When Your TMS Treatment is TMI

by Sharon Kayne

I’m having TMS treatment again. Since you’re probably wondering what the heck TMS is, I’ll tell you: transcranial magnetic stimulation. And, yep, it’s as delightful as it sounds. Basically, I go to the office where my psychiatrist works, and they strap me into this machine that pummels my head with magnetic pulses. TMS is used for a whole host of mental illnesses, but for me it’s a treatment for what’s looking more and more like medication-resistant depression.

I had TMS a few years ago and it did help me. For a while. Like, six months. Here’s the process: they put a rubbery head piece on you that looks like a really ugly swim cap. (I realize that’s redundant, as there are no pretty swim caps.) Over that they place a ‘helmet’ that sits high on your head, looking something like the bride of Frankenstein’s gravity-defying hairdo. When I had this treatment a few years ago, I had my husband come along once so he could get a picture of me in this helmet. I thought a picture might be funny. It wasn’t. So, no, I won’t be using it to illustrate this blog. Of course, the moment they strap the helmet on you, you notice a small itch on your scalp that wasn’t there before, because this is the way the universe punishes people like me.

Then they turn on the machine, and it sends the magnetic pulse into the left side of your head. Oddly enough, you feel it on the right side of your head, because that’s the weird way the brain works. It sends the pulse (‘bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam’) for a few seconds, then you get a short break. Before long, the machine makes a cheery ‘bing’ sound, which signals that the next pulse is coming. The break/‘bing’/‘bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam’/break cycle goes on for about twenty minutes total. The whole thing reminds me of the constant drip of ancient Chinese water torture—except it’s being administered by an angry woodpecker.

They start you off with a lower dose of the magnetic pulse and, over the next few days, work you up to the therapeutic dose. That’s probably good, because the pulses are really jarring at first. It felt like they were making my fillings rattle—and I don’t even have fillings! (Hey, don’t hate me for never having had cavities. I’d trade you my depression for your dental problems any day!) Even once you get up to the therapeutic dosage, the pulsing is still strong enough to make my right hand tremble just a bit. And I’m sure I make a really hideous grimace while it happens.

Once you get up to the therapeutic dose, you go in for treatment every day for six weeks. That is, perhaps, the most annoying part. Aside from the twenty-minute treatment, there is the drive there and back, which is twenty minutes each way. The problem with the drive is that since I was in a car accident about two years ago, I haven’t been very comfortable in a car—either as a driver or a passenger. It wasn’t a terribly bad accident. I was T-boned by a teenager. She was driving an SUV the size of a tank. I was in my tiny Toyota. She was more interested in her cell phone than paying attention to inconsequential things like traffic lights. She ran a red light, hit my back fender, and my car did a complete 360 before slamming—hood first—into a pole. I wasn’t badly hurt (except for a bump on the front of my shin the size of a ham), but the whole experience was terrifying. There’s the explosion of the vehicle impact, there’s the explosion of all the airbags deploying, and then there’s the spinning through the intersection where you have absolutely no control over your car. Plus, given the airbag deployment, you can’t even see much of anything while you spin. I’m lucky I didn’t hit something other than the pole. What’s worse than having to do so much driving for this treatment is that, to get there, I have to go through the very same intersection where I was hit. I always check for distracted drivers when I enter it.

I hope my TMS story isn’t TMI. But since it’s been taking up a lot of my time lately, I figured I should at least squeeze one blog out of it. And, when it’s over, hopefully I’ll have at least another six months free of depression.

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