TMS had a way of teasing out my problems. I had been blaming my daily naps on rheumatoid arthritis, but it turns out a lot of it was depression. I do still have to take naps several times a week, but it is no longer a daily obligation. I never would have guessed depression was playing such a significant role in my full body shutdowns, although looking back, it does make sense.
TMS took care of the depression. My goofiness is back. I had kind of forgotten about it? This Laura laughs and is weird and silly. (I told you I wasn’t afraid of her.) On the other hand, I’m feeling my feelings all the time now.
Several years after that, I posted similar sentiments. We struggled to get a tree in a timely fashion, which meant we had to drive from tree farm to tree farm only to find all the U-cut trees sold out and the precut pickings slim. It was hard to get the holiday foods made. One year we never decorated the tree at all.
This summer I got TMS and blasted the depression out of my brain, although I hated every second of it. I’m pretty sure this is the first Christmas I haven’t been depressed in my entire adult life.
I know I get a bit obsessive about these detours into the Possible Magic Pill That Will Fix All My Problems (all duds long term, for the TLDR), but I’m going to stick my head back in here for a moment and finish documenting the old TMS journey, for myself and for anyone else who is looking for accounts of the treatment that are somewhere between rainbows/unicorns and YOU RUINED MY LIFE.
Like I mentioned in my last post, I started TMS recently. TMS sends magnetic pulses through your head and can cure you of – according to the internet – almost everything. It’s often covered by insurance (you know, after every other treatment has failed), although neither the insurance company nor the TMS clinic can tell me how much it will cost me out-of-pocket because apparently neither of them know.
So far, the FDA has approved TMS for depression, migraines, OCD, and smoking cessation. Apparently, across the pond, Europe is already using it for a host of other conditions, including chronic pain, MS, and Parkinson’s (Please note, this link is to the website of the machine my clinic uses. I was hoping for a less biased source of info, but that was all I could find).
I’ve been gone a while. It’s a little overwhelming to think about coming back to this space and just talking about one concise topic when life is so much more complex than a little blog post.
There’ve been a lot of personal changes recently, but they’re the kind that will take a long time to start helping – and the reason I need help is the biggest reason I haven’t been writing.
