Mental Illness and Working on a “Broken” Brain.

I haven’t posted for a very long time. And it’s not for lack of ideas for blog posts. I’ve actually got a sticky note attached to my computer with a couple of awesome ideas…I just haven’t had the capacity to put words together. Or maybe I just couldn’t muster the massive amount of energy it takes to put words together.

I’ve written before about my anxiety and depression. The last few months it’s gotten really bad–worse than it was when I closed my law practice just about 5 years ago now. But a lawyer can’t just drop out of life and crawl into a hole and sleep, even when that feels like the best possible solution (I’ve got BILLS, ya’ll). Especially when that lawyer has a regular 9-5 corporate gig. So I decided I needed to be proactive and get on top of it. Back in October I went to my primary medical care provider and discussed options, but had also looked into TMS therapy. At my appointment with my primary care, we decided I’d bump up the dosage on my anti anxiety maintenance medication, and bump up the dosage on the benzo I was taking as needed when I’m in a bad place, but hold off on trying another antidepressant. I wanted to wait and see what happened with TMS.

TMS stands for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. You can read more about it here: https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/transcranial-magnetic-stimulation/about/pac-20384625. It’s not necessarily covered by insurance. There was some hoop jumping to get my insurance to cover it, but they did end up doing so on a one-off basis. My treatment protocol is 20-30 minutes at a time; I’ve been going during my lunch hour at work, every weekday less holidays, since the beginning of December. The clinic I’ve been doing it through shows excellent results in most people. Like, 86% respond favorably, 66% go into complete remission of their depressive symptoms.

Hell on Earth, actually.

Sadly, my depression is really secondary to my anxiety and panic disorders…and TMS is less effective for people like me. In my case, I’m in that 14% that it’s not been effective for at all, and I only have 5 treatments left out of 36. However, going through TMS DID put me under the care of an awesome psychiatrist I wouldn’t have gotten into otherwise. I started new medications (there actually ARE meds I hadn’t tried before!!) just over a week ago. And thankfully, the new anxiety med has completely knocked my anxiety down. Which means that my depression is now manifesting more than the anxiety, because it takes at least a month for antidepressants to reach therapeutic levels in the brain.

So now I feel like Nothing. Flat. I have little to no interest in anything, and I’m exhausted. But after being in a state of near constant panic for the past 4 months, it’s kind of a relief to have my brain not revved in fear 24 hours a day. Because that’s what anxiety feels like to me–my brain is in a continuous state of dread, worry, panic, and stress, like I’m hanging on by my fingernails, and constantly on the verge of tears. I don’t sleep well, and when I do sleep, I wake up in the middle of the night for no reason at all and can’t go back to sleep, or because I’m having horribly graphic violent nightmares that have scared me awake and then I can’t go back to sleep. To say it’s exhausting and distressing is an understatement similar to those warning signs that say “Warning: 900 degrees Fahrenheit is Hot. It will burn you.” Duh.

I was thinking about this this morning and remembered an incident from way back in the day, when my Grandpa Tanner was still alive, but was in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s disease. He’d fallen and broken his hip, but kept trying to get out of bed. Alzheimer’s causes its sufferers to “time travel,” if you will, and hallucinate that they are living at some time in their past. My grandpa regressed to his younger years when he was a cowboy in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and had to go feed and herd cows. He kept trying to get out of bed because, in his mind, he needed to go to work. The nurses didn’t know what to do with him, so they called my folks to help. My dad was talking to him, trying to convince him he needed to stay in bed with his broken hip. Finally, Daddy said to Grandpa, “Dad, you wouldn’t make a horse work on a broken leg, wouldja?” And Grandpa thought about it for a beat and said, “No. I wouldn’t.” And he calmed down, and quit trying to get out of bed.

That’s my Grandpa Tanner, second from the right, back in the day.

And so it is with those of us with broken minds–because mental illness IS all in my head, just like asthma is all is the lungs, and scoliosis is all in the spine. I have a chemical imbalance. I likely always will. I’m going to be realistic about what I can do, and do all that I can, but not beat myself up over what I can’t do but think I “should” (terrible word, that “Should”). I’m going to treat my mental illnesses, and stay on top of them, but stop expecting myself to “work on a broken leg”…because even an old cowboy will tell you that you don’t work anyone on a broken leg. You gotta get that thing healed.

I can be taught.