
Jul 22, 2018, 03:41 PM
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Member Since: Jun 2018
Location: US
Posts: 1,512
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gordian_knot
I'm back with an update.
It's been a very rough couple of months. As I mentioned, my wife developed debilitating post-ECT symptoms in late April after her ECT treatments finished (intense, overwhelming fear; complete disconnect from family and every aspect of her life; sensory hallucinations including a persistent smell/taste of rotten meat). I couldn't find anything that matched these symptoms online. About 2-3 weeks post-ECT though, those symptoms simply vanished one morning as if flipping a switch. One day she was terrified and unable to really function, and the next morning it was just gone and she could function again.
This was just before we had an appointment with our psychiatrist, and she put a name to it: postictal delirium. With a diagnosis I could Google, then I was able to find some information, mostly in medical research papers. It's extremely rare, but it's supposed to be short-term, only for a few weeks post-ECT, and then go away.
Unfortunately it came back a few weeks ago in a very disturbing way. My wife developed an intense fury at everything. The slightest thing would cause an intense, uncontrollable angry reaction. She even acknowledged when pressed that the anger was overwhelming everything in her life. She wouldn't touch me, and acted like she completely lost all of her love for me, barely interacted with her kids, threatened to walk out the door. And then, two days ago, halfway through the morning, it just... vanished.
We are completely baffled and very worried that this is going to happen again. My wife's psychiatrist for 18 years is very old school - no computers, all handwritten notes, poor memory - and she didn't really want to hear that we were still having problems, kept saying to my wife "Well, you seem better" and sent us on our way. We're trying to get in to see a new psychiatrist but the wait time is about a year.
Has anyone heard of anything like this happening to someone more than three months post-ECT? And are there any places I can go online to get advice from trained mental health professionals that could shed some light on what the hell is happening and what we should do?
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I am so sorry your wife and you are going through this. That sounds like a scary reaction. The one thing I wanted to mention about the recent episode is that I get very intense anger related to hypomania/mixed episodes. I would ask if her psychiatrist thought it was related to the ECT or not, but it sounds like you didn't get very good answers for them. That is really frustrating I am sure. I can't say I know much about if this is ever seen with post-ECT. Can you get on the cancellation list for a new psychiatrist? A year is a crazy amount of time to wait, but if she gets really bad you could go to the ER.
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