Heather Armstrong might be the valedictorian of being dead, but the words I’d use to describe her are courageous, indefatigable, and victorious.

In the midst of a severe depression, one in which no medication or therapy has been helpful, Ms. Armstrong stumbles into a clinical trial using propofol, an anesthetic drug, to induce a deep state of unconsciousness, literally one step from death., in an attempt to “restart “ her brain. It is interesting that this anesthetic agent was used in this trial, which apparently was never tried again (I could only find one scholarly article on the subject) given the current surge of research underway on using ketamine for treatment resistant depression, and just recently the FDA approved a ketamine treatment, when Ms. Armstrong’s experience occurred, this therapy was unheard of.

Every day for a period of weeks, her parents took her to the hospital for treatment. Her mother sat in the room with her and watched as her daughter almost died every day. I cannot imagine what this was like. She, too, deserves accolades for courage and love.

While the treatment took its toll on Ms. Armstrong in the process, eventually her depression lifted and she was able to rejoin the world that despite, for so long, she had barely hung on to it by her fingernails and relishes life.

This is a remarkable book. It gives hope to people with depression and is a profile in personal courage. for any reader. The book itself is very well written, and the people in Ms. Armstrong’s life deserve medals for standing by her and supporting her and taking care of her young son when she wasn’t able to. This is also a story of what unconditional love looks like.

I received this book as an ARC from the publisher and NetGalley, for which I am extraordinarily grateful.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but I enjoyed reading this. An interesting story with fun characters. Well written.

Another past-due NetGalley Read, another 4 star book. It was just so fascinating, and her dry-wit was fabulous. I think it is super important that Heather B. Armstrong wrote The Valedictorian of Being Dead. Her experiences with extremely severe depression and her journey through it and through an experimental treatment for it are worth reading whether you suffer from depression or not. It’s important to understand and accept mental health issues and to treat them just like one would treat any other health issue. This released on Tuesday, and I think it’s definitely worth the read.
Trigger warning: cussing, discussion of severe depression, suicide ideation and other related topics.

One of the classic signs of deep depression is the strong, intractable belief that, if you die, your loved ones will be much better off. Even if you can’t bring yourself to commit suicide because of family responsibilities, despair drives you to “pour the misery out of my body in howling electric waves” while hiding in a closet so your children can’t hear your screams.

Which is where Heather Armstrong found herself in 2017, when in the grip of a treatment-resistant depression, her psychiatrist suggested she join a study conducted by one of his colleagues. The experiment mimicked the effects of electroconvulsive therapy through the use of “the Michael Jackson drug,” the powerful anesthetic propofol, by flatlining a patient’s brain in ten sessions spread over several weeks.

Heather takes her readers through the nightmarish pits of despair, vividly illustrating why she was willing to risk her life to to undergo burst suppression — quieting the brain — for fifteen minutes. When her alarm went off every morning, the anxiety it sparked felt like flames covering her body. Showers were a shock, forcing her not big to go from wet to dry and warm to cold, but requiring energy she simply didn’t have.

Preparation for each treatment was painful — after 18 hours of fasting and no liquids, the staff struggled to force 22-gauge infusion needles into her dehydrated veins, a process Heather likened to electrocution — and traumatic for her parents, who watched in terror as the medical team rushed to intubate her after she succumbed to the propofol, since she could no longer breathe on her own. She experienced nightmarish backlash from supplemental medication used to counter the anesthetic’s side effects . But not quite halfway through the regimen, she realized she’d started doing things — showering, putting on pants without an elastic waist, applying mascara — that once seemed impossible, and on a Sunday afternoon, she experienced an breakthrough that indicated the treatment was working as promised.

Heather’s recollection of her journey is gripping, terrifying, and all too realistic for anyone who’s ever suffered severe, unrelenting depression. But there are also moments of levity, such as when waking after a session, she screamed “My mother married Satan, and when he’s here next time you’ll see exactly why she divorced him!” That particular demon, her father, remained unsympathetic to the reality of depression even as he watched his children fight it. But the love of her stepfather, Rob, who did the heavy lifting alongside her mother during the treatment, came into sharper view for Heather: “Now I also know the love of a father who loves me despite the endless differences between us, who dedicated himself to me, showed up and was present and understood and believed and held gently in his palm the silent, ticking moments as my lifeless body rested on that gurney … to drive me there and back home, each time, over and over.

