"Struck by Living"
by
Julie K. Hersh

My story of recovery
with ECT
www.struckbyliving.com

Note: Please also reference Carrie Fisher's "Shockaholic" --
First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition, November 2011.

" Happily, none of the stories I'd previously heard about ECT turned out to be true anymore. Spoiler alert! You're given a short-acting anesthetic and a very effective anticonvulsant, you go to sleep for about ten minutes, and your big toe moves a bit, which is all that remains of the bone-snapping thrashing of old. .... And whereas before my brain had felt it was set in cement, leaving me...I don't know, kind of stuck, the ECT blasted my Hoover Dam head wide open, moving the immoveable. "

[ Carrie Fisher, "Shockaholic," pp. 19-20. ]

     " 'Donald' [Antrim], a voice said, 'this is David Wallace [David Foster Wallace]. I heard you were in bad shape.' [ ..... ]
     On the phone, Wallace said immediately, without prompting:
'I'm calling to tell you that if they offer you ECT, You should do it.
You'll be alright.' [ ..... ] Wallace told him the treatment was going to help him, he would see. [ ..... ] 'When we hung up, I walked straight to the doctors and told them I was ready to start.' [ ..... ]
     A month passed in the ward, while nothing happened -- not nothing, only flickerings. 'Green conductive gel dried on my forehead. Weeping.'
     Around the 11th time he underwent the shock, Antrim said, something shifted. Not subtle, dramatic. 'The color came back on.'
     It wasn't a permanent fix -- he went back into the hospital again, in 2010, and again underwent ECT. In all, between those two periods, he submitted to the procedure 55 times. He is unequivocal in his belief that without it he would be dead."

"THE ANXIETY ARTIST, Plumbing The Depths of American Literature's Darkest Comedian", by John Jeremiah Sullivan, "The New York Times Magazine", September 21, 2014, p. 35.