OCTOBER 18, 2007
From some strange reason, Ross has been stressed about my seizure and has been thoroughly unamused by my attempts to make light of the situation. Like when I jokingly say, 'uh-oh,' and roll my eyes back in my head and feign like I'm twitching. "Really not funny," he says in all seriousness and then I can't help but roll my eyes. "What's the point in having a seizure if you can't have fun with it?" I asked after one of his 'thou shalt not mock seizures' dissertations, but he just stared at me like he couldn't believe I'd joke about this. So I finally told him he was being far too serious about it and needed to view it from a positive perspective. "A positive perspective on your seizure?" he asked incredulously, to which I said, "yeah, don't view it as seizure, look at it as the home version of electroshock therapy."
Again, he didn't think that was funny, but that's ok since I was only half joking. Electroshock therapy, after all, consists of intentionally inducing seizures as a means of treating severe depression like the kind I have and, while my doctor has yet to hook my brain up to the nearby hydroelectric dam whilst cackling, "happy dance, motherfucker, happy dance!" shock therapy has never been ruled out for me. Granted, it's not tops on the list of treatments, but seen as a last resort since jump starting your grey matter can have adverse effects. Like crispy creaming your brain, and not in a tasty, delicious donut kind of way. So electroshock therapy has always lurked on the periphery of possible treatments but, as my doctor has always said, "let's hope it doesn't come to that."
I've always been with her on that because I'm wary of anything that involves electrodes and my brain and don't think I could voluntarily subject myself to seizures, but then my brain didn't give me a say in the matter last week. Like it or not and irregardless of choice, I had a seizure and, as I read about what had happened to me, my mind couldn't help but wonder. Is an idiopathic seizure like the kind I had at all like the seizures induced by electroshock therapy? And if so, was there any chance there might be a positive effect to the hellacious brain meltdown I experienced? I knew that was far-fetched but I have experienced a sudden and drastic improvement in my mood and I couldn't help but wonder. Was that just coincidence or was there something more to it?
When I started rambling about this to Ross, he listened patiently and then weighed in with his two cents worth of insight and, as it turns out, his two cents had a much higher exchange rate than my own. Or, in other words, he looked at the situation logically and that lead to a more sound conclusion than my nascent attempts to find a silver lining in a seizure. Because, as Ross pointed out, the type of seizure I had was different than the kind induced by shock therapy and, what's more, electroshock therapy requires numerous seizures over a course of time that target specific areas of the brain so the odds of a random seizure causing an improvement in depression are pretty much nil.
So is my improvement in mood just psychosomatic? Self-fulfilling prophecy? Or simply the relief of finally feeling better after the seizure? In truth, it's probably a little of each, but mostly due to the glaringly obvious factor I missed but that Ross was well aware of. Exercise. Yeah, how's that for anticlimactic? I had a seizure and I've been prancing around thinking it might have helped my depression but, come to find out, the change in mood stems from the simple fact that I finally got off my ass and started exercising again. Doh!
Exercise is more effective for me in fighting depression than medication but, when I had my second miscarriage, my doctor told me to take a break from exercise to give my body time to heal and, unfortunately, I never resumed my walks after that. It was strange in that I'd been a hardcore walker for years and knew exercise was essential for my mental health, but I just couldn't get going again after the miscarriage. I went from walking every day for several years to suddenly not walking at all for 8 months and, boy, did that take a toll on me, but I didn't realize just how much until now. But I finally got off my arse and started walking again and it's like someone's pumped me full of happy juice.
So, as it turns out, it's exercise and not the seizure that's responsible for this amelioration in my mood but at least I have a new mantra to inspire me to keep up with the physical activity: "Exercise. It's better than electroshock therapy!" Granted, I don't think doctors and health experts are going to adopt that as a new slogan for a physical fitness campaign but, if I ever slack off on my walks again, all Ross will have to do is start taking about seizures and electrodes and I'll be flying out the door.
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