The Fog - The End of the protocol

I knew today was going to be hard.  This is session #12 which is not only the last treatment in the protocol but also my favorite number so I put a lot of pressure on this one.  I felt like it could be the “ONE” that changes everything. Maybe that is just like me to put too much pressure on something and be disappointed when it doesn’t manifest.

It is also coming on a week when I have even more stress than last week.  My car is not fixed and the insurance has yet to approve the supplement after it being torn apart for a week now.  Jym has had no relief from his pain since surgery unless you count the 6-year expired Oxy I had leftover from my hysterectomy nightmare which has at least been allowing him to urinate.  After calling the office a good 7 times last week and getting NO appointment on the books for his stent removal they now say (when Jym called) that they don’t have any appointments available for another week.  Ya think?  That is why I called last week 7 damn times!  I am so angry at them, at the insurance, at the body shop.  Everyone.  I do not know how I am supposed to meditate on that. 

I did lay down with my headset and realized that my crappy headphones are NOT noise canceling.  I could hear the neighbor’s lawn being mowed, my husband in the shower, etc.  But honestly even if I blocked it all out, I don’t honestly know if it would help because my mind does not shut off.  After 2 months of these treatments I am still unable to block out the rest of the world and just allow myself this self care.  I just lay there and stew in all of it. 

On top of it I had a rough weekend.  After the events of last week.  The phone calls, the getting nowhere on any front, the sheer ineptitude of literally everyone I was dealing with, it all just blew up for me I think. I tried to keep my head down and just plod through it but I had a bad bought of depression kick in. 

In a way it allowed me to see the difference between how I have been the last few weeks vs how I was before that because this was definitely suicidal level December depression.  The treatments so far have definitely made the suicidal thoughts less and less but it has been a slow progression almost unnoticeable.  But when all of a sudden you are back to that place it is VERY noticeable. So although I could see the juxtaposition of the two it also reminded me that I am NOT healed and no where near remission. 

I began focusing heavily on what an absolute failure I am in my life across all platforms except my marriage which I guess is my one real success and only because Jym tolerates my craziness.  The rest of it is just a waste. 

I started comparing my brothers’ career and education successes to my lack of them and it all spiraled downhill from there.  I have always known I am the wasted one in my family.  It isn’t news. Even when I was younger I referred to Gary as the Golden Child and then Shane as the Platinum child.  My mom asked what I was once and I replied “I don’t know.  What is a useless metal? What is the most worthless metal?  That’s me.” That hasn’t ever changed for me but at points in my life I accepted it and didn’t think much about it.  I think it is exacerbated now because I am in this ‘career transition’ and that is the nicest words strung together for it that I can think of.  My career is in the toilet.  Any small level of something I had created for myself, that title, from my previous employer was worth nothing now (hell it was worth damn near next to nothing THEN to THEM) and I am literally just a button pushing monkey. now  Not even worthy of full-time employment.  Just a hole filler.  And I don’t know how to dig my way out of that.  Yes, people do reinvent themselves at the age of 52 but apparently I am not that person. I don’t know how to figure any of this out. 

And now it is time to go let my brain do what my broken brain decides to do for a few hours…stay tuned…

 

Well I waited to write this because I just couldn't, physically or emotionally do it on that day.  On the drive to my ‘last” official session within the protocol I was actually feeling ok.  I think sitting down and writing before the treatment when I found myself unable to meditate really helped to purge my feelings and put myself in a proper frame of mind for the therapy.  It worked really well for session #11 and I honestly felt I had stumbled upon something that would help me set myself up for success and only wished I had figured it out sooner.  But this whole experience has been a learning curve for me so hopefully my words can save someone else from the mistakes I have made along this process. 

I arrived and signed in and had to cancel an upcoming bonus session I had booked because of Jym’s 2^nd kidney surgery.  I also had to move my psychiatrist apt where we will discuss how I wish to proceed moving forward.  In all honestly I don’t know.  I didn’t know that day and I don’t know now and with everything going on these last few weeks I have had little time to consider it.  So pushing that decision back a few days was ok with me. 

