24/7 Deja Vu

[rustee72]

I am 42 years old. I have Bipolar Disorder, Anxiety, ADHD, and OCD. I have received ECT treatments fine since 2008. Then, in May 2014 things went downhill when I was in the hospital (again, I was receiving ECT treatments and had no problems). I started experiencing non-stop/constant deja vu. It has not let go and they have supposedly rule everything out and are calling me psychosomatic (I have had horrible headaches since then). I am living in a state of deja vu 24/7 and my dreams are like I have had the exact dream before, as well as the thoughts that are running through my head. There are no new memories. I was in the hospital in November and now I see that my head was not as clear-headed as it was, as I had an episode where I got some saline in my eye and it then felt like I went into a complex seizure, though I came out of it after 2-3 minutes -- all I know is I could not see and felt my body shaking and felt l ike my life was passing me by. I asked one of the observing nurses if I had a seizure and they told me. I was not in my right mind and I did nto tell my psychiatrist. I thought nothing much of it, though my head became a lot more clear-headed after this episode. Since December 29, 2014, I have had periods that have felt like my head on my left side was tingling. There was one period where I was totally exhausted/fatigued (never happenes) and I was nodding off everywhere, including driving. That took about five days to heal. I guess it is just hard to deal with as it is affecting my mental illness and I thought there is nothing that can be done and that is the most hard thing -- knowing that my life is always going to be like this.

 

[Nakamova]

Hi rustee72, welcome to CWE!

ECT treatment is essentially a controlled tonic-clonic seizure, so along with short-term memory loss and confusion, it can also cause longer-term memory and cognitive issues, especially after multiple sessions as in your case. It isn't known to cause partial seizures such as deja vu, though if you had epilepsy as a pre-existing condition it might make them worse.

It's also very possible that the deja vu is related to the ECT's repeated disruptions of your memory. Have you ever been evaluated by a neurologist for a seizure disorder? Have you ever had an EEG or MRI? Those tests might give a better sense of what is going on, and whether your temporal lobes (which process memory) are in "overdrive".

Whatever the cause of your persistent deja vu episodes and headaches, the doctors should be taking them seriously and helping treat them, rather than dismissing them out of hand. Have they recommended any kind of therapy whatsoever? At minimum, a neuropsychiatric evaluation would be helpful for gauging if memory and learning problems have resulted from the multiple ECT sessions, and an EEG might help determine if there are ongoing issues with your temporal lobes.