3,000 Pulses Later

Not only is 3,000 Pulses Later a testament to Rhodes’s own experience with TMS, it also provides information and guidance to anyone who is considering TMS, is in the TMS treatment process, or has completed TMS therapy.

Rhodes’s broader message is meant to create more awareness of the dangers of undiagnosed and untreated Treatment Resistant Depression; that depression is a medical, oftentimes chronic illness; and that patients must find the therapy that works for them.

While Rhodes urges patients to “own” their illness and responsibly attend to it with whatever therapy relieves their symptoms—alternative or mainstream—the book offers readers an understanding of what it’s like to go through TMS therapy and how effective it has been in the author’s life.

3,000 Pulses Later, now in its 8th printing with over 20,000 copies in circulation, has been cited in The New York Times (online and print), Psychology Today (online), and U.S. News & World Report. Rhodes has appeared on ABC-TV, NBC-TV, The Daily BUZZ TV, Fox News TV, and Sirrius Radio. She has written articles about treatment resistant depression and TMS for online and offline media such as CNN.com, The Saturday Evening Post (online), HealthyWomen.org and TMS Neuro Health Centers.

Reviews from Doctors and TMS Educators

“This is a remarkably written story about a powerful and energetic woman, laid low by a depression that would not respond to medications or talk therapy. Luckily she was able to receive a new treatment called TMS and get her life back. A must read for anyone with depression, or their loved ones.”

“Compelling and accurate description of the TMS experience written by a successful advertising executive with treatment resistant depression. Should be required reading for all TMS psychiatrists and technicians. Extremely valuable for TMS patients—highly recommended.”

“Deserves 5 stars and more! 3,000 Pulses Later is my #1 recommendation for anyone who suffers from depression—and the family and friends who walk through the journey with them. A must read.”

“This important and timely book opens up discussion about treatment resistant depression and how brain stimulation is changing the landscape of psychiatric practice. It is a story of how true heroes can transform profound human suffering into powerful authenticity and advocacy!”

“Couldn’t put it down! It is a gripping and suspenseful tale–honest, painfully descriptive–but with humor and spirit. Readers will immediately know which of their friends will want to read 3,000 Pulses Later next. I have a list of those who wish to be next.”

Reviews from Readers

“Heroic, courageous, and stunning story of surviving Rhodes has crafted a book of enormous value to anyone who has battled depression. Her choice of treatment and recovery sends a beacon of hope and her book fills a void in the literature on this subject. A moving, well researched, and sincere “must read.”

“If you or someone close to you has depression, GET THIS BOOK! TMS-the treatment that finally did what antidepressants couldn’t-may very well be the best thing that’s happened in the world of mental illness. Martha Rhodes is helping to lead the way to put a much-needed spotlight on this long-ignored, real biological disease.”

An Excerpt from 3,000 Pulses Later

It was the easiest decision I ever made. Easier than choosing a nail polish color. Like rolling off a log. A simple cry of “Uncle” and it’s done. Pour the vodka, open the amber bottle, and fill the left hand with the thirty little white pills. Open the mouth, shove them all in, and send them on their way down the gullet with the potent liquid. No thoughts. No worries. Feeling absolutely nothing.

Done, done, and done.

Although I took antidepressants religiously and repeatedly questioned my doctors as to their declining effect, psychotropic medications have taken me down an untenable path of confusion and failure, one that has driven me to examine where I went on February 25, 2009. That’s the date I downed an entire bottle of Xanax, along with the help of excessive pours of wine and vodka, and all with the hope of ending what appeared to be a perfect life.

Twenty years earlier …

I wait alone on the dark corner of 79th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in New York City. I nudge my coat’s collar to my cheeks, wondering if the cross- town bus will arrive before the cold March wind proves it the loser in the battle to keep me warm. A mental switch flips itself on, and suddenly I viscerally experience myself as if I am standing next to myself, feeling at once the actor and an audience member in the same movie. As the bus approaches, I envision meeting its front end head-on with a full body block. I stand frozen in my own private scene: the performer waiting for my cue to jump—the observer wondering if I actually will.

