A study at Chicago involves being willing to be part of either the ECT or TMS arm of the study, and an active study at the University of Washington requires that people be right-handed. So, this left-handed person found that there are two well-trained groups of psychiatrists offering TMS privately in the US. I chose the one in Atlanta, as the doctors there have been trained at Emory and the University of South Carolina- two of the centers for TMS studies. I'm (more or less) good to go on Dec. 30! Wish me luck!
Pfinstegg
poster:Pfinstegg
thread:1736
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20021109/msgs/1772.html