AF: Well i’ve been on antidepressants for a very very long time and you know reasonably well managed for a few years this year i had some really bad major health issues and i sunk into probably the deepest depression that i’ve had in over 10 or 15 years and i made the leap to consider the tms treatment and i struggled a little bit at first you know it’s a lot of a time investment to come in every day of the week for a couple of months and i did experience a little bit of a dip on during the process but overall i started noticing a trend of feeling better feeling less anxious so definitely feeling less depressed and by the time i got to the end of my tms journey at the beginning of june i it’s like a switch flipped in my world and i have felt the most elated and least oppressed least anxious and most energy probably more than i felt in at least five or six years and over the last month then a little bit over a month um it’s continued to get better to the point where i just met with my doctor the other day to start experimenting under his supervision to decrease the medication because i am feeling so good and you know i i read up a lot about it and i appreciated what the office you know was able to communicate both in discussions and then with the information that’s online but i have to say i really wish i tried this years ago because it has just been a resounding success for me and i just i feel like i have a new lease on life right now.

Dr. W: Can you walk me through some of what you were feeling before you did TMS and how those symptoms got better? 

AF: I was in a really really severe depression and my doctor and i had increased the doses of my medications and i had really awful side effects from that just that dose increase and not getting really much benefit at all so i i couldn’t stay on that and at that point i was you know what do i do here you know when i switched medications and you know then we had that discussion about the tms and really i was pretty desperate um i could hardly get out of bed in the morning and whether or not the other health condition was doing well or not i just felt like i had no energy my life was just you know drawing to a complete halt in everything social or whatever or just daily functioning so um you know i went through the screening process and was excited to find out that you know i qualified for the tms treatment and it would be covered by my insurance because of my long history with medication you know use and you know the first couple weeks well let’s put it this way the first appointment period was to what they call map you know the treatment and so they figured out what level would be appropriate for me in terms of intensity and um you know so i went in for the first appointment already knowing a little bit about what to expect from the treatment and you know at first you know i really didn’t notice much of anything and it’s it’s short and it’s it’s easy and your um technician you know kind of either chats with you or they’ll stay quiet if you want to stay quiet but for the most part it’s like completely pain-free the sound doesn’t bother me and the intensity level was always a little bit adjustable you know to my needs for that particular day and in a few weeks i did notice some changes some were improvements but i also did notice that i had um some brief trauma that i hadn’t completely processed through and i had an experience with some of that coming back up again but i stuck with it and um i i’m just so just pleased to say that um you know working through that with all the therapeutic tools and then having the tms on on board as well slowly things started to increase and it was a little bit difficult to notice um but you know you do fill out a tracking form with your you know different moods and your activities and how your depression and anxiety symptoms are and i did kind of notice that maybe my numbers were trending upward without really knowing and seeing all them together but you know by the time we got to the last two weeks just a dramatic improvement hit me and i was bouncing out of bed with more energy than i can remember having you know for so long and um just really all of a sudden not only being able to take care of like my activities of daily living which are a struggle but also um getting to some of these like projects that i had put off for so long you know just little things around the house and then some big things but i felt like i was able to start like making goals again and you know think about like okay my my future coming up is so much brighter now and oh my gosh like if i could be one of those people that ends up being able to you know decrease some of my medication with my doctor’s assistance that you know like it was only just going to keep getting better and i was a little skeptical that it was going to keep improving after the last treatment but it really has and i i can’t even convey to you the number of people in my life that i interact with who have said what are you doing andrea like you just are on fire you’re you’re smiling you’re happy like this is like we haven’t seen you like this in a couple of years you know.