Anyone who’s walked the pitch-black corridors of depression knows how hopeless and lonely the journey feels. But for Heather, the staff of the ECT clinic at the University of Utah, all of whom volunteered their time for the study, reached out to guide her into the sunlight of healing. As Dr. Brian Mickey, the lead physician of the study, told her during check-in one day, “You have so much to live for, and you deserve to feel that way.”

I very much enjoyed reading this personal account of a new experimental treatment for treatment-resistant depression. I would like to know the other data regarding the effectiveness of this treatment in other individuals.

Remember dooce.com? The LA party girl blogger turned mommy blogger turned blogging industry? I followed her for years, mostly writing about parenting and her struggles with mental illness. She's a really good writer, and I enjoyed the blog a lot.

Her name is Heather Armstrong and her new book is called The Valedictorian of Being Dead. It's about an experimental treatment for depression that she underwent--experimental as in she was patient #3 in the trial--after an 18-month depressive episode that nothing else could touch.

It's really hard for me to review this book apart from my feelings about Heather herself--isn't that always the case with a memoir? I have fairly strong opinions about her work, and it's kind of hard not to have strong opinions about her life, too, when you've read years and years of detailed accounts about it.

One of the pivot points of my reaction to dooce is the idea of honesty, straightforwardness, and self awareness in a personal blog. Just because you write a blog about your life doesn't mean you owe your readers any particular details. I don't have any right to know more about the facts that fall in the gaps I see in her storytelling, the places where I want more detail. I want it, but I'm not entitled to it, and I know that.

But am I entitled to the truth about the parts she does write about? Nobody promised me nonfiction, did they? And then again, what is "the truth" when you're telling your life story? There are plenty of stories I tell myself and mostly believe until I don't and I realize they were never true.

Take the divorce. That's about when I stopped reading the blog; that's about when I realized that the people I thought I was reading about were personas. (It's reality TV. No one believes reality TV, right?) I don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure that pictures of her on a date with someone else (selfies, not any kind of blogger-paparazzi shots) showed up on her Instagram just a couple of days after the separation was announced. What that said to me was either a) cheating, or b) a long-term rift that there had been no hint of in the storytelling. To the point where, in my memory, there was a "my husband is the best husband" blog posts fairly current before the split was announced.

The specter of her ex-husband, Jon, hangs over the book. He doesn't appear, having moved to New York since the split, but one of the driving factors in the book is her fear that if he finds out about the severity of her depression, he'll take the kids away.

I have complicated feelings about that, too. She spent 18 months very, very depressed. Hiding in the closing crying on the phone to her mother about wanting to be dead. Weeping and leaving the room because the fight to make her daughter practice piano was too much. I have felt this--the tyranny of the neverending list of things that need to be done that she describes so, so poignantly. Her ability to explain the feelings of depression is amazing.

But also, maybe she wasn't doing her kids any favors by plowing through this? Not that her ex was the solution--he appears to be a "two weeks in summer and one holiday a year" kind of parent, which, eugh. Who is that guy, and who was the guy I knew on the blog? So no, I don't necessarily think he should have taken her kids. But maybe someone should have been looking at whether they were okay through this?

Ugh, I don't want to dump on her. I really don't; this is a great, interesting memoir of this particular treatment, and it does an excellent job with almost everything it's trying to do--her relationship with her mother and stepfather, her father and her siblings, the family history of mental illness, the experience of the treatment, the nature of her depression, all incredibly well-painted.

I guess it's more that I don't entirely trust her to be an authentic reporter of her own life. Whether it's for reality TV reasons (in service of the story), or for standard memoir reasons (to protect the real people who are out there in the world living this life), or because her tragic flaw is the need to be the valedictorian of everything, including memoirs, and so everything is cured and sewed up into a neat little package--when I read her book, I am very aware of everything that must be there but is not being said.

One thing that gave me pleasure, though, was how, as the treatment starts to work and she starts to reconstruct her life, she realizes that she has to build it in such a way as to not trigger her anxiety. This is something I have learned myself in the past few years--that part of keeping myself emotionally healthy and strong is to build a life that does not press on the places where I am weakest. There are things that are harder for me than they are for other people--it is not weakness to work around those things instead of trying to do them anyway because I "should." Having a job that you can do competently without getting panic attacks is more important than having a prestigious job; I've learned that, and I am only, endlessly glad that Heather did, too.

