September 2025 Amy Stacey Curtis

Content Warning: Suicidal Ideation

A switch flipped in my brain. One moment I was thinking about which movie to watch, and the next, I was seeing in my head, horrific moving images of me ending my life, over and over. I couldn’t flip the switch back, not to movie ideas, not to anything else, and I couldn’t make the frightening pictures stop. I’d known how it felt to want to end my life in the past, but this felt completely different. I told doctor after doctor that I had no interest in dying, that I was loving my life, and that I thought something was physically wrong with my brain.

After two psychiatric ward stays and months of incorrect diagnoses, I lost all control of my body. The muscles in my face, neck, shoulders, arms, and legs, were doing their own thing, regardless of how I wanted to move them. I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t walk. I started to feel cut off and no one knew what to do. Me, I didn’t care as much about my flailing arms, bobbing head, and curled lips. I just wanted the pictures of my death to stop playing.

A Facebook friend sent an article about how brain inflammation can cause suicidal ideation. I showed the article to my primary care physician and asked how we could determine whether ornot I had inflammation in my brain. As a test, she prescribed an over-the-counter anti-
inflammatory drug for two weeks at the safest largest dosage. During the trial, the images were less vivid, more toward the back of my mind. I also regained some control of my muscles, and experienced hours of normal speech. I couldn’t stay on the drug beyond the two-week test as it would cause liver damage.

As soon as the drug left my system, the images re-entered the foreground, and I again lost my muscle control and speech. My primary care physician referred me to a neurologist, hopeful. All tests were negative: the electroencephalogram (EEG), the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), even the spinal tap. The neurologist saw the inflammation, but didn’t think the numbers were large enough to “warrant concern.”

Soon, there was a front-page story published about what was happening to me. Hundreds of readers sent emails, letters, and texts, with prayers, suggestions, diagnoses, and contacts. Some sent their own resonant stories about going through mental illness, sometimes sharing these stories for the first time. Following a reader-suggested lead, I met with a naturopath to look deeper into the elevated inflammation levels. My naturopath suspected brain inflammation, and he explained that brain inflammation can be caused by many different things, viral infections, bacteria, fungi, toxins, even diet.

After testing, he found that I had had Lyme Disease, potentially years before. He explained that when Lyme disease isn’t treated enough or at all, it can eventually cause “parkinsonism,” walking disorders, facial palsy/paralysis, speech difficulty, and dystonia (the word for how my arms and wrists were curling in on themselves), as well as psychiatric problems like major depressive disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, even psychosis. Other symptoms he mentioned to which I could relate: extreme fatigue, neck stiffness, muscle twitching, numbness, poor balance, increased sensitivity to light and sound, and seizure activity, He said, “You essentially have a brain injury I’m confident you can recover from.”

I could finally give this horrific thing a name! The naturopath suggested an anti-inflammatory
diet and prescribed supplements to reduce inflammation and strengthen brain function. Five
months into the naturopath’s treatment, I saw big improvements in my energy levels and muscle control. But in places where my brain was extra-stimulated (hospital lobbies, grocery stores, crowded rooms), I still had no control. My naturopath explained that all the symptoms would likely go away in reverse order. This meant my psychosis would probably be the last thing to go away. If it took a lot longer to gain control of my body, I was fine with that. But by now these horrific images had played 24 hours a day for 20 months.

I asked my assigned psychiatrist to give me a referral for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). After 16 ECT treatments, for the first time in almost two years, I could see something in my mind other than my suicide. A little over two years after starting this treatment, the images were finally gone. Once I started getting my mind back, I concentrated on my body.

Over the course of another two years, I graduated from wheelchair to walker to cane, back to my feet. But I was still struggling with dystonia and speech impairment. This is when I intuited to learn to play an instrument. If I did something daily which required multiple tasks at the same (strumming, fingering and finding chords, reading music, and singing), would I make new neuropathways? Within a week of playing the ukulele, I was capable of perfect speech and relaxed dystonia, all the time, unless overstimulated.

For over three years, I have learned five songs a week as a self-prescribed occupational therapy. When I play in front of people, it is like uber occupational therapy. Sharing this music in public and on social media also gives me ways to share my story, which might help someone else, just as people have helped me.