First Writings. Please Remain Calm and Adopt the Brace Position
Featuring: About me
And so I write my first blog post. This is a scary thing and I am currently drinking tea in the extra big mug to sooth my distress. Many may be wondering “why are you writing if it causes you distress? Surely a distress signal is the signal which means: cease and desist?” Well. My running hypothesis is that it is similar to when you are waiting to be passed the baton in a race. Runner number three comes ever closer, the metal of the baton catching the light in synchronization with his movement. You are runner number four. In a race of baton-passing, they save the abilities of their fastest sprinter for last. You feel the weight of the fate of the team resting on your shoulders. You are terrified. If you drop the baton, the world shall implode in on itself and you have ended the human race. You lock eyes with number three and solidify the sacred bond which can only be felt by mortals in this exact situation and no other situation. You begin running. It is a good sign that your legs have the ability of movement. The time of the baton-pass is close. Time stays regular as you feel the warm metal in your palm, and grip it. You know this is the baton as it feels exactly like a baton should. You break into a grin as you tighten your grasp and push yourself to a sprint. Elation washes over you as your body moves with a speed almost primal. As you pass the finish line in first place, you realise something important.
That this is a terrible simile. Why was there a baton? Why couldn’t I just have said nerves before a race, the actual action of running being when one calms down? I do not run and have no idea if this is even accurate aside from the four-person baton rule and that they save the fastest for last (this comes from a potent memory of a particular baton race in an Olympic Games long past. Usain Bolt ran last for Jamaica’s team in a breathtaking display and ripped the world record to shreds. I am nothing if not accurately sourced). The first sign that this blog will be a success is that I don’t want to delete the above piece of writing because I am proud of a sentence, and so I shall just leave it there and question my own logic instead. Ideally, if I was going to go for a simile, I should have probably drawn it from personal experience. Like, “nerves before a piano exam”. In my school career I played piano for a long time and underwent exams under the Royal Schools of Music. I will now tell you why this simile is completely and utterly un-usable. Firstly, it was not nerves but terror. Additionally, there was not one second of those exams during which I was not terrified. You know those musicians who close their eyes while rocking back and forth in some sort of blissful trance created by the sound of their own musical talent? Negatory. My brain shut down to protect itself and my pieces and scales were played from muscle memory alone, as if I was some sort of android. Can the “feeling” which must be put into the piece of music be programmed? Yes. Or the examiner would not have written “a fine demonstration which captured the emotion of the piece” in the comments section of the Romantics piece of my Grade 8 exam.
I have been overcome by a genius idea. I shall not be using any similes or metaphors to speak about the experience of blog post number one. Why am I doing a thing that is scary and will the thing become not scary? What I am hoping is that it will become not-scary as I ease into it. If there was a self-help book out there called “blogging about difficult subjects”, I would avoid it. When I accidentally pass the self-help section in the book shop and I see titles like “JUST DO IT” (all in Caps because apparently Caps is motivating as opposed to intimidating) I move swiftly on. I’m assuming I know what those books are trying to say. They can motivate you to eliminate hesitancy and fear in achieving a goal you have set. Some might have baby steps to do this. Perhaps writing a list of smaller things to do which can ultimately lead to going for the big thing at the end. Some might be autobiographies of a person who achieved great things despite their circumstances, and this motivates the reader. I’m not really a fan of the self-help section. In terms of “do the thing” I sort of find that, whatever it is, I’ll find a way to do it within my own capacity. And it can be different for whatever the situation is. A situation can present itself and if the solution is: curl up in a ball like a pangolin and cry for a while because actually what you needed for this one is catharsis and pangolin crying is how you achieve it. Then that is that.(1) I guess if I ever wrote a self-help book it would be called “I am not qualified but I sort of just do what is necessary to get to the other side with the least mental damage possible and that is all”. And then the book would be empty apart from soothing sketches, many of my giant teacup from different angles. And the mechanisms which allow pangolins to curl up in those balls (with diagrams)
How did I go about starting a blog if I was nervous, hesitant, scared? Well. Those were really only some of the emotions I felt about the whole thing. I knew I loved to write, and that maybe my writing could actually go somewhere other than the notepad on my phone. Of course, before I actually started this, I did a whole load of research on the whole thing, and many of them said essentially this: why do you want to write it? What do you want to say? Well.