I guess that's the other part of reading this book, the good part. In spite of my doubts about whether I'm getting a whole and accurate picture of this person's life, the story she is telling--her suffering, her family's support, her hope--all resonated with me, and I was rooting for her all the way.

Missed you, dooce. Best of luck with everything.

This book was informative.. In think many that know someone with depression should read it..i don't known that I have areas around me that do it but if u do this great in sight to be followed up on

A valiant effort chronicling a devastating illness, I feel for Armstrong and the strength it must have taken to face her demons head on via 10 experimental treatments despite scary complications. Gutsy as heck and her family support was unwavering and amazing.

*will post in additional online venues upon publication.

Heather B. Armstrong, best known as Dooce, has written about her struggle with depression for years. In the midst of an 18-month bout, she agrees to participate in a trial treatment that involves flatlining her brain ten times.

I’ve been reading Armstrong’s writing for over a decade now, and this book still blew me away. No one else is able to so sharply illustrate what it’s like inside your head when you’re depressed. I could not highlight passages fast enough - I kept reading bits out loud to my partner, in awe of how it seemed like Armstrong had transcribed my own thoughts and feelings.

She lays out all the ways your own brain is inescapable when you’re dealing with depression and anxiety. How could you possibly shower when the water hurts your skin? How could you possibly fold one more piece of laundry? And maybe worst of all, how could you possibly burden anyone with helping you? And, not to get spoilery, but she also captures what it’s like to come out the other side and how in a matter of days you can wonder how you possibly could have thought you were down such a dark hole. Lest you think this book is a total downer, Armstrong’s usual lightning quick sense of humor is still present - it’s cliche to say I laughed and then I cried, but it’s true.

If you’ve ever wanted to understand a loved one who is dealing with depression, read this book. It’s hard to believe a book about dying ten times can give you hope, but this is the case for THE VALEDICTORIAN OF BEING DEAD.

There is one thing I know about myself and it is that I am no nurse. I am fascinated by books with a medical setting, the more accurate the better, but throw in a patient requiring care, and I lose all interest.
This true tale of an experimental treatment to pull patients from the abyss of chronic, terminal depression sounded promising until the narrator/.author let it all hang out and gave us page after page of every one of her appalling symptoms.
There is definitely a need for books like this, especially among victims of depression and their families, but I do not count myself among them, and for this I am very grateful.

3.5 stars

Heather B. Armstrong is a popular 'mommy blogger' who uses her website 'Dooce' to share posts about her family, personal life, pop culture, music, commercial products, and so on. Over the years Heather also wrote about her struggle with depression, which became more serious over time. By 2016 Heather had been suffering from an eighteen-month-long bout of a depression so deep that she wanted to be dead. Heather would wear the same yoga pants, sports bra, and T-shirt for days in a row, with her unshowered body topped by dirty hair. Feeling her normally trim body was out of shape, Heather writes: "I slept in my yoga pants because I didn't want to have to change my pants and see my alien body."

At the time Heather fell into the abyss, she'd been living in Salt Lake City, Utah for most of her life and was raising her two daughters Leta (13) and Marlo (7) alone.

Heather's ex-husband Jon had moved to New York, and she was desperate to keep her depressive condition from him, fearing he'd demand custody of the children. Instead Heather would hide in a closet and call her mother, who lived nearby. Hoping the children couldn't hear, Heath would let loose, sometimes "making noises like a pig makes in a barn fire" and sometimes moaning "I don't want to be alive."

Heather could hardly bring herself to do laundry or unload the dishwater; got anxious when her boss emailed or called, knowing he'd want something completed; and was amazed that she could perform her 'mommy' job from day to day, which she describes as: "Make sure the girls have eaten; make sure they're showered and dressed; make sure they have their homework; is Marlo wearing socks? make sure to let the dog back in; make sure we have Cheerios for the next two breakfasts; make sure Leta has taken a pill for her allergies; make sure Leta has asked her friend for a ride to school tomorrow, since the other carpool just cancelled......and so on. Morning after morning after morning. And then again. And then again." Heather felt like she was barely hanging on.

