Cold As Ice

I haven't made a post on this blog in quite a while.  That is because there hasn't been too much to report.  It is now almost four months since I had the Magnetic Resonance-guided Focused Ultrasound Surgery (MRgFUS) for my treatment resistant depression and I have not noticed any improvement in my mood.  As I mentioned in a previous blog post, my anxiety had seemed to decrease for a while, but even that modest gain seems to have been lost now.  My anxiety seems to be back to where it was previously, and that is very discouraging.

In my last blog post I mentioned that the psychiatrist for the study in which I am taking part, Dr. Levitt, had suggested four modifications in my medications that my psychiatrist and I could try.  We have tried one of them, but it hasn't made any difference in my mood thus far, which is very discouraging.  My psychiatrist had questions for Dr. Levitt about the other three suggestions that he made, so they had to discuss them.  I will be meeting with my psychiatrist again next week, so I should get an update as to how feasible those other three suggestions are.

The past few days, in addition to my depression, I have been battling a bad cold.  I don't know if it is the depression that makes me more needy when I get sick, or if I am just a needy person to begin with, but I really find that when I get sick I become more needy.  It is really difficult to try to fight off a cold while you are being held down by depression at the same time.  It's all the more difficult because the depression saps all of my motivation and leaves me feeling very lethargic, and when you add a cold to that I really don't feel like doing anything.  Staying in bed definitely seems like the best option.

That's where I am right now.  Nothing has really improved and I may have regressed in terms of my anxiety.  Getting better seems as far away now as it ever has.  My posts on this blog will probably become more infrequent as there isn't much to report on now that we are more than three months post-surgery and I am not getting better very quickly.  My next follow-up appointment at Sunnybrook hospital is at the 6 month mark and unless something drastic happens before then I may not post until that follow-up.