About Me
My name is Caitlin Krause (grimace at the use of my actual name. Hi… to anyone reading this who knows me) and I am a 28 year old female living in Cape Town, South Africa. Now, the reason that the “about me” section is a problem is that it will always be unacceptably long. Simply because there is so much information that cannot be excluded. No unnecessary similes, we’re getting down to business. But hey, you’re readers! I believe in you! More self-help book phrases! Okay, let’s go.
I got diagnosed with depression in 2007, when I was 14 years old. That was when I was given my first ever antidepressant, a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. An example would be Prozac. And that is when my journey began. Unlike Sam and Frodo’s journey, there was no Gandalf and it ended fucking terribly. Included in the premium psychiatry package would be: 14 years of pills, psychiatrists, more diagnoses, clinic stays, hospital stays, way more polypharmacy than is okay, one incident of malpractice, alternative treatments and I do believe you are getting the picture.
For a little more information there, the diagnosis was bumped up to Bipolar Type 2 in 2011. So, take the sin graph of typical Bipolar Type 1. And drop it so that my “manic” would be “feeling like a normal person” and “depressive” would be horrifically bad depression. Up and down on a cyclical basis. A very haphazard cyclical-ish basis. And I was not responding to any pill thrown at me. In 2013, owing to panic attacks which were becoming debilitating, panic disorder was thrown in the mix. This is when a benzodiazepine (calm down pill. Like Valium or Xanex) was added. My chosen benzo was Rivitrol. Going along the years, more pills and many at once. Aside from the benzodiazepine, nothing was working and, furthermore, nothing was working the way it was supposed to. Antipsychotics which are supposed to knock you out, made me anxious. Things which usually make someone more energetic, made me fatigued. Everything became completely counterintuitive but I suppose things aren’t exactly going to go as planned when a patient is taking 4 classes of drug and you, as the psychiatrist, won’t admit that the interactions and receptors you are or are not messing with are impossible to determine at this point. Eventually after trying every option available, from first to 4th line, I levelled up to XDR (Extremely Drug Resistant) Bipolar Type 2 (and panic disorder). My 6th psychiatrist (I got bounced around a lot and moved cities a lot) was at a loss. There weren’t many options left.
Ketamine treatment had become available here, and so they jumped on that. After 6 treatments, it was determined I was non-responsive. This… was the first time in a while my heart sank when I didn’t respond to a treatment, ketamine being an anaesthetic. New. Ground-breaking. A game changer in psychiatry. And my brain was not having it. Right. Now we get to the alternatives. Cannabis oil? Nope. Psylocybin? Not useful as my serotonin receptors are blocked.
I had moved again and agreed to give my new psychiatrist six sessions of Electroconvulsive Therapy. This treatment sort of scared me, but I think it scares everyone a little bit. Probably something along the lines of the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest effect. I didn’t have much faith in it, to be honest. Primarily because, well, nothing in my very long and tiring psychiatry journey had worked. I was tired. But there was one last treatment left before I could just call it quits. I felt ready to leave the psychiatrists' offices behind. But first, the ECT. And then, I believed, I was done with psychiatry.
Things did not quite go as planned. This. Was when I became that one in a million where you think “that doesn’t happen to people". And I hate that I have to come here being those cases so rare they aren’t even documented. Well, because it happened, yes. But also because now everything I want to say about what happened afterwards is tinted by something which makes ECT disturbing as opposed to something which can actually help. It can, and has with many. And I really need readers to understand, I’m still an advocate. Despite everything.
(Sigh)(Holds bridge of nose between thumb and forefinger)
I would like to go through everything that happened after session 5 of my ECT therapy on the 18th of September 2020. In terms of the procedure. Nothing went wrong. In terms of me. I woke up, having no idea where I was, or what had happened or who these people were. And my memory was a blank slate. I searched for memories and there were none. I soon passed out owing to the anaesthetic.