Heather's psychiatrist, Dr. Lowry Bushnell, had prescribed many medications over the years, but her illness had become resistant to drugs - and pharmaceuticals no longer helped. When Heather visited Dr. Bushnell after a nine-month lapse, he looked at her and said "You don't have to tell me [how you feel]. It's all over your face. It has stolen your eyes." The psychiatrist then suggested that Heather participate in an experimental study with Dr. Brian Mickey, who was investigating the use of Propofol (the anesthetic that killed Michael Jackson) to treat depression.

With this treatment, the patient is put to sleep - that is put into a REALLY DEEP INDUCED COMA (simulating brain death) - about three times a week for ten sessions. The purpose is to find out if "burst suppression" - quieting the brain's electrical activity - can alleviate the symptoms of depression.....sort of like rebooting a computer. Heather agreed to the Propofol regimen and this book describes each of her ten treatments, interspersed with anecdotes about herself, her children, her parents, her job, and more.

Heather's mother and stepfather stepped up to accompany her to each session, while her children - who didn't know exactly what was going on - quietly hoped for the best. Heather had to forego food and water prior to every therapy session, each of which went something like this: Heather arrives at the clinic; fills out a form assessing her level of depression; tells a nurse what drugs she's taking; has a 22-gauge needle inserted into her vein; lays down on a gurney; has sensors attached to her body; and passes out when a doctor starts the Propofol (plus other meds) drip. The medical team then inserts a breathing tube into Heather's throat, which is removed at the end of the session. When it's over, Heather is transported to a recovery room, where she wakes up confused and thirsty. A nurse then gives her apple juice and assesses her condition. When Heather demonstrates that she's compos mentis (knows her name and the year), she's allowed to go home with her folks.

Heather's mother and stepfather watched every procedure from beginning to end, her mom keeping an eagle eye on everything and everyone, making sure Heather's eyes were taped shut and substances that constipated her were left out (to Heather's eternal embarrassment).🙂

Heather notes that she started to feel better after treatment five.....and was on an upward trajectory from then on.

In the course of Heather's story we learn that she comes from a family plagued by depression; she left the Mormon Church; her biological father has an anger problem and traumatized her as a child (I would have liked to know more about this); her mother is an angel who helps with laundry, meals, babysitting.....whatever's needed; her kids have a full roster of activities, including school, piano lessons, and sports; she helped a blind man run a marathon; she wouldn't mind having a nice boyfriend who has a job; and she's eternally grateful to the medical team that treated her, all of whom volunteered their time and were immensely caring and helpful.

In an afterward, Dr. Brian Mickey, MD, PhD, writes that tens of millions of people around the world have treatment-resistant depression, and "this situation has inspired scientists like myself to search for new treatments." Dr. Mickey goes on to say "The study Heather participated in could be the beginning of something new. But the true benefits of Propofol for treatment-resistant depression remain unknown. Much work still needs to be done."

So far Heather continues to do well. With luck, she'll be a long term success story.

I found the story to be a bit repetitive (all those treatments) and would have liked to know more about Heather's upbringing. Nevertheless, the book is laudable for explaining a therapy that (eventually) might help a lot of people.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author (Heather B. Armstrong), and the publisher (Gallery Books) for a copy of the book.

I was not familiar with the author before reading this book, but I now feel like I can truly relate to Heather B. Armstrong, even though the details of our lives are very different. She vividly describes severe depression in a way that allowed me to viscerally experience what that can be like. I loved her sense of humor, sympathized with her desire to be the valedictorian of whatever she is doing, and found myself cheering her improvements. I found this to be a touching and compelling story. I laughed, I cried, I questioned my life choices.

It was also interesting to learn about the study she participated in. This book demonstrates the importance of getting treatment for depression and offers hope to those who have not yet found a treatment that works.

I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to better understand depression, or those who enjoy reading memoirs.

Thanks to Gallery Books for providing me with an ARC through NetGalley that I volunteered to review.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Blogger Heather B. Armstrong shares an intensely personal telling of her struggle with depression and an experimental treatment to stop it.

In “Valedictorian of Being Dead” Heather shares in very personal language how she has struggled for years with depression, not so much as the misconception of just feeling blue, but how her brain is trying to convince her that all the people in her life would be better off if she were simply no longer here.

As a single mother and a deeply logical person, she understands that she shouldn’t be listening to that part of her brain, and decides to undergo an experimental treatment to help “reset” the part of her that is denying any enjoyment of life.

