I was so wrong. Again my feet were yanked out from under me and this treatment felt like slamming into a physical and emotional wall. Every piece of me just wanted to give up and stop. For this round, all the chairs were taken so I got a medical bed instead so that added a bit of strain to sitting more upright and not having the arms of the chair to support my upper body.
The luck finally ran out on being able to use my left hand to hook up the IV. They tried both hands for a few turns and on the second try they got my right hand.
I went in around a 6 pain level and left at 6. It took about 15-20 minutes before the Ketamine slammed into me and just pushed me off a cliff.
I probably spent 5 minutes fumbling with my Kindle tablet before I was finally able to escape the game I was playing and just turn the tablet off. I had the music playing prior so at least I didn't have to struggle with that. I think I received extra Versed this session but I vaguely remember the nurse checking on me to give me the extra shot to the IV. I spent the next 3 hours just spiraling in my thoughts: it all being a waste, my pain was just fake, I felt like an imposter, I was just making up all the pain cause at that moment I felt fantastic, this was a waste of my time, the doctors' time, my boss' time, a waste of money for the treatment and a waste of money for every day I was missing work to give this a shot. I was a waste of time and money to my husband; we had been married for like 6 months before I got hit with GBS and all of this was just a culmination of complete failure. I basically just circled and swirled in those thoughts for about 3 hours until I opened my eyes to them unhooking me. This isn't worth it; I can't do this; fuck Ketamine: that was my mantra blasting itself in my mind as I was wheeled out from the therapy and down to my husband's car. We skipped the smoothie and went straight home. My husband had to help me through the front door again and to my cot. Every few steps I had to stop and catch my breath. I felt exhausted and broken; with only one more treatment left it was pretty easy to just say no more, I'm done, I'm out. After all, I felt no different than I did from the start of all of this and what difference could one of the 4 hour treatments make? I could just call it quits and move on to the next option. I broke down crying a bit and my husband hugged me. He chuckled and said "Maximum effort~" and though cheesy, it was a moment where I was able to kind of swallow the doubt and turn around and think just one more day, one more treatment and then all I have to do it get past the exhaustion and wait to see if this whole ordeal would give me any benefit or improvement.
I crashed on the cot and dragged myself up to bed around 11pm that night.
"Maximum effort" was a catch phrase Deadpool, one of my favorite characters, used in a movie recently. Cheesy, but the sentiment was true... :x <3 nbsp="" p="">My mantra of the day was still: "Never doing this again. Fuck Ketamine."
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