Hi everyone! 🩷 I’m a BHT and I’ve been the primary Spravato Tech in my office for the last almost 4 years!

I’m starting a little project for my new patients & patients who are going through a rough patch — I’m having my current patients write some small encouraging messages if they’d like for me to keep on hand to give to new patients since everyone is always SO nervous on your first appointment.

I love both Spravato and TMS, but since I started my program from the ground up in my center Spravato has a special place in my heart & I would love to share this project with you all!

SOOO if you all want to share positive words or encouraging messages about your experiences, feel free to comment below and I will print them out to include! I will block out usernames as well. 💜

Spravato has been a lifesaver for me. I have a pretty lengthy hangover following treatment into the next day. Total fatigue. I schedule my treatment bi-weekly on Friday afternoons so I can work my job and crash on Saturday. By Sunday I feel amazing.

Does anybody else experience this? Is there anything I can do ?

I’ve done a handful of spravato treatments now, almost done with the induction phase. I would say all the the appointments except for one, my blood pressure appears to drop instead of increase.

However, I’m wondering if it’s actually accurate or not to monitor BP with the finger?? Also, no one really checked on me despite some pretty low numbers throughout the appointment so I am just a little confused. I’ll probably say something to them next appointment

I'm restarting Spravato today after a year and a half and I was considering how I journal during treatment.

Has anyone found any specific journal prompts or journaling themes that were particularly helpful during sessions?

My clinic didn't do the "Do's and Dont's" call before treatment, so I'm trying to remember all the little things I need to know before I go in.

My doctor believes I’m a good candidate for Esketamine. I’m open to it, as every other medication has proven either ineffective or harmful. My main concern is- how debilitating are the treatments themselves? I want to get better, but don’t want to sacrifice the other things going on in my life such as work, preparation for moving/going back to school, and my social life. If you’ve been treated with Esketamine before, how much of an impact did it put into the logistics of your day to day life?

Thanks for all the supportive responses yesterday. I’ll just tell you the highlights of my first time with Spravato.

I have high anxiety so I mentally prepared with a bag of comfort items and comfy clothes for the chair. I did take .5mg Ativan upon waking and the other half an hour before leaving. The car picked me up and the driver was friendly and put me at ease, which really helped.

I got to the clinic and sat in a comfy recliner in a little cubicle that had a small bedside table with a low level light, candies, a cute little cup of dum-dum lollipops, tissues and crackers. The nurse I spoke to was helping me and she was really nice. Kept offering me water and when I said I was afraid of nausea she showed me where the throw-up bags were in the drawer of the table. So that helped with that part of my anxiety. At first I thought I wasn’t in a recliner and asked to go to a room with one, and the nurse showed me how to use the chair. I filled out the paperwork, and could hear a lot of other patients being asked how they were and them complaining about life. I was trying to stay in a positive mindset so I put my headphones on and finished the papers. I did two nasal sprays 5 minutes apart and I expected the taste to be horrible but It wasn’t as bad as I’ve heard and a wintergreen candy helped it pass quickly.

I covered my eyes with a mask, put on a Spravato video off YouTube, covered myself with my blanket and felt excited about the idea of dissociating on legal meds. (I’m 63 and back in my HS days I tried acid and shrooms but wasn’t a fan of the exhaustion the next day). I started to feel lighter and just relaxed and said, “show me what you got.” I had the mint in my mouth and noticed my lips felt a little numb so I decided it was time to stop thinking. I definitely floated up in the air and then images just were coming at me like pages in a book, but the stories weren’t in order from the same book. Earlier I had listened to a video someone on here recommended and it said to ask your dead relatives to guide you so I kind of had that in my mind. The first thing to come up was my deceased mom and I felt safe and loved. Then my old dogs from when I raised my family flickered in my consciousness and it was comforting. Next cats from my childhood and I went into all these memories of things that occurred in my life. Let’s just say I’m emotionally drained and the memories didn’t even go back to early childhood trauma! I was never scared but I did feel negative stuff. Once or twice I had to mess with my phone because my cell signal was glitching. I remember calling for help to get on the free WiFi but I think I was too quiet. I hit the call button but no one came. Then my video started working and I put my head back, smiled and thought it was funny, “they aren’t going to come help a patient with signal issues and they’re probably watching me on the camera and saying nope.” LOL

I was so groggy when it was time to wake up. I felt drugged and I was worried when I saw my ride would be there in 15 minutes. The nurse was reassuring that I had plenty of time and told me to just start sitting up. People were leaving and I could see out the door into the waiting room where a bunch of people were in chairs. My anxiety sprang up and in a daze I asked one of the workers who those people were. I robotically packed up my stuff and it was time to go. I asked to use the bathroom and I got lucky because near the bathroom was another door out where I didn’t have to walk through the waiting room.

I managed to get home, eat something and crawl in bed with my cat for a couple hours. I have a lot to process and even though nothing terrible happened it was mentally and emotionally exhausting and I feel like I don’t want to go back. But the nurse told me don’t drive and don’t make any big decisions like buy a car or a house. LOL I think she also meant process what happened before I decide not to go back.

I’m sorry I got so long. I like to write down my feelings as a cathartic way to process them. It’s why journaling works. Thanks for everyone’s support.

The clinic I consulted with today is checking my UMR coverage. They said I may need to try another class of depression medication for 8 weeks before insurance will cover Spravato.

I was on Pristiq for about 10 months. Around two months after starting it, I began having hyperthyroid symptoms—heart palpitations, lightheadedness, low energy, and feeling awful almost every day. They got worse over time, but stopped after I discontinued Pristiq. I don’t know if they were connected, but I’m not really interested in going back on it.

Has anyone gotten an exception or appeal approved? Any Chicago-area clinics that are good with insurance? Any advice or experiences are appreciated :)

This may sound like a dumb question. I had a vars plana vitrectomy to repair a detached retina on oct 7th. I had a gas bubble put in and my eye is blurry and will be for atleast several more weeks up to 2 months. I have severe depression and anxiety, hence the spravato treatment. Not being able to see out of my eye gives me additional anxiety. Im concerned about a bad trip due to not being able to see and panicking. While I can see out of my left eye, my eye gets tired and will get a little blurry now and then also. Close your right eye for as long as you can and imagine if you'd had to do treatment like that. I have some minor pain and itching with the healing and am not allowed to touch my eye. Obviously my first instinct is to rub it. If I have that urge to rub my eye, will I know not to while under the spravato treatment?

Just took my 1st dose of 4..

I’ve been in treatment for almost 2 years. After the first 6 months the sessions stopped feeling like much and I was back to baseline shortly after. Due to life I started experiencing bad insomnia months ago. Now my sessions are super intense again and the rest of my evening is done. Has anyone else experienced this? Don’t know why I didn’t think of the correlation between the two until now.