UPDATE FEBRUARY 2017

Well, it’s been 9 months since I finished TMS treatment. It didn’t help. Actually, I think it helped with the anxiety for a bit, for a while – I was able to search for an apartment without being reduced to a quivering ball of sobbing tissue. Most of the time. But now I’m back to where I was before treatment. I never heard back about the research study I participated in. But I still think the MRI pics are cool!

I have my own apartment now. My sisters both give me money every month to supplement welfare (called Ontario Works) so that I can afford to live here. (Taking money from family feels so humiliating, even though they both have been wonderful about it. But it’s better than renting a room. Thank god for siblings!) It’s a small one-bedroom in a modest complex. I took custody of my older sister’s two cats when she moved out west to be closer to her little grandson. So: my own place (HALLELUJAH!) and I have company. Both of those things contribute greatly to my sanity! I didn’t realize how much I missed my privacy and my belongings until I was here. And it was time for cats. I’ve known these cats for a couple years and it would have broken my heart to see them go to a shelter. We make a good family now. They do make me laugh! And feel needed.

I am waiting to find out the final ruling on my ODSP benefits (Ontario Disability Support Program). I was denied, we appealed, denied again, it went to a hearing and I should hear about the adjudicator’s decision within 60 days. Fingers crossed. If you are applying for ODSP, or any other type of government support, please, please, PLEASE, get legal assistance! If you can’t afford to hire someone, go to a legal clinic or try your province’s legal aid program. Most cities have community legal aid clinics, and any university or college with a law program usually will as well. I am intelligent and have navigated government applications and bureaucracies throughout my career, and there is NO WAY I would have got this far on my own! Now I have a good chance of winning. The woman I have been working with at the city legal clinic is a paralegal and disability support benefits is all she does, so she knows what works, what is needed, and how to get it. Do it!

I have also expressed interest in joining a study into the effects of Ketamine on depression. The researcher is reviewing my file, and if I’m not disqualified for some reason, she will call me for further screening. Ketamine has proven extremely effective in the short term and especially in hospital emergency rooms with people who are suicidal. The only concern is that there is an experimental group that receives the medication, and a control group that does not. It is a double blind study, so the participants and even the researchers do not know who is in which group. The good thing is if I get in the control group, after the research is finished, I can try the medication to see if it works for me. Here’s the link to the details of the study: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02417064. Again fingers crossed!

SADIE

MONSTER

MORE ABOUT ME

Well, read the Blogger Profile, then come back here.

Done? Okay. As you read, I have been struggling with depression and anxiety for a long time, and I’ve tried a LOT of different treatments with little success. Some success, or I probably wouldn’t be here, but not enough.

I’m not working now. I left work on Sick Leave three and a half years ago. I was in a meeting with my supervisor and another colleague to discuss some problems in the office; I started crying and couldn’t stop. So I just left. I never went back.

I was on sick leave for a year and a half, and when I was ready to return to work, my job wasn’t there. The office had been reorganized and my position had been split into three (no wonder I was crying, doing the work of three people!). 

Then my cat died. She had been with me for more than twenty years. She was my baby, my best friend and confidante. She was old and sick and it wasn’t unexpected but I felt like my world had collapsed. I had enough savings that I decided to take the summer off from looking for work to help me adjust to life without her. When I started looking, I couldn’t find anything, not even interviews. I have been a senior administrative assistant in universities, with experience in non-profits and fundraising, but all of a sudden, nobody wanted me.

Also, I had waited too long since my last day of paid employment so I didn’t qualify for unemployment insurance support, and I had too much savings to qualify for welfare. So I started burning through those savings, small as they were to start with.

I have applied for Canada Pension Plan Disability Benefits (CPPD) but for a variety of reasons, have been refused. As soon as the TMS therapy is finished, I am appealing the decision with the assistance of the local legal aid clinic. The process takes on average three years.

Among the reasons I was refused was that I tried to return to work after my sick leave, and because I have taken some temp work and continued to apply for work. I guess if I’m well enough to try to work for a couple days at a time, I am not disabled. So now I don’t try to earn any money and I don’t even look at job postings. Someone who is receiving CPP Disability is allowed to earn a certain amount without penalty; I guess just not when you are trying to qualify in the first place.

I have also applied for Ontario Disability Support Benefits (ODSP) and should hear soon. I have to be refused before I can appeal the decision. The appeal process generally takes a year.

Just over a year ago, I put all my belongings in storage and moved in with one of my sisters and her husband for a few months while I looked for work. That was the idea. But I kept crying over cover letters and only got two interviews which were unsuccessful. Now I am on welfare (my savings are gone), and rent a room in a house, share a kitchen and a bathroom with a couple PhD students and a hoarder.

For more than twenty years, I used to be a self-sufficient member of society, even with depression and anxiety (I have never been hospitalized luckily) but now I no longer am. That in itself affects my depression and anxiety greatly.

I want TMS to work but it is no magic bullet. I find it hard to believe that it will allow me to improve enough to function again, even harder to believe that I can ever be not depressed.

My family doctor referred me to the local mood disorders clinic last year. I had to wait 4 months to see the psychiatrist. He referred me for TMS. It has been a 4 1/2 month wait for that. It's a long wait, but because this is Canada, there is no charge to me. (CANADA ROCKS!)