I got the side I like and I set up my area and then went to the bathroom.  I stood there waiting for one to open up and finally realized someone had closed the door but no one was inside.  I was already taken back about 20 minutes late and felt terrible for Jym with his stent who was waiting for me so by the time I got back to my seat and got myself set up I just jumped right in with the spray.  The nurse had forgotten to give me my anti-nausea meds and I forgot to ask for them and I was 3 doses in before I remembered when I suddenly felt like I was about to throw up.  Just for reference dose 3 is the most intense and you are thrown into peak at that point so it is the absolute worst time to get sick or to realize you forgot meds.  So the nurse raced over with them but at this point I have my eye mask on and cannot lift it or I will really start puking.  I also have my fruit lozenge in my mouth to take away the awful taste of the spravato.  So I now have to hold the sticky lozenge and simultaneously put one pill in my mouth and they gave me the one I had to swallow with water so I have to open the water bottle and do all this with a blindfold on and holding a sticky lozenge.  It was a mess.  Then I had to put the other one under my tongue.  Now I will say that when you are in that 30-45 minutes of peak your senses are heightened and tactile things are extremely exaggerated.  So the pill tasted like sand under my tongue as it bubbled up into my mouth and over my teeth.  It was an unpleasant sensation.  I could also taste the spravato AND the Zofran at this point and the lozenge was helpful but not completely effective.  I tried to relax at this point but it really threw me completely.  I should have probably just gone without the drugs but I felt extremely sick which had not happened before at that point in the treatment so I was afraid to start puking and made a poor choice.  I was so mad at myself for not doing my check list and trying to rush through it all and then creating this situation.

The session continued but was just not good.  I remember a fog.  A thick fog.  Not surprising.  I feel like my whole life is a thick fog right now.  I don’t know what to do, or how to do it in regards to damn near every aspect of my life.  I feel uncertainty about Jym’s health, our car repairs, my future career.  I feel unsupported by people who claimed to love me (both in this and even Jym’s surgery which is not something like the Ketamine that maybe you have some holier than thou feelings about.  How hard is it to just ask how Jym is doing?? If you can’t even muster that, then I don’t even know why we are friends quite frankly) and I don’t know how to handle any of that or the feelings I am having around it.  I feel like I have made a mess of my life and have no clue how to start cleaning it up.  So a fog isn’t something I need to sit and ruminate on.  It is just what is. 

But at session #12 shouldn’t I not be in a fog?  Shouldn’t I have clarity?  I started to consider that maybe this treatment is not working for me, or at least not working entirely.  Should I continue?  Should I give up?  I am definitely at a crossroads with this one.  Unlike my bad session #3 when I was just starting out, I had hopes for session #12 because it is the exact number of sessions that science had determined was the optimum number of sessions in the protocol.  If I am to be healed shouldn’t I be healed by now?  Or it is ok that I am still having an occasional bad experience?  Will subsequent treatments help me or be a total waste of time and money and energy?  Then I considered what if I do stop?  Where do I go from here?  Maybe I am just someone who is a late bloomer and it’s going to take a few more for me than the standard? I just don’t know.  I honestly don’t know.  I don’t know what to do or when to do it.  I hoped that this would all be easy and it would just WORK and there wouldn’t be any doubt.  But there I was tamping down my nausea and filling my thoughts with the chaos of what to do. 

It was all so overwhelming. To add to my dismay I did not love the entirety of the playlist.  Some of it was ok but some of it was not my favorite. There was literally a piece of music that had this weird uplifting tone and then all of a sudden went all out of sync and down like “doing great, getting better, oooohhh plummeting down…”  it was just bad. It was the equivalent of “WAMP, wamp”. And it literally happened (the plummeting down) right at the point that I hit the 45 minute mark where they do the BP and that is pretty much the end of the trip.  So it was like “WAMP, wamp” monitor goes off. So it was fitting or not fitting. 

