Electric

The most important thing I can tell you about Electro-Convulsive Therapy is that I can’t really tell you anything. People who have had ECT are the worst people to ask, because those electric shocks fry up your short-term memory with a happy little sizzle. And then afterwards you are so ok with everything that is happening that you don’t take notice of anything going on around you.

I was a patient at the Adult Mental Health Unit, and had been for six weeks, when my Psychiatrist said that he had consulted with his colleagues, and they all thought that ECT was the best option for me. I knew people who had the treatment before, and I was pretty aware that I wasn’t heading in to a remake of One flew over the cuckoos nest. At that particular stage I really would have done anything. I was desperately depressed, considered a high risk to self, so very disengaged from reality. So when they suggested ECT I thought that it appropriately matched the level of drama I was seeing my life in, and consented on the spot.

One week later they transferred me out of the real nut house, and in to a new ward called Hill Green. They no longer conducted ECT at the other hospital (pun intended) so I had to be moved to a new psychiatrist on a new ward.

Hill Green is the only private psychiatric hospital this city offers, and it’s very exclusive. To be admitted you must be seeing one of 4 admitting psychiatrists, all of whom had full books nearly all the time. I’d tried hard to get in a few times, and had always ended up travelling to Sydney instead. This time, my psychiatrist had pulled some strings and managed to get a new psychiatrist to take me on. That brave man is still my psychiatrist today.

At first there was some trepidation about going through with the ECT. It isn’t common for people my age, and they worried that if it didn’t work I would feel like it had been my last resort and I would kill myself. I tried to explain to them that I was probably going to kill myself anyway, but I didn’t mind prolonging the suffering. I was seen by three doctors, and finally they came to the decision to go through with the treatment. I would then have treatments three times a week for the next month.

Now, Electro-Convulsive Therapy is covered by some pretty heavy misconceptions. These days, the treatment involves putting the patient under anaesthetic, injecting them with a muscle relaxant, and putting a small electrical pulse through their brain, lasting only seconds. The whole process, including waking up, takes no more than half an hour.

I was feeling too desolate to be scared about my first treatment, so I just let it all go on around me. Everything is a blur right up until the moment they gave me that oxygen mask, injected the anaesthetic and told me to count backwards from ten. It was by the far the most pleasant thing I had ever experienced, even better than popping too many Valium and lying in the sun. Even writing about it, I can feel the relaxation in my muscles and the happy floating feeling in my head. Because of that, I really looked forward to having treatments, and it was all worth it for me.

During this time, I was staying at Hill Green. I had a room with a bathroom all to myself, and I was surrounded by the best nurses I had ever met. People came to my room and talked to me, regularly. I couldn’t tell you what I talked to them about, but I remember them being nice. The ward was sunny, and I think I liked the food. That is a part of the experience I am missing. I don’t remember the food. I don’t even remember eating on any occasion, but during that admission I gained nearly ten kilos. I think of all the fun things I must have been eating and I’m terribly upset that I didn’t get to be there. All of the Anti-Depressant weight I’d gained had nothing on this stuff.

People came to visit, came and told me stories about what happened last time they visited. Apparently I was a happy little delirious creature, blank, most of the time, and I didn’t seem to actually pay attention to anything that was said to me. The truth of that is that I really didn’t. They said I would stare off in to space and smile like an invalid.

After twelve treatments I was released back in to society with orders to return for three more sessions as an outpatient. I went to live with my father, I had the treatments, and then for three or four months I lived at home. I haven’t the slightest clue what I did in all that time. The ECT wipes your brain so significantly that you struggle to make new memories, and I really did struggle. I’m easily missing 4 months of my life, including the month before I had the treatment.

I was constantly finding out about things I’d done while having treatment, like ‘you don’t remember putting up this Christmas tree? You made us do it and then you stuck a Sombrero on the top’ and ‘you don’t remember going to my 21st birthday party? You drank six pints and then made a speech about yourself while we cut the cake’. I had to merely trust that these things were true. Who was I to know what had happened? I was just drugged out of mind, coming along for the ride. And what a ride it was.