I cut to reality. The bus door flips open. In robotic motion, I ascend the steps, deposit the fare, and drop my heavy body into the nearest empty seat. We head across Central Park toward a friend’s apartment where I will spend the night alone, minding her cat.

That was the early 1990s. Despite my rising career in New York City advertising at that time, I had been sinking into an emotional pit for several years as I simultaneously worked a full- time job and raised our two young children with my husband, John. The frighteningly real bus stop fantasy, and the palpable feelings behind it, haunted me for weeks. A group of supportive friends with whom I shared the troubling scenario suggested I seek the help of a psychiatrist, who in turn diagnosed me with clinical depression and recommended an antidepressant medication. The subsequent first prescription of Zoloft aided and abetted my ability to regain a mental footing and fortified an emotional façade from my early forties throughout the following two decades.

Although I was glad to have relief from the strain of trying to keep it all together, the drug prescribed for me presented side effects that, at the time, seemed a small price to pay for my loftier goal of being alright in the eyes of the world. Initially, it assuaged my dark thoughts and laid an armored cloak over the deepening hopelessness, replacing it with a comfortable, impenetrable numbness. I became lulled into a false sense of being cured by the drug, strengthened by a misguided belief that all I had to do to sustain my mental health was remember to take the prescribed daily happy pill.

I grew from a sassy Size 8 to an unrecognizable Size 16— one of the medication’s many side effects. That fact only served to exacerbate my depression, lowering my self-esteem and obliterating any desire to maintain sexual intimacy in my marriage. The day I found myself relegated to the Women’s clothing racks, shuffling through sizes 1X, 2X, and 3X, only confirmed that I was no longer the former Miss Connecticut beauty pageant contestant with all the tricks of the beauty trade in my svelte hip pocket. I viewed the person in the dressing room mirror as a total stranger, disgusted with what peered back at me, longing for my former self, yet knowing in my heart she was gone forever. “Is this what happens when the girl becomes the woman?” I disdainfully asked myself. “Are we expected to leave our pretty selves behind in order to move forward in the process of living?”

With the added physical girth and lonely detachment from a once-healthy marital relationship, my energy and lust for life waned proportionately. Nothing made sense to me—not physically, mentally, or emotionally. Life’s ultimatums boiled down to this: if I didn’t take the antidepressant medication, I would not be able to hold down a job. I would fail my children and lose my marriage. I would not survive. Heavy body, heavy thoughts, heavy heart.

Had I been warned of the drug’s hideous side effects, I might have chosen to not take it, but on the other hand, I really had no choice. By the time I awoke to the fact that Zoloft made me fat, I also knew it kept me on an even keel and I was too scared to try to live without it. My Catholic mother’s classic recommendation for any of life’s difficulties resurfaced: “Just offer it up for the souls in Purgatory, Martha.” I wondered if the souls in Purgatory felt as depressed as I did here on Earth, and if they’d ever pray for me if the shoe were on the other foot. Nevertheless, tolerating several other antidepressants’ side effects became my own personal cross to bear. The numbness the medications induced served to replace any normal emotions, making it easier to cope with life’s problems, but in the bargain, they left me passionless. Eventually the drugs became ineffective, and unbeknownst to my primary care physician and myself, I tumbled down the treacherous rabbit hole.

The reality of my attempted suicide will never elude me. I live a guarded existence fully aware of how easy it was to step over life’s edge. I continue to ask myself the obvious, unrelenting questions that demand answers in order for me to go on living. How did I, a successful, ostensibly stable person, get so far away from a good life? Where did I go that February night in 2009? How did I even get there? How could I find my way back? Would I ever really get back to where I was—and did I even want to rejoin that place? And most important, because of my history with depression and how antidepressants affected me, was I ever really here in the first place?