I didn’t realize how important memories are until I lost them. I used to be able to remember things very easily, and now I struggle to remember a lot of things. My memory has improved over the last few months, since I stopped doing ECTs, but it’s far from what it used to be. I have a hard time with both short-term and long-term memory.
One day, many months ago, I woke up and didn’t realize that my grandmother had passed away years ago. I forget family memories often, and I feel that those are the most important. I ask people questions all the time, forgetting that I had just recently asked that same question. I have conversations with people over and over, because I forget that I just had that same conversation.
The forgetting is hard on me. I feel as if I annoy people because I repeat myself often. I try to improve my memory, but that’s not an easy thing to do. I feel incapable, less than, and pathetic. My memory has improved a little since I stopped ECT, but will it continue to improve? Am I ever going to get back to what my memory used to be like?
My Side of the Pole 
Wishing you well honey!!
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Thanks!
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I’ve had one course of ECT but I wasn’t affected permanently in any way. One time I woke up from a session and forgot my father had died, and had an image in my head that he was going to see me later with mum. Realising that he was dead was quite traumatic at the time. I remember many months later seeing a picture of a zebra and thinking what is that and feeling this real haze and asking someone what it was and when they told me the bulb went off and could place the animal and my knowledge of it. But these things are distressing and make you feel dislocated. I really hope you’ll have my experience that it was short-term. Thinking of you.
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That’s a horrible experience, so sorry you had to go through that. My memory has improved since i stopped ECTs, but I still struggle, mostly with short-term memory loss. I had a total of 34 treatments in about a year and a half.
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I had in the past been quite worried about having ect but without lunging myself at it I’d probably feel less scared to have it again. In my mind I thought of ect & one flew over cuckoo’s nest. While memory loss was distressing it did improve my condition quickly. Hope your memory returns quickly. Certainly distressing.
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Thank goodness the ECT treatments have come a long way from ‘one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.’
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