Red Light, Green Light

For those of you who have no clue what I am talking about, you can find out more about Schizoaffective Disorder here and ECT here Or Google them.


If you had to take a guess as to what question I get asked most frequently is, what would you think? And no, "how are you" and other generic pleasantries don't count.

If you guessed "How is Joe doing?", you win the prize! (The prize is the satisfaction of being right. Hey, I'm cheap, I'm not giving you a REAL prize!)

I'm not going to go into the whole back story right now (though I probably will blog about it at some point). Since my stats tell me I have quite a few stalkers out there now (Hi everyone!!), writing a blog post is probably the fastest way to update everyone all at once.

Most (some?) of you know that Joe, my husband, is disabled. He suffers from schizoaffective disorder. Click the link at the beginning of the post if you want more info about it.

For some time now, medication therapy has not been working. We've done it all. Well I'm sure we missed a particular drug or two, but we've pretty well hit every combination of every category of drug approved for the treatment of mental illness (and a few that were not!) to no avail. About 3 years ago, the doctors started bringing up a treatment called Electroconvulsive Therapy, or ECT.



"Now hang on a minute," some of you are saying right about now, "That sounds an awful lot like shock treatments!" Well, that's because that's exactly what it is. Don't jump straight down to the comments section and give me crap. Email me (criss11401[at]gmail.com) and I'll be glad to discuss it with you. Like I said, not gonna post the whole long story on this post this time. It will work its way up here eventually.


Anyway, back to ECT. So we've been trying to get Joe hooked up with a doctor who will prescribe and administer ECT for a long time now. At first I was like you probably are. No way. Not going to happen. Then I did some research. Hmm. Not as scary looking when you get the facts. Side effects certainly aren't any worse than those of all his current meds AND are not nearly as bad as his condition untreated. So I started sharing the info with Joe. And slowly he started to warm up to the idea.

Now there's a reason that med therapy hasn't worked for Joe. I don't know what that reason is, but God does and I fully trust that he knows what he is doing, so since it kept coming up and I know God is guiding me in that direction, for the past year or so we have been actively pursuing it as a viable treatment option.

Do you remember playing Red Light Green Light as a kid? Basically, someone is the caller and yells "Green Light!" and all the kids run towards them. Then they yell "Red Light" and all the kids have to freeze right where they are. This keeps going until someone reaches the caller and tags them. Then they get to be the caller. This has been our experience with ECT. God calls "Green Light" and we run towards ECT as fast as we can and then suddenly BAM. He calls "Red Light". And we sit there frozen waiting for his next move.

Joe's current regular psychiatrist (it gets tricky when we start talking doctors, just go with it) has been a STRONG encourager of ECT almost from the start but didn't really start pushing us that way until about 18 months ago. But he doesn't practice it himself. So we had to find someone who does. He referred us to UNC and got us a consultation with the head of the Schizophrenia department, who is a MD and PhD but pretty much only does the PhD part now (research) with limited MD stuff (clinical treatment of patients), so while he is licensed to perform ECT, he doesn't actually do it himself anymore. He thought that Joe was an EXCELLENT candidate for the treatment, wrote up a referral stating such, and sent us back home to find someone local to perform the procedure ("Green Light"!!! Go go go!!!).

So the regular doctor found a local guy to do the ECT at a local hospital. We went and met with him, got started on the pre-procedure stuff, and waited to hear back (Another "Red Light" call). Finally I called to bug him and find up what the hold up is. Oh. You dropped your practicing privileges at the hospital. Great.

So back to square one. Local ECT doctor #1 refers us to Local ECT doctor #2. GREEN! But Local ECT doctor #2 doesn't treat patients in the schizophrenia spectrum. RED!

Regular Doctor suggests we call UNC Doctor and see if he can work something out up there. Yay he can! GREEN! Admissions department calls me the next day (Um...highlighter green?! That was super fast....) to admit him to get started. Oh, he's not critical? (Critical = danger to self) Well then the UNC doctor really needs to follow protocol and initiate the procedure with the ECT coordinator (apparently UNC has a whole ECT department) and do things that way (BIG freaking Red Light).

Today I get a call from UNC doctor. He's so sorry for the wait, but they are really backed up right now. (Sigh, I prepare for another red light). Is there anyway we can wait until March 20th? He knows that's a long time and all...

Ok. Hold up. Did you say March 20th? As in, 2012? As in, FIFTEEN DAYS from now?! If that is a long wait, I'd hate to see what the express pass is!

So UNC doctor is going to be lecturing on campus tomorrow anyway  and will drop by the ECT department to have admissions contact me to set up an appointment to admit him on or about March 20th for pre-procedure and blood work so they can tentatively do the treatment starting March 23rd. Of this year.

I feel like the kid who just needs one more green light to finally tag the caller.