[Daonnachd]

Yesterday I had ECT treatment. The unilateral hadn't been doing much apparently, so we did bilateral. The only other time I had done bilateral, I didn't know my name for 2 or 3 days. Coming home yesterday, I was conversational and moderately functional in just 2 or 3 hours after the treatment.

My question is this: If you've done ECT, did it have a similar tapering of efficacy or impact?

Thanks.

I never had really abrupt memory or confusion problems with ECT. In fact, I really never had any problems other than the usual short-term memory issues during treatment.

It could be that since they started unilateral, it kind of prepped you for bilateral? Totally a theory based on nothing but a wild guess.

One thing my pdoc did with me because he was being very protective of my memory (thank you, pdoc) was that he had me take an alzheimer's med during treatment. I think it was namenda or aricept. No real idea if that had any addition protective factor because I didn't have any memory problems, but . . . I didn't have any memory problems. (I also only had unilateral; I refused bilateral because memory loss just was not an option.) He didn't guarantee it would help, but he didn't think it would hurt either. I can say I didn't have any side effects, and I only had to take it during treatment so it wasn't any big deal.

I'm thinking on the same lines as lolagrace. maybe the fact that you did unilateral first made the effects of bilateral less. I personally havent done bilateral so i'm not really sure what to expect after it. I only had some mild headaches and a fuzzy brain temporarily with unilateral