TMS for depression and...

Cool ideas on other things to do with TMS:

TMS, George came to realize, could be more than a tool for studying the brain. He wondered whether TMS could re-energize the brain's left prefrontal cortex, where in depression the nerve cells turn sluggish, consuming less oxygen and glucose and firing unenthusiastically. His London colleagues didn't jump on board. "Why would you ever want to do that?" one inquired skeptically. Even to George, who now directs the Center for Advanced Imaging Research and the Brain Imaging Center of Excellence at the Medical University of South Carolina, his therapy sometimes seems a little nutty: "I think of that Steve Martin movie The Jerk, where he invents these Opti-Grab eyeglasses that have the unfortunate side effect of making everybody cross-eyed."

But TMS is far from nutty. George recently published a study showing that brief pulses of TMS as surgery patients roll out of the OR reduce their need for pain relief rom a morphine pump. TMS may speed the excruciating process of post-stroke rehabilitation, lower the volume of auditory hallucinations and ringing in the ears, and provide a midflight attention boost to fatigued pilots. That's drawn the Pentagon's interest.

(bold mine)

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation May Cause Improvements in Memory

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation May Cause Improvements in Memory - Psychiatric Times

Now, understand that depression impinges on memory function and the correlation below may not be the rTMS improving memory per se but the relief of depression actually causing memory to function like it did when the brain was not depressed.

Still good news though. Memory loss is one of the awful things about depression as it hinders your ability to not only remember your loved ones, and life, but also work.

Oh, and FYI, Wernicke's area, which is where the rTMS is being applied, is closer to the brain stem than I would like making it less likely that I could try it (The VNS coil is too close.)


Wernicke's area - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,

Wernicke's area is one of the two parts of the cerebral cortex linked since the late nineteenth century to speech (the other is the Broca's area). It is traditionally considered to consist of the posterior ...

There's No There, There

Today’s writing didn’t go according to plan, and I’m feeling like a five-year-old about it. Like a child whose balloon pops and throws a fit. I’ve tried explaining to her that it’s no big deal, it’s just a balloon, and that there are other balloons in the world. But she’s kicking and screaming. And crying. A bratty fit in a coffee shop. It’s times like these when I hate being a parent.

It never ceases to amaze me how little it takes to upset me. I can go from OK to not OK in the span of traffic congestion. It feels like I can’t deal with anything, except for of course, that I deal with everything. I deal with more than anyone I know and control more than anyone I know and yet completely feel out of control.

You can’t tell, of course. No one can ever really tell anything. I’m thinking about the conversation I had with someone last week. He couldn’t believe that I was as sick as I said because of the way I come across. I know. I know. I come across so brilliant and witty and charming and in control. I can’t be sick. I can’t be. Best compartmentalizing ever.

This is required. I can’t not do this. If I were to live in the diseased part I would never get a thing done. There would be no work, no book, no friends, no writing, no anything. To live in the disease is not to live at all. I’m lucky, I guess that I’ve figured out how not to do it. That I’ve figured out how to act normal even if I haven’t figured out how to actually be normal.

But I wonder if bifurcating myself isn’t just lacking in humanity on both sides. My sick side obviously doesn’t feel human. It’s just pin. Painful, painful pain. Just the writhing, just the seething, just the burning, just the sobbing. It’s infinite and yet unidimentional. A black hole. Just black that goes on forever. Nothing to hold on to. Nothing to see. Nothing to do.

And then the other side of me is just an act, and is an act ever really human? Stage whispers, lighting changes, and blocking, approximate reality but aren’t actually real. Sense memory, method acting are designed to make you think the act is real. It’s not real. It’s a portrait, a composite, and approximation of something that could have been. Even actors have their lives offstage. I vaporize off stage.

So oh yes, I can act. Oh yes. Endlessly. Without question. But it doesn’t fix anything, just prolongs it. I’m supposed to prolong it. Everyone says so. Wait. Something will work. Just keep on. Just keep. Just stay. Oh yes, that has worked so well so far.

I understand this ability is what made the book possible and what made my ability to talk to people about it possible. This doesn’t make me feel any better. If I think very positively, and think that I saved someone’s life with my work, I honestly don’t know that it’s worth it either. If I saved someone with a quality of life like mine it’s not a win. It’s a push, at best.

People say I’m excited about it. Something in my voice. Manner. Approximation of excitement maybe. Or some part of me has managed to be excited without me actually feeling excited. I appreciate the excitement and hopefulness of others because it gives me something to emulate. And then I just go into intellectualization. I can intellectualize why it’s good, and the good it can do. And people believe this. Think that I believe it. People are so stupid and so blind.

i am sad

I am sad.

I am sad. Those three words don't mean anything to me anymore because I just always am. I am breathing. I am thinking. I am sad.

I resort to small words that don't speak to the profound nature of the sadness. The words that speak to it's depth and breadth have all been said, and all been written. There are no new words. There are no words big enough. There are no words strong enough. So simple and small it has to be. I am sad.

I can't seem to be unsad. I can't seem to be joyous. I can't seem to be energetic. Everything I do, which is the very minimum, done out of absolute need with the absent of want achingly present.

It's mostly a dry barren sadness which is to say that there are no tears to speak of likely because they've been compartmentalized so well. I know how not to cry. I know how to control my physical being. I just don't know how not to be sad.

I am on eight medications, none of them doing their job, but I'm scared to part with any lest the situation get worse, which it always can. I could stop being able to suppress the tears. I could stop being able to leave the house. I could stop being able to take a shower. So I live in pain, and fear, of even greater pain.