After that day I made no new memories for 8 days. This is called anterograde amnesia. I have no recollection of my 28th Birthday. When I “woke up” I assessed my memory. People and experiences were there but the last 5-ish years were scrambled. Facts were gone in chunks. And an unimaginable terror took me. Much like a permanent panic attack. I could not eat, I would throw it up. I could not sleep. If I dozed off, I would be jolted awake by terror. I did not sleep for a long time and was losing weight fast. The lack of sleep was becoming torture. My psychiatrist was away and I could not contact her. I went to another psychiatrist who I had seen in the past and told him what happened, and he called me a liar. My sleep deprivation continued for a total of 12 days before I fell into a catatonic state. I had also lost 10 kilograms at that point. I was driven to my psychiatrist and admitted to hospital, to ICU. It was there that I had my first sleep in a while. When I woke up in hospital, I found that my memory issues were still a problem. I kept forgetting where I was and forgot the faces and names of my nurses constantly. It was as if they were a new person I was meeting with every new day. Now. These four were especially unfortunate. When I tried to read, I saw and understood the words, but could not string them together to make a coherent sentence. Music sounded like disturbing static and frightened me. And visual media were just scary moving pictures which I couldn’t make sense of and confused and scared me. The 4th one, ah this one did break me. When I tried to draw, I could not move my hand in the way that I wanted it to. Everything came out like the drawing of a very small child.
There was nothing on the MRI’s or any other neurological scans. I had been given nutritional shakes and was no longer malnourished. I was a psychiatric patient. Psychiatric patients do not stay in hospitals. I would have to go to a government psychiatric facility, or somewhere else. I did not want to go to the government psychiatric facility. Because I knew what would happen to a psychiatric patient there who came in terrified and claimed she had memory problems and could no longer read or hear music or watch things or draw. I knew because I had gotten far enough in my medical studies and been in that facility long enough to know. I flew home, to my Mom.
And started recovery.
What do I want to say in this blog? I would like to take readers through how I have recovered so far, and what there is still to do. I would like to speak about other parts of this process, the wonderful and the terrible. The first time I heard a song properly again for the first time, and how I got there. The time I thought I was psychotic. Then all the other times I thought I was psychotic. I am not going to be speaking about Electroconvulsive therapy in general. Whether it helps you, or hurts you, I am no expert. It hurt me, I was that one in a million. That is all. I’d like to bring more attention to mental illness through personal experience. I find I write best through personal experience. If anyone who reads this can be helped in any way by anything that I say, it would be worth it. I can talk about depression, panic disorder, dissociative disorder and PTSD. And a whole load about this recovery process. I can also talk about things like the time I became best friends with my roommate in a clinic. I can talk about medications and how shitty it is to be on so many that when something bad happens, you have no idea which one is doing what. Even when you are literally studying a psychiatry textbook with drugs you are taking right in front of you. Basically, I want to write. I want to tell stories. I want my mind to derail and begin constructing a novella on Imperial Russia before having to delete the whole thing because I’ve gone off on another one of my weird tangents. Most importantly, if any of what I say can help anybody along the way, that would be the best possible outcome. And so, what is scaring me?
It is what people think. I’d love to say I’m one of those who don’t care what people think, but I do. I’m using my actual name in this blog. The thing is, I’m scared of being called a liar. It was so much of a blow when it was said to me by the very person whose job it was to help me, that I worry about it a lot. I guess being called a liar by ordinary people would hurt. Apart from what happened and recovery, telling the whole world that you have a mental illness feels extremely vulnerable. Like something I have kept a secret my whole life is now being placed on show for all to see.
Nevertheless, here I am. My tea is finished and this shall be posted. And even though it’s scary, I’m sort of looking forward to it. Like a literary adventure.
And after every blog post:
Song of the day: Help I’m Alive — Metric
Feel free to contact me at selkie2309@yahoo.com if you have any questions or just need to talk
(1) Please note that pangolin crying may not always be the solution for every situation. Even though it might feel like it.
