*DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor, therapist, or health professional of any kind. I’m sharing things that I have been taught that have helped me (or not). This is my experience.

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Friday, November 11, 2011

Weight Gain/ECTs

"I know it's your medicine," she said.  "[Your brother] would show me pictures from like high school and I would be like, who is that?  And he'd say, my sister.  And I was like, wow, she used to be so pretty."

I, on this day, weigh more than I have ever weighed.  I never had problems with my weight until I started taking psychiatric medication.  I look at old pictures of myself and my mind doesn't even flinch.  I feel like that's who I am.  But it's not.  I am obese.  I now have a muffin-top and a double chin.  People don't stare at me or ask for my number.  Shopping, which I used to love so much, is worse than a chore.  In a way I am grieving the body I used to have.  I have said many times that I will not date until I lose the weight, even though I'm not sure that could actually happen. I've always wanted a tattoo of a bundle of orchids down my side, but I can't stand to look at my body in the mirror, so what would be the point?

The hardest time in the process of the weight gain, even though I was much lighter than I am now, was after my ECT's (electroconvulsive therapy).  Electroconvulsive therapy is a treatment they use usually as a last result.  They cause seizures using electric current to treat medication resistant depression and sometimes mania.  The patient is under anesthesia the entire time and feels none of it.  There can be many side effects from the ECT's, most immediately headaches.

Before the ECT's I had begun to gain weight as a result of the medications, just as I have been ever since.  The thing about ECT's is that they can effect your memory.  It was like I went to sleep a size three and woke up the next day a size seven.  I suddenly had stretch marks and when I tried to get dressed I always tried to put on things I used to be able to wear, which no longer fit.  I couldn't remember what was going on and once I did, I had a hard time remembering things in the long term as well.  I recognized people's faces but had a range of memories that was individual to the situation.  Some people I recognized their name and could only remember what they looked like once I saw them again.  My mother would talk about family friends and even when I saw them I still had no memory of them.  A lot of the time I didn't know how I was supposed to know people or thought I knew them from the wrong place.  I thought many of the people I knew that were my age I had known from high school.  Even though that's how my brain associated our relationship, it made no sense because it had been years since I graduated and was living hours from the town I went to school.  While I have had some memories come back to me, mostly in bits and pieces, I still have problems with short and long term memory.

People are always surprised when they find out about my ECT treatments.  I think a large part is that people don't think they perform them anymore.  Not to mention that people never think of me as being "that sick".  I am pretty open about the treatments, especially when talking to someone I'm supposed to know, but my compromised memory has erased them.  It may surprise you, but patients joke about such shock treatments when they are in the psychiatric wards quite often.  While I know there are people there getting them there (usually), they don't really speak up.  I always make a comment about having had the procedures and that's it's not something to joke about.  Usually people are more curious than malice when they realize that it's still an active treatment.  I feel that educating those with mental illness or a psychiatric episode is a step in the direction of ending stereotypes and misconceptions about all psychiatric problems.

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