It's the netherworld; purgatory if I'm lucky. It's impossible to be kept in a state of constant pain and not know why. Know that it's a disease isn't enough. I need an enemy. A black hat. Someone to fight. Someone to plot to win against. Not this endless nothingness, where nothing matters, and everything is gray.

Only to be left with I am sad. Encompassing my life. Signifying nothing.

After the Orgasm

I'm laying, one leg bent up, and the other bent to my side, on a deep duvet, with my wet pussy in the middle. I can feel that it's slick from the top of my pubis, down between my lips, and into the crease of my ass. I can feel the air trying to cool the wet, hot places. I am sure that the places covered in cum are the only places I'm alive.

And Smiling

So I wrote a book. Like a book. A whole book. A beginning, middle, and end. Yes, I've been dabbling in writing for years but I've never had anything that I thought was worth publishing. But this has worth. I truly believe that it does. Which is amazing. I produced something with worth. Maybe that means that I have a little more worth. That would be nice.

I wrote the ending a couple of days ago after thinking and thinking and thinking about it. It seemed like there was nothing worthy in my head and I was worried that I was going to have written a book and never quite finished it. But I think it's finished now. I think it has an ending now. I think it's, ready.

I've been told it's good. It's impossible for me to tell. I really hope that it is. I really hope that it's more than good. I really hope it's amazing. My standards are high. I hope I'm not disappointed. I hope I'm right.

I'm shocked when I write something amazing. I'm shocked when others are amazed. It's like a miracle. A miracle I magically usher in. I'm like a magician that doesn't understand his own tricks. Resulting in a, tricky book?

I'm impressed. Egotistical and impressed.

Wanton

Physically I'm exhausted, mentally I'm tired, and sexually I'm still wanting. I'm in an adrenaline hollow and still wanting. I'm marked from neck to thighs; still wanting. I've never seen such a me-soaked bed and still, wanting.

I'm not sated. He says I don't do 'sated'. I don't know. I guess not. I don't know what it would take to sate me. Hours? Days? More? Hard, hard, hard...to say.

And one mark on my right thigh looks like the outline of an arrow with a slice through it. I think I remember that scream.

Such pain. Such extraordinary pain. Such extreme pleasure. He's right, it's a big deal.

Shame

I have a rash on my right shin. It’s horrible and red and raised and itches like crazy. The rash has been coming and going for the last year. It is the rash of shame.

When the rash first appeared I ignored it, just like I ignore everything else that happens to me, but then it would go away with the normal time and ignorance and it insisted on being horribly itchy and spreading. The doctor gave me some steroidal cream, some dire warnings and sent me home.

Being a steroid, the cream could only be used in the effected area, and only for two weeks at a time. Any more than two weeks and the skin would start to thin too much.

After two weeks the rash went away. But then, a short while later it returned. I went back to the doctor, they gave me more of the same cream.

This, of course, didn’t work. So I went back to the doctor and they gave me stronger steroids now in the form of an ointment. A greasy, filmy ointment with even more dire warnings than the cream. Ointment of death. Obviously.

After two weeks of the cream, and then two of the ointment the rash went away. And I was waiting for my leg to fall off from all the steroids. But it didn’t. Instead, the rash just returned again. And again a doctor said just use the ointment.

So for the last year I’ve had the rash off and on and had to use the ointment to treat it. Naturally, every time I do, it takes longer to beat the rash back. It wasn’t really what you’d call a sound long term solution.

So then my doctor decided to biopsy the rash. She did that a couple of days ago and we’ll see what she finds.

And every time this rash has resurfaced I have felt more and more ashamed because I know this rash is my fault. I produced it with my own stupidity and rash behavior. (Funny, I know.) I produced it because the need to hurt myself was so great that I just used what I had handy. I produced it because hurting myself seemed like a good idea while brushing my cats. I produced it by taking the grooming blade for my cats, that’s made up of a hundred little sharp teeth, and scraping the skin off of my right shin. Immensely stupid, I know. No one knows this better than me. That’s why I haven’t told anyone.

There is an idea that I deserve this. That this is payment for my own stupidity. That this is what happens when bad little girls do bad little things to themselves. They get punished. Over and over. In a way that everyone can see.

I can’t bear to tell me doctor this is what happened. I want her to actually want to help me. I don’t want her to know how idiotic I am. I don’t want her to write me off because I’m a person who can’t even take care of themselves. I don’t want her to view me as unimportant because I committed a shameful act that I know was both stupid and shameful. I want her to help me.

I spend a lot of time trying not to hurt myself. Removing temptations, making it more difficult, not giving in to contributing acts, and so on. For example, I saw some new bandages at the pharmacy the other day. I thought I should pick them up. They would work better than the tape I have for lacerations. They’re more like what you would see in an ER. That would make it easier.

But I didn’t buy them. And I didn’t buy them because I knew if I did I would just spend brain cycles obsessing over them and when I would get to use them and what they would be like. I knew it was an excuse I didn’t need, and help I shouldn’t have. I stayed away.

But I can’t stay away from everything in the room. In every room there are a thousand ways to hurt yourself. Particularly when you’re prepared to go as far as I will. And so just because I avoid the knife doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean anything at all. Just means I’ve avoided one thing out of a thousand. I picked skin scraping because it produces days of pain, it’s larger, and it heals almost without scars. And because the blade was in my hand. And because I needed it. And because I wanted to know what it would feel like.

And I’m ashamed.