True Champions Bipolar EP 4: Alternative Treatments
In episode 3 of True Champions Bipolar, Natasha shares her personal experience of living with bipolar disorder. Natasha had no luck using medications
In episode 3 of True Champions Bipolar, Natasha shares her personal experience of living with bipolar disorder. Natasha had no luck using medications so she had no choice but to seek out alternative treatments. This led her to electroconvulsive therapy treatment which ultimately also did not work.
Duration: 5:57. Last Updated On: Nov. 8, 2017, 6:14 p.m.
- 00:00 [MUSIC]
- 00:09 I had the fortune, the good fortune of actually working for
- 00:13 Microsoft in the United States.
- 00:16 And the reason why this was good fortune is because they have the best health care
- 00:20 that money can buy there.
- 00:22 So, I was able to get certain treatments that aren't necessarily common,
- 00:27 in people's, repertoire.
- 00:30 Within six months of working for
- 00:31 Microsoft I was actually back in a very bad spiralling suicidal depression.
- 00:39 And I had to take time off for disability, from Microsoft.
- 00:45 Which I was pretty embarrassed about.
- 00:48 The problem was, I had tried basically every medication, and
- 00:53 I was extremely sick.
- 00:55 So, there was very little left to try for me.
- 00:57 But there was this.
- 01:01 This is vagal nerve stimulation.
- 01:03 A computer is implanted in your chest.
- 01:05 Wires go from that computer to your vagal nerve, which is in the back of your neck.
- 01:10 And an electrical impulse comes out of the computer through the wires,
- 01:14 hits your vagal nerve, and then it goes up into your brain.
- 01:18 And doctors hope that this electrical impulse will change the way your
- 01:22 brain functions, such that it will treat, treatment resistant depression.
- 01:26 Unfortunately for
- 01:27 me, it wasn't effective because I got too many side effects from it.
- 01:32 So, even though the device hadn't worked for
- 01:35 me, it had meant that I had taken time off of work.
- 01:40 And because I had taken time off of work, I was, I could de-stress.
- 01:43 And I de-stressed enough, that I could go back to work again.
- 01:47 I would go to work, I would do the best job that I could,
- 01:50 and then I would go home and I would fall apart.
- 01:53 And I would just be a puddle on my couch, and not move.
- 01:56 I would wake up, go to work, go home, be a puddle on my couch.
- 02:00 And on the weekends, I didn't move, I just slept and
- 02:03 tried to get enough energy together to get back to work on Monday morning.
- 02:07 So there was absolutely nothing in my life except for Microsoft.
- 02:11 And then after about three years there, I went in and
- 02:15 my boss had put this really funny meeting on my calendar.
- 02:18 And I went to the meeting and there were a couple of guys I didn't know.
- 02:22 Turns out those guys were lawyers, I was getting laid off.
- 02:25 I was devastated.
- 02:30 You know, I had moved, I changed countries from Canada to the US,
- 02:34 moved my entire entire life and dedicated myself to that company.
- 02:38 Not surprisingly, that did bring about a very serious depression very,
- 02:43 very quickly.
- 02:44 Because I didn't have a job at that time.
- 02:47 ECT made the most sense, because ECT actually works rapidly, but
- 02:52 you need to have it three times a week for 9 to 12 sessions.
- 02:57 So if you're working, that can be impossible and so because I
- 03:02 didn't have a job at that time, it made sense to try that therapy at that time.
- 03:06 And I was really out of options.
- 03:08 Electroconvulsive therapy, you might have heard of it as shock therapy.
- 03:12 This is what ECT looks like.
- 03:14 So this is a person getting ECT, and you can see there's an anesthesiologist,
- 03:19 he's the person that puts you to sleep, so that you don't actually feel it.
- 03:22 There's a doctor, there's a couple of nurses, it's a medical procedure.
- 03:27 Just like any other medical procedure.
- 03:29 It's very difficult to trust that
- 03:32 running an electrical current through your brian is going to help you in any way.
- 03:37 [LAUGH] You know, it feels like, I'm just sticking a fork in a light socket.
- 03:43 But, you know, I learned about it, and I became educated about it.
- 03:46 And what I learned is that in the cases of depression,
- 03:50 it does tend to help around 80% of people.
- 03:54 And so, that's more than any medication that we have.
- 03:58 And so it's actually more effective.
- 04:01 And I just was praying that I would be in that 80%.
- 04:05 I remember waking up after my first ECT treatment, and what I remember,
- 04:11 not surprisingly, is the pain.
- 04:15 It's true, you can't feel anything in the treatment.
- 04:17 You are put to sleep.
- 04:19 But when you wake up, you can feel pain at that time.
- 04:23 I had nine treatments.
- 04:25 And at the end of nine treatments, it wasn't effective.
- 04:30 And I talked to my doctor about it, and basically I had an option.
- 04:36 I could move to a stronger form of ECT, or I could elect to stop treatments.
- 04:42 And in my particular case, I elected to stop treatments at that time.
- 04:46 And it was around about then that I was crossing the border between Canada and
- 04:50 the United States.
- 04:52 The border guard looked and
- 04:53 my passport and he said, you're not getting into the United States.
- 04:56 It turned out [LAUGH] that I had a specific kind of visa,
- 05:00 when I worked at Microsoft, and after I got laid off,
- 05:03 I had a certain number of months to move my primary residence out of the country.
- 05:09 And I hadn't obeyed that rule, and therefore had violated my visa.
- 05:13 And therefore was not allowed back in the country and at that point,
- 05:18 things were pretty dire.
- 05:20 I needed help from anyone who would help me,
- 05:23 seeing as I was homeless, jobless and penniless.
- 05:25 I ended up on my mother's couch for a while and it took me quite a long time to
- 05:30 figure out how to get my stuff out of the United States.
- 05:33 A friend of mine had to actually drive to Seattle to pick up my
- 05:36 two cats to bring them back to me.
- 05:38 It was really a horrendous time.
- 05:40 When I came to, I had a realization, I'm fine, I just need a psychiatrist
- 05:48 [MUSIC]
