Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Day to Day covers Ray Sandford's ect

From Minn. NPR:

St. Paul, Minn. -- Ray Sandford has been getting electro-convulsive

treatment, also known as electroshock and ECT, since the end of May.

For Ray, the process works like this. Every week or two he is taken

to a hospital, where a medical technician attaches electrodes to his

head and delivers electrical current into his brain. The current

causes a seizure.



For reasons that doctors still don't quite understand, some patients

with severe depression or mania get better after having ECT.



But the potential benefits don't matter to Ray. He says he dreads the

shocks and wants them to stop.



"It's scary as hell," he said.



Ray is 54 years old, with a receding hairline and a salt-and-pepper

beard. He walks with a cane and his hands shake slightly, a side

effect from some of the medication he's taking, he says.

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