Day of treatment one

Today is treatment one. The scheduling has been shifted a couple of times. Now I'm not scheduled until 3:30. For the procedure, a general barbituate anethesia is administered to put me to sleep. This means, of course, that I cannot eat or drink anything after midnight of the previous night. With an expected 2 hour recovery and then time to get some food, that's going to be 18 hours or so without food. I'm a big guy. I have a big, gas guzzling engine. 18 hours is a long damned time. Its 12:00 and I'm starving already. After the anethesia, a paralitic is adminstrered to prevent muscle contraction. This agent prevents active physical convulsion during treatment. The procedure uses a cuff on one ankle, restricting the flow of the paralitic to one foot, to allow contraction in that foot. A twitch of one toe is used to indicate convulsion. Today is a "tritration", which means that the procedure will begin at the lowest electrical stimulation. The docs will increase the stimulation slowly until seizure is produced, hold for 1 second, and then stop the stimilation. The next and subsequent treatments are dosed at 6 times the threshhold stimulation noted today. I was told to expect about 2 hours in recovery before going home.