Hello all! It’s been awhile. I have now officially been admitted for 3 months. While I never expected this admission to be so long, I am aware that I am still a ways away from being “better” (I say in quotation marks because if they waited until I was 100% recovered I’d probably be stuck here for years). I’m still unsure of what goals they’d like me to obtain before they’re ready to discharge me. I had a potential discharge date of October 17, which has clearly came and went and I am still here.
Honestly the majority of my hospital stay is fuzzy at best due to the second round of ECT I had from August to September, which unfortunately has really messed with my memory this time. I’m still having difficulty with making and retaining new memories but things are slowly getting better so I am hopeful. My doctor also believes the current and ongoing memory problems are due to the depression as well.
For the past few weeks, now that I can finally vaguely remember them, my doctors have really been encouraging me to “activate”. Behavioural activation encourages people with depression to approach activities they may have been avoiding. If we’re being honest here, that meant pretty much everything for me besides some basic coping/distraction techniques. I’ve done books and books of word searches and pages and pages of colouring, but rarely would leave my room except for meals and the occasional group. My doctors encouraged me to do some form of exercise during the day, as well as staying out of my room as much as possible.
I started with going for walks around the perimeter of the hospital in the evening with my mom when she would come to visit, mostly because she wanted to and I felt obligated to. Now let me tell you- this felt like running a marathon rather than a 20 minute walk. I would be exhausted by the end. Now I know my exercise tolerance isn’t superb to begin with but I was easily doing 30 minutes on the treadmill as a warm up when I was going to the gym prior to my relapse. My main nurse started to ask me to go for walks with her during the day as well, which helped with my activation but was also a time when I could more easily talk to her as opposed to sitting face to face.
I also started going to more of the groups offered on the unit. This would bring a lot of anxiety at first, but slowly I found that they were actually helpful and look forward to going to them. I restarted dance classes as well which I love. Unfortunately the memory issues have been causing me some problems with remembering routines and stuff, but luckily I have awesome teachers and classmates.
So here I am. Spending 80% of my day out of my room, either going to groups or just sitting in the living rooms and reading. Do I really think that it’s going to work? My rational mind says “yes, and there’s plenty of evidence to support it”. My emotional mind says “no way, this sucks”. I figure that if my doctor, who I like and trust 100%, is asking me to do it, there has to be some benefit in some way and maybe I can get out of here. And if it doesn’t work, no one can tell me that I didn’t try everything they suggested.
If you’ve managed to stay engaged this far, here’s my “exciting” piece of news that I wanted to share. Up until now, I would agree to go for a walk with someone if they asked me, but I would never ask someone or go on my own. Today my nurse was busy and my mom wasn’t coming in until it was time to take me to dinner. I’ve been incredibly exhausted all week. I could have easily said, I’m going to bed, I don’t want to do anything. And no one would have forced me to.
Instead, I thought I would do the hospital perimeter walk on my own. It’s not long, I reasoned with myself. I got my stuff ready and headed out. I stopped just inside the main doors and wrestled with my depression for probably about 10 minutes. I really, really wanted to just go back and have a nap. At this time, my roommate/bestie called me. As I was talking to her, I figured- I might as well just start walking. I talked with her for approximately half the walk, and by then I reasoned that I should just finish because going back would take just as long. And so I did it.
Now I know that may not sound like much to some of you, but to those of you who know, either personally or professionally, know that something as small as a 20 minute walk can be like climbing Mount Everest when you’re deep in a depression. I shamelessly sent out a few excited Snapchats to a few people. This is the first time I’ve done something on my own, because I “wanted” to, without someone else encouraging or “forcing” me to. Although it may seem like a tiny achievement, this is a huge step in my recovery, and hopefully a couple steps closer to being able to go home.
So for all you warriors out there- don’t let anyone tell you that your achievements are lame or not good enough. Anything that you do despite depression telling you not to is impressive to me, and deserves to be recognized.
Adventures in Adulting 