It turns out to be a little confusing. A lot of the hospitals and guidelines for treating bipolar depression say that ECT is no longer necessarily a last resort. But then when you actually contact them, it turns out that they do want you to have tried all the other things on the list.

I looked at the protocol and it seems like I did follow all the steps there, so I should be eligible. The only thing is I would have to go inpatient for five weeks... I was kind of hoping to be able to go home and try to work when I'm not being treated. I want to show some goodwill towards my employer. Also, I really want to keep seeing my therapist through all this, especially in a time like this... And my home is like my sanctuary. It's going to be really rough on me being away for so long. I'm trying to see if there's another hospital where you don't have to be inpatient all the time, but I don't know if there is. If there isn't, then I guess IP is what I have to do.

It's just really inconvenient right now what with the babies and moving to a new house soon. Gonna be hard on my wife.

It's also confusing when the depression kind of waxes and wanes every now and then. Sometimes there's a week where I'm "only" moderately depressed and I immediately start to doubt whether I should go through with this. But when you look at the big picture I've been doing quite badly for the last five years or so, and the past nine months even more so, so... ECT is kind of where I've put most of my hope right now.

I don't know, maybe I've been depressed for so long that I've gotten used to it and I don't really feel the severity anymore. I regularly take these questionnaires that my Pdoc gave me (not online tests) to see how my mood is tracking. They often say "severely depressed" even when I thought I was doing a bit better than usual. It's all confusing as heck.

I will see about contacting Guinness, thanks for that tip!