VNS
I’ve been incrementally turned up to 1.25, while 1.0 is the therapeutic target. Anything above that is a benefit, as long as it can be tolerated. Though I think next appointment (2 weeks) I’m going to ask to be set back to 1.0 for a bit longer. I haven’t been getting used to 1.25 as quickly as the other settings.
The sensation is actually less complicated than some of the previous. I can feel it “ramping up” and then it’s a strong feeling like an uncomfortable twisting feeling at the neck. That sensation fades over the following thirty seconds. It’s accompanied by a small choking feeling and something like heart burn, which is annoying more than anything else.
I have found myself using the magnet to temporarily disable the VNS much more often than any other time. I’ve got a loose magnet but I’ve also got one on the underside of a watch band, so it looks like a wristwatch on my right wrist. Actually, it is a wristwatch on one of the provided wrist magnets. But if I’m in public and I feel it kick in while I’m talking, I just reach up to my left shoulder as if to scratch it and the movement puts the magnet in just the right place. So subtle. My scars are so subtle now that Wife actually wondered what that redness was on my chest, until she remembered.
As for me..
I’m introducing a new section, positive news.
Positive
I had a trip to the east coast (the same one I did last year, without the following suicide attempt) which was good. I got to spend a ton of time with my daughter, we really get on well. She has a passion for road trips to match my own.
I got to see my brother and his growing family. With frozen custard!
I spent five days with my oldest sister. No plans except some day trips to various parts of New York City. The rest of the time was spent doing absolutely nothing. Some writing, a bit of playing music, and a ton of time having really good chats with my sister and her husband.
I’ve have had some freelance work contracts come through, including a new one that’s part of a series. I think I’ve made dozens of dollars this year. So not much. But it’s something, I guess.
Back to our regularly negative blog..
Logistically (therapies, schedules, DBT) things are the same for me, it feels like everything is unspooling lately. I feel I’ve broken in half after/despite the peace of my trip to the East Coast. Since then I haven’t been able to write, play music, or even take the Vespa out and wander around. While these are usually escapes for me, where I can forget myself for a bit, they no longer work. It’s like something just came and removed my ability to enjoy the last things I could.
I’ve been thinking about the “anniversary” all week. Remembering the hospital and so on. So much has happened in a year, and yet nothing feels different, except the various side effects. I reread my journal from my hospitalization and I was so upbeat on release. I had plans and schedules and an attitude. That all seems so foreign to me. I can’t remember if that was genuine or I was just saying the things I needed to say to get out of there. I do remember the day I came home Wife picked me up and it was a pretty day. Still warm like summer, but hope for sweaters was there. And we went home and sat around the table and had dinner in the fading light of the day. Just like before. And after.
It feels like everyone else seems to be getting on with their lives. Everybody knows neighbor X is a baker, neighbor Y is a salesman, and neighbor me doesn’t work because he’s got the depression. That normalization is one of the most isolating things I’ve felt yet. Somehow I keep thinking I’m the old, robust me (with some weight lost, even!) but that I’ve been temporarily hobbled by my issues. As this wears on it really feels like this is it though, how it’ll always be.
(In rereading this, that’s a lot of feels. It took about three hours for me to write this, should have been easier.)
a Scarlet D 