I think that was the final straw for me in that moment and I just started to cry.  I mean I wasn’t sobbing but I was clearly dismayed.  Then the nurse shows up to do my BP.  I still had the blindfold on so my tears were collecting in the padding of the mask and not outwardly running down my face.  It is also dark in the cubicle so I am sure she was unaware of my state of mind.  Also not her job to deal with my state of mind even if she recognized my dismay.

I put my arm out and she put the wrist BP on me and then walked away.  I can’t see her walk away but I sensed it and then when the cuff was done reading I put my arm back up (you lay the cuff over your heart when it is reading) and she wasn’t there to take it off.  I waited easily 5 minutes and she never came back so I put my arm down and then I heard someone else’s monitor beep and knew she would be looking for that cuff so I put my arm up again and she walked past (I assume searching for where she left the cuff.  HINT…It was ON MY ARM) and she took it off finally. 

At that point I was really just questioning everything and admittedly I considered walking out and canceling all my bonus treatments and the apt with the psychiatrist.  It was that bad.  I only admit this because for any one reading this who is considering this path I promised to always be honest about my experience and not embellish it in any way.  It is all here, the good and the bad, as I experienced it.  It is not what I want to be writing and not what I even want to admit to thinking but here it all is. 

I was extremely defeated at that moment.  I am almost glad that they were shorthanded and that I didn’t get to talk to Caitlyn like I usually do because I was a mess and I had been crying pretty hard.  I was blowing my nose mostly on my shirt.  It was not good.  I don’t want to be negative or even admit to the staff how I was feeling.  We have moved well past the “its early, give it time” stage.  I was so depressed and upset at that time I just didn’t want to discuss it. 

Then I left and Jym was waiting for me and I was pretty upset and was not sorting it out well.  It was even worse when I got home to a letter from our insurance denying coverage for Jym’s surgery and having to deal with that plus getting him an appointment to get his stent removed and then dealing with my car in the body shop and my insurance still not responding.  It was one bad thing after another.  All piling up.  I couldn’t even pause to think about anything, not what happened and not what needs to happen for me going forward.  It was a wasted day for me in many ways. 

But I will say that when I was able to think about all of it, I was left with 2 options, to continue or not to continue.  I did not want to make that decision in the heat of the moment when I was upset so it required some consideration.

To be honest I don’t know what the right thing is to do.  I wish I had more clarity.  But I feel like I have come this far.  I feel like session 11 was really good and I had hope then.  I recognize that there is science here but I also know that not everyone responds the same way in the same time to this drug.  So there is a possibility that I will still have a positive outcome.  Maybe not as good of one as I had hoped but still a chance of making some difference.  Or maybe none at all.  Who knows.  If I come out of this as bad as when I went in then I am just out some money and time I guess.  To be frank I do not know where to go from here so I might as well just at least give myself a few more sessions and go from there. 

I think I have put too much pressure on this to work in the time frame set aside for it and the closer I got to that bar, the more pressure I put on myself to respond positively.  Maybe if I look at it as an open ended option (which it is.  There is a woman there who has been doing it for 2 years somehow and has had great response but doesn’t want it to stop I guess. My insurance has approved me thru May for this as much as I need so I can continue and not worry about that.) I think I have also been swamped with a lot of bad life events this month that all piled up and put me in a hard place where I was just not equipped to navigate my own self care in the way that I should.  Maybe I will never be in that place.  I just do not know.  But I think I want to at least keep trying if for no other reason than it can’t hurt.  I need to know I did everything I could and gave this 100%.  I also have no other options that I am ignoring to continue this.  So can’t hurt, might help I guess.

I am also glad that I made it through the entire protocol and it has not always been an easy road.  No part of this was an easy road.  But I finished it on their terms and I will complete the rest of it on my own and I hope that will at least give me some response that eventually leads to healing. 

I have decided to continue the blog despite this being the last official treatment because my following treatments may bring some epiphanies.  So feel free to continue the journey with me.