Part IX: Sensitive and Treatment-Resistant
The never-ending list is partially due to the lack of effectiveness I experience and, as my—current, but not for long—psychiatrist likes to remind me, I am very sensitive to medications (a.k.a. my lovely tendency to get many of the side effects listed in the “rare” section of WebMD). However, despite this, I always go into a new med thinking, Okay Alyssa. The last 28 didn’t work, but #29 is gonna be the winner. I feel it.
In addition, I have been through three months of TMS treatments and am currently doing Spravato treatments once a week.
You would think TMS was a miracle treatment the way they advertised it—with more than 70% of people hitting remission! But, as it turns out, sitting in a chair watching house remodeling shows 5 days a week for 8 weeks while getting your head “tapped” with a device that resembles what I imagine a woodpecker would feel like drilling into your head might leave you in that lucky 30% of people.
Spravato isn’t any better in terms of effectiveness, but—let’s be real here: if you could do drugs in a controlled setting, wouldn’t you continue just for the hell of it?
All jokes aside, the Spravato doc seems to think it’s doing something, the placebo effect is on my side, and I’m still alive (!)—so I’d say it’s worth trying for a few more weeks.
The room is rather small, and oddly has no windows, but it has a heater, fan, massage chair with so many settings that I still don’t know how to simply make it just lean back, and a blanket laying across the arm of the chair waiting for me. On the side table next to me, there is a cool blue barf bag—one that I think, ‘wow I should really have this at school’, a notebook, tissues, a lamp with a dimming feature, and they even sometimes bring in a cup of cotton balls with a lavender scent (that’s supposed to help the nausea).
And know that old people's commercial where the older gentleman says, “I have fallen and I cannot get up!” and he presses that button? I have that red call button!!
When you open the drawer, it's stocked full of 10 more barf bags, and blankets tucked so tightly that you wonder how they fit that many.