www.ketamineadvocacynetwork.org

Hello again.  I have been adding a few more things to the website and I am taking a much needed break to blog.  I was thinking about my website and what else it needs in order to help.  I decided to head over to a website that helped my family during the month leading up to and after my Ketamine Infusions.  I pray the site Ketamine Advocacy Network continues to attract attention and more people become aware of the huge benefits that Ketamine offers for treatment resistant depression.  I was visiting the site today and decided to finally register and post.  I have been reluctant to in the past because I can get pretty overwhelmed by others emotions and experiences.  I admit that even today it was upsetting.  However, I did remind myself that tomorrow is Ketamine day and that I have been ready for my treatment 10 days now.  It is not shocking that I would cry and hurt when reading about others’ histories and pain.  It is a very fresh feeling for me.  What I mean by that is I am too close to the depression.  I feel some days it is too raw and painful.  I know that after 9:30am tomorrow I will feel substantially better.  I won’t falter.  I feel broken today.  I have much to accomplish and no, absolutely no drive to do.  I want to accept and embrace where I am today but I admit I am angry.  I am human.  I am a little irritable, okay extremely so.  I am definitely struggling with my depression lately.  I am very uncomfortable.  I am fighting for breath.  My disability to center myself is compounded by the constriction the depression causes in my chest and stomach.  I am feeling immensely negated.  I feel I could disappear and nothing would shift or change.  It will be as though I never was;  nothing loss.  My head is heavy and I believe I am close to auditioning for Sesame Street as the letter C because when I looked up and saw my reflection in the window that was what came to mind.  I am curling into myself.  It is physically more difficult to move and function mentally when the depression has latched its rotten teeth into me.  I want that shot.  I need that shot.

I have been using Ketamine therapy since March 2015.  I have learned so much.  I am in touch with my mental illness.  I recognize the shifts and difference in myself.  I feel blessed that I can distinguish a rotten day from Clinical Depression.  However, I have hours upon hours of research left ahead of me.  I need and want to research Ketamine.  It is a massive part of my life.  You know that part that decides whether it continues.   I try not to freak out about the possibilities of not be able to afford or get my Ketamine therapy.   It would be lovely if changes could occur to insurance companies so that Ketamine can be made available to everyone under their insurance coverage.  I also would like and want to change stigmas.  This is a tough one for me because I hide my illness at every turn.  If I couldn’t camouflage my depression I wasn’t leaving the house.  I spent many, too many, days in bed.  I want and must inform doctors.   I am shocked at how few doctors know or are willing to believe in Ketamine and its effects.   I realize that prescribing Ketamine involves a little more hands on time for safety but in exchange for days of pure relief it is a no brainer to me.  I feel the doctors should want to take the time if they are truly about healing the body.  I have millions of pieces to glue together to make Susan completely whole again.  I love knowing that Ketamine will give me a kick start.  I will be floating up the stairs instead of crawling.

I was posting on the KAN sites’ forum about how I started with 6 Ketamine infusions and now I get a shot every two weeks and it brought back memories.   I was investigating on the Ketamine Advocacy Network website and it got me thinking.  I am documenting my journey by creating a place to go and I hope to see activity to my site too in an effort to help others.   I know for a fact that the Ketamine Advocacy Network website helped my husband when I was barely hanging on to life.  I feel Ketamine needs a voice.  It needs all the voices it can find.  It is so sad that this amazing drug has to go through so many hoops in order to help possibly millions.  I would be dead today if not for Ketamine.  That might sound dramatic but it is no lie.  It changed my life.  It continues to change me.  I can not say it enough.  I believe with everything in me that Ketamine could help thousands and thousands of individuals with Treatment Resistant Depression and Anxiety.

I also found after reading a few posts and comments on their forums section that I need to take some time to write about my Infusions and the treatment experiences I originally had and the ways that has changed over time.  I want to be informative.  I will.

The major obstacle, besides the health and insurance industry, is those of us suffering don’t know anything about Ketamine therapy and neither do our doctors!!  Education is needed.  I want more people talking openly about Ketamine and depression.  I started my website as a beginning.  There is so much I want to say.  I want to shout it.  Ketamine was my last chance.  I had my suicide planned out fully in my head if I returned from NJ and the Ketamine didn’t turn out to be this wonder drug my husband was reading about.  If it was unsuccessful which I figured it would be I had the escape plan.  And that is exactly how I saw the direction of my life.  I didn’t honestly have any hope that this treatment would be any different than any other antidepressants or cocktails from hell I have been prescribed over the last three decades. I had nothing left to give.  I stuck around to try this last treatment only for my husband and son.  The incredible part is we haven’t looked back since.  I am working diligently on healing and Ketamine gives me the ability to do the work.  I am super fortunate to have discovered Ketamine.  This drug could help so many like me but it isn’t being used or talked about nearly enough!  I am on a mission…. ?

I never believed my outlook on life could feel so completely opposite to the beliefs I have had in the past but they are.  It hasn’t been reflected in the last couple post (excluding the poetry. I am posting many that were written in my teens and twenties.  A history of mental illness in stance if you will.) and I know I still have several unanswered questions.  Oh, that reminds me Dr. Steven Levine emailed me back Friday and agreed to discuss my case with my local doctor today.  I am going to close for now and give Dr. Charles Moseley a call and check the status on what they decided regarding Ketamine and possible issues with my menopause results.  It could be an explanation as to why the Ketamine wasn’t as effective as it typically is.  Until next time.  Keep moving upwards even if you have to crawl because at the top is Ketamine.  I am crawling.  I know what I will find.  It is worth the bruises.