VNS Days 1 – 3

Day 1:

Surgery first thing. Had to wait for-EVER once we got there. Told to get there at 6:45, apparently the surgery itself wasn’t scheduled until 8. Paperwork took a grand total of 3 minutes.

They put me in a bed in a smock, footies, and a little blue cap. Everyone kept asking me if I smoked, drank, had taken out any piercings, etc. I was ready to ask the next person who asked me if they were asking because we were going to have a party.

Everyone was really nice, and they wheeled me into the OR, which had these 3 ginormous lights. I couldn’t see very well because I’d taken my glasses off. So they attached my IV and the room started scrolling toward the ceiling. I thought about asking if they’d given me something. Then one of the nurses asked me if I could tell they’d given me something. I told her yes, and that was the last thing I remembered until I woke up.

I was wobbly, but got to go home shortly. Slept a lot of the afternoon, but as whatever they’d pre-medicated me with wore off, a began to have a terrible reaction to the general anesthesia. Dry heaves are the worst.

And then I saw the implant.

Guys, it looked like someone had implanted a cupcake. It was huge, and all I could think was WHAT HAVE I DONE??!! I was going to be a freak with this huge lump on the left side of my chest. You could even see the leads going up into my neck. Forget the scars, who cared about the scars…who was even going to notice the scars with this massive soup-can-lid sized lump?

I mean, I teach, and people stare at me for hours at a time. And I like wearing tank tops. My mom said, maybe I just wouldn’t be able to wear as many tank tops, and I thought, Like hell. But then I started thinking about meeting guys. If I met a guy I was interested in, would he be repelled by this nasty huge lump I had? I would be. I started to feel like a freak.

Day 2

Got some medicine to stop the puking.

Was allowed to peel off the gauze. I now have two 2″-incisions, one horizontal on the front of my neck, one vertical just to the right of my left arm….well, that one’s probably more like 3″. There are no stitches, they used surgical superglue, so I won’t have scars from the needle. It actually looks pretty good, considering.

And…thank GOD…the swelling has gone down a bit over the implant so it’s not like I have an Alien trying to bust through.

It’s right under the skin, and I can feel it, a hard disc a couple of inches across. And yes, I can still see the lead going up toward my neck. I really hope there’s still swelling to go down.

Day 3

Checked my phone and go on my computer and am a little upset to have missed some important work stuff on Friday. I expected to be back on the computer by Thursday afternoon after the surgery, and obviously I was trying to turn inside out thanks to the general. So Friday came and went and I missed things that day, too. So now I’ve been doing catchup and a little damage control.

I’m sore, but I haven’t wanted to take any of the painkiller they gave me, because it can make you kind of nauseated. That’s all I need right now. So I’ve just been taking Tylenol, the only other thing I’m allowed to take.

I find myself favoring my left arm, and the implant feels heavy, especially if I lean forward, even though I know it isn’t. I guess it’s just the fact that something is in there that I’m not used to, right underneath this big vertical wound.

I’m trying to figure out what it’s going to be like to have this thing in there when it doesn’t hurt around it. I mean, if I have an itch, will I just scratch like normal, or will I have to be careful I don’t shift the thing under my skin?

I also keep wondering how they got it over there. Did they have to slide a scalpel back and forth under there to disconnect the skin from the muscle or what? Gross, but inquiring minds…well, maybe I don’t really want to know….

VNS and Me

The first, and most obvious question, is — What is VNS?

VNS stands for Vagal Nerve Stimulation. The Vagus nerve runs down from the brain stem and affects all those important internal organs — heart, lungs, etc. According to Wikipedia, “Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is an adjunctive treatment for certain types of intractable epilepsy and clinical depression. VNS uses a stimulator that sends electric impulses to the left vagus nerve in the neck via a lead implanted under the skin.”

So that brings us to this blog.

I’m getting the VNS implant in two days for chronic and recurrent depression, and I intend to chronicle my experience with it here.

But let me bring you up to speed with a little info on me. I’ve had problems with depression since I was 11. It was kind of like being the unwitting victim of a landslide. One minute I was struggling through adolescence like any other kid, the next I was buried under a few tons of sharp and painful rocks, wondering what the hell hit me.

In the 25 years since, I’ve taken every psychological test, done all kinds of therapy, and taken damn near every medication on the market.

The problem is, a med will work for a little while and then stop, leaving me back where I started. I seem to have that problem every year to two years. Right now I’m taking a cocktail of meds that makes even the pharmacists raise their eyebrows (and you know they see everything). We had to just keep adding things until I was functional again. I was in bad shape this time around…bad enough that I was ready to try anything. (It only occurs to me after I wrote that that “I was suicidal” might have more impact on the reader. I don’t even see “I was suicidal” as shocking anymore. Suicidal is a given when I get bad. I can’t stand to be conscious when I get bad, so I “self-medicate” with sleep, sleeping 16-20 hours a day, easily. Not so good for the career.)

Anyhow, here’s my cocktail.

Effexor — 225 mg
Abilify — 4 mg
Lexapro — 20 mg
Trazodone — 100 mg
Synthroid — 100 mcg
Cytomel — 25 mcg
Lamictal — 100 mg
Deplin — 7.5 mg

Those are just the drugs for the depression. And I’m still having trouble.

I’ve also taken

Prozac
Zoloft
Celexa
Wellbutrin
Cymbalta

and a handful of old-standby antidepressants called tricyclics and MAOIs.

I’m kind of nervous about having this thing implanted. I mean, in some ways it feels really counterintuitive to me. I want my depression taken out, so we’re putting something in? But I guess that’s how medication works, too. You put it in the body.

On the other hand, if it could mean never having to sleep just to stay alive again, freaking wire me up!

Oh, one more thing I should add in this first entry. Insurance has refused to pay for it. They don’t care that I’ve wrestled most of my life with this disease, this monster, this demon; their refusal letter is practically a rebuke. And they are cheerfully sure to add that they don’t care if you have a life-threatening illness for which this is the only treatment — they’re not paying, dammit. But hey, have a nice day.