[Maru]

ECT often makes me think of what my doctor suggested to me in the past for something else. They have something that is done for painful bladder where they put you under and pack your bladder full with water, i.e. essentially expanding it... it sounds awful when you think about it, if something is already inflamed and ulcerated, why would you want to expand it?? You'd think expanding something like that would cause significant pain. And it is literally hell at first supposedly, but then it can cause periods of relief for several months after as it does something to "spread" the nerves. I was never quite bad enough to need it done, but it was fascinating...

Sometimes with restless leg, punching it can help things to calm down. Though hard to sleep when I have to sit up to punch myself... but nerves really respond to the weirdest things... We're still learning about chronic pain, but I wouldn't be surprised if depression and physical pain are linked in such a way through the nerves somehow that when there is the ability to treat one, we could probably accommodate the other. Maybe "retrain" the nerves somehow. Like one example, some people have their bladders removed if the symptoms are severe enough (and untreatable)... but sometimes the pain remains as a sort of "phantom pain"... and this is unusually common... I guess it is possible for something to build up overtime overtime that it leaves a physical "mark" on us. Pain is a weird thing... There is a strong link between depression and pain in general, so maybe there are associations made over-time that make it possible to continue to feel symptoms despite "relief"... in the physical sense... and I guess ECT "disrupts" and similar trauma to this effect causes a "numbing" effect?

I was in a study for the use of an anti-depressant drug that helps with pain. A lot of the newer medications are tweaked from what was learned by doctors experimenting with using anti-depressants "off-label" to treat pain... so I feel like the more we explore that area and learn about it, the more effective we'll probably be at treating things like depression, etc... is my hope.