Posted by Reggie BoStar on November 25, 2007, at 1:39:14
Hi Everyone,
I may have to go in for another round of ECT soon. The last one was in August 2005.For some fortunate reasons I had no memory issues at all the last time. Lately though I've been hearing from other ECT patients who have gone through multiple treatments. They all report some permanent long-term memory loss after more than one treatment. They also feel - all of them - that the loss of those memories was worth the gains.
I just finished Kitty Dukakis' book "Shock" in which she describes the positive results she has gotten from ECT. It started out well but sure enough - late in the book she acknowledged losing a few long-term memories. Like everyone else who reports this she felt the cost was worth the gains.
Trouble for me is:
1. I only have a handful of good memories of childhood. If I lose those, I won't have any at all.
2. Regarding all those ECT patients who think the loss of memory was worth the gain: how do they know that, actually? They can't remember what they've lost. And when times get tough and they try to concentrate on good memories, they'll have fewer and fewer in their arsenal the more ECT they get.
3. I have a small amount of mental edge left over from when I burned out on the job. It's nowhere near what it was but I can still use it to read a lot of books and learn new things that aren't too technical.
"Difficulties with acquiring new information" is the way the pdocs describe the loss of that edge. Sometimes it's short term, sometimes it's long term. That's about as specific as they get on that subject.
Living life for me right now is basically just waiting to die and hoping I don't suffer too much in the process.
I've been to the anti-ECT hysteria sites. It's all junk science, garbage propaganda. They're always lifting things out of context from the research journals and rewording them to suit their agenda.
The problem there is that I haven't found an anti-ECT site that ISN'T loaded with hysteria.
Good grief. Well, here I am again.
Reggie BoStar
poster:Reggie BoStar
thread:796918
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20071120/msgs/796918.html