the crossroads

Well clearly I gave up on my promise to journal this journey at every step.  So here is what you missed over the last 3 months. 

So only days after my last post my husband entered a very unexpected leave from his job.  An unpaid leave which was a blow to us financially and at the time we had no clue how long it would last.  13 weeks.  He is still not back to work, but we are hoping for mid-December as he is now recovering from surgery #3.  This has been a tragic year for both of us. 

In addition, my career is in the absolute toilet.  I mean it isn’t like it hasn’t been but being without my salary AND his at the same time again feels strangely like we are reliving the pandemic but doing that alone. 

All of that aside, I was able to pick up several more unexpected sessions with Spravato due to my husband being out of work.  He is my driver, so it was helpful to at least get in some extra sessions.  Gotta look at the bright side right?

Sadly most of those 6 sessions were not fruitful.  I don’t know if I was too stressed out to really immerse myself in any kind of healing.  I don’t know if I have just built some immunity to the drug.  I have no idea.  All I know is that I spent most of those sessions with zero trip and zero positive feeling afterward.  Now don’t get me wrong.  It wasn’t like I was skipping thru daisies on the other ones either but I was feeling (in most of them) hopeful for the healing.  I also fully recognize that the “trip” is not the healing but session after session I just felt like I sat there for 2 hours and then went home.  It all just felt like a waste.  But I kept going because I have nothing else to put in its place.  

I had my psychiatrist appointment on November 7 (after 4 of the last 6 sessions) and decided that maybe it was time to call this all quits.  At this time last year I was suicidal and wondering why I was even on this earth.  This year, same.  All I gained was one more year of this endless suffering inside my head.  Why?  To what end?  Will I be worse off next year at this time?  Or the same? 

This is clearly not the miracle it was billed to be.  I mean I do ok when I am on the drug but like all pharmaceuticals they are designed to create a dependance.  Otherwise the drug companies make no money.  This is why I was hesitant to even try Spravato.  It was not natural.  It was lab created.  And it is not even the straight Ketamine. But I was desperate and the allure of a “cure”, a “miracle” seemed like it was worth a shot.  But now here I am at the crossroads.

I knew eventually I would have to make a decision to continue or to stop.  I just hoped that I would have found an alternative before that happened.  I have not and its why I continued long after I felt it was possible it would work.  For me continuing this path indefinitely was never an option.  The clinic os an hour away and that is a lot to ask of my husband who has been extremely supportive of me in this process. But I can’t continue this path.  I was hoping they would open a clinic near my house but that also has not been the case.  But my life in general has been this way the last 4 years.  Just keep going even when its not working because I have nothing else. 

And then in that meeting with my psychiatrist, to make it worse, she said that maybe I am building a tolerance to the drug and suggested a new option which she learned about from a clinic in CO that was adding this option.  We would add an intramuscular injection of ketamine which would be done at the same time as the Spravato as a kind of “boost” to my treatment. 

At first all I could hear was INJECTION and then quickly followed by the cost of this injection which is NOT covered by the insurance or FDA approved.  Now I am all about experimentation for sure.  But with that comes the cost and the uncertainty of what that level of drug being administered to my brain all at once would mean.  That was more my concern.  I am not someone who has done drugs in the past and anything I have done has been met with poor results so I worry that I would have an absolutely horrendous experience driving all of that into me at once.  I, of course, said I would consider this but with our current financial situation it honestly was not really a consideration at this time for me. 

After the appointment I sat on it all and then the worst epiphany of all.  It was becoming just like all the other drugs I have been on.  They worked a little, just enough to give me hope, but then they stop working and I need a “boost”.  Just one more thing to add to the regimen and I would be all fixed up.  Until I am not, and I need another boost and another and before you know it I am on 8 meds and just a drugged up zombie.  That is what I was trying to avoid with the Spravato but now here I was.  There is no option with Spravato to just up the dose.  I have read about some clinics that fudge the scripts to request 2 lower doses which they then administer at the same time effectively giving you that higher dose but I am not certain that would even help. 

I was in this strange period of what to do the last few weeks but continued my sessions and had one more useless session in there before I came across an interesting article on a Spravato group I am on.  I often go on there just to give other people hope.  I mean I don’t hold any for myself but for others this could truly their miracle drug so why not encourage others to continue and give them some hope?  I have had to do this all on my own so finding this group (even late in the game) is a help to me to at least be a help and support others in the way I wish someone had supported me.  I don’t post.  I just comment on others posts.

This was not the first time I saw this suggestion recently so I dove in and read a bit.  It suggested taking magnesium before your treatment.  Magnesium has been suggested many times as an anti-depressant so adding it seemed like a good idea to boost the Spravato but apparently the new studies say that magnesium L-Threonate works on the same receptors so it enhances your treatment.  Some people said they took it just on treatment days (because of the cost) and some take it all the time as an anti-depressant.  I did not have that specific type of magnesium on hand and my next session was too close to get it, so I went with the magnesium potassium aspartate which my Sister-in-law turned me on to for my constipation.  I took that in the few days I had leading up to the session and I even took it the morning of the session.  Someone recommended an hour before but I worried about puking as they recommend fasting but I did it anyway. 

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with the reaction during my session.  Not only did I experience a vivid trip but I saw FLOWERS.  I mean it wasn’t that field of daisies everyone talks about and I wasn’t skipping thru them by any means but they were indeed flowers.  They were small white flowers along a river bed.  I also had an overwhelming sense of peace and feeling like things would be ok.  I was so surprised at what a great treatment I had after so many bad ones and really wanted magnesium to be my game changer.  I decided to continue my therapy at least into the new year and see if this new “addition” (which was natural and a fair price) would be what I need to turn the corner.  I also ordered the recommended version (magnesium L-threonate).

I then had to pause my sessions due to my husband’s 3^rd surgery as I am his care taker now and so he can’t drive me.  I am 2 weeks past the last treatment and I have plunged back into the deep well again.  To make it worse I received my new magnesium and took a half dose last night in preparation to build up to the full dose by my Tuesday treatment and I woke up suicidal.  WTF?  I can’t continue like this.  The reality is that even if the magnesium works it is not long lasting and I am coming up to a place where I will have to be without a treatment for weeks at a time.  I can’t keep on this roller coaster.  I just don’t know what to do.  I have 2 more sessions scheduled and we will see how those go but I am just feeling very hopeless about the path forward.  I have been on quite a roller coaster with this lately and I need for something to change in a big way to show me the path from here.  I am certain of only one thing.  That whatever is out there to fix me, it is not going to be mainstream.  Nothing that works for everyone else ever works for me.  I am some anomaly.  I have given everything I have to this process and that is my only solace.  I tried.  Again.  I do not know where to go from here.