The treatment is multiple sessions of a deep sedation that emulates brain death for several minutes. She’s monitored to see that there is no brain activity (to the point where she requires machines to breathe for her), and then brought out and quizzed on simple questions (like her name and the year) to ensure there were no ill effects of the session.

Humorously, she always seems to initially fixate on a year when she would have been a young child, but quickly comes around as she regains her senses.

The book also tells of how her treatments and their risks weigh on her family, mostly with her supportive mother and stepfather. One really gets the feeling that they also feel the struggle that she’s going through.

The test program she took part in was being given to ten people, and results were promising as a possibility for others in the future, but not necessarily a cure for all. But for her and her family, it makes all the difference.

I've loved Heather Armstrong's writing for many years but didn't realize how deeply she struggled with crippling depression. What a gift this book is to anyone who feels hopeless in their day-to-day battles with mental illness and what a gift this treatment was for Heather. This book was a fascinating read from page 1. It follows her experience with a groundbreaking treatment that rendered her nearly brain dead 10 times in three weeks as an alternative to shock therapy. True to her writing style, it's the dark humor that keeps the reader on their toes with each page. Would definitely recommend for anyone interested in mental health.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What a powerful, brave, and truly unique memoir! Heather B. Armstrong has masterfully written about a journey no one has written about before, and her story holds true value for any reader affected by depression. As a mental health advocate, I strongly recommend Heather's harrowing but ultimately inspiring book.

Heather Armstrong has done an outstanding job of inviting us into the world of the chronically depressed and shared with us the hopelessness that is generally experienced by individuals plagued with this illness. She is by trade a blog designer and writer so as you might imagine, her message delivery is captivating. She introduces us to her family, both immediate and extended. For me, her mother is the heroin in this story. Unconditionally always being there, never outwardly flustered and always having the right supporting things to say (except for that once). Thank you Heather for sharing your journey. I wish Heather well and am glad she has had success in her journey.

So why the three stars and not 4 or 5? For one... there was a lot of redundancy in her journey. Two....The medical portion where she dwells on the fact over and over as to how horrifyingly LARGE the 22 gauge needle was that delivers the Propofal. Okay so here is the scoop people, when you donate blood the needle is about a 16 gauge needle. The needle gets smaller as the degree gets larger. So a 22 gauge needle is significantly smaller than what you experience when you donate blood. Three.... Thousands and thousands of people are put under anesthesia daily. She makes her point over and over and over about the speed and time limitations that the staff has to get a breathing tube down her throat once she goes under for her 15 minutes. Seriously??? Isn't this routinely done? I don't mean to minimize her journey or what she endured to get well, but honestly I found the procedural portion of her story way overdone.

As she walks us through each individual treatment numbers 1-10, I couldn't wait to be DONE with number 10. Other than which family members joined her to experience her being anesthetized, it was the same routine over and over and the reader has to sit tight for the 10 repeated experiences. Honestly why you would want to subject family members to this is beyond me. I wouldn't drag my family in to watch me have a baby so they can appreciate what I've just gone through. (In all fairness, it was her mother that was inviting the family to witness the procedure and thought there would be some benefit). You get my point. A good read, rating 3.

Heather Armstrong is a famous blogger. She has married, had two daughters, gotten a divorce and become a full-time single mom. What her blog readers might not know is that she has suffered from depression her whole life. Heather decides to take part in a risky venture whereas doctors give her an anesthetic and takes her so deep she actually is almost dead, then bring her back. The study/testing is a variation of ECT, electric convulsive therapy. Heather was one of the first people to engage in this trial and it worked for her. She has her life back. This book was typical Heather Armstrong. She is irreverent, funny and profane. Loved the book!

Imagine being so depressed that the only thing you can picture is just being dead. Life goes on, and you complete your daily tasks, but the constant desire to be dead is there all the time. Blogger Heather B. Armstrong faced just this type of life until her doctors offered her a choice; continue on the way she was, or experience a new therapy that literally would force her into a deep brain-pausing coma for a few minutes as kind of a reset. You read that right. The doctors offered an experimental treatment where a concoction of well known medications would briefly cause Heather's brain to turn off and then back on like a computer for a total of ten separate treatments. The Valedictorian of Being Dead sounds like something out of a futuristic novel, but it isn't. Heather Armstrong's candid autobiography of her experiences with extreme depression and anxiety is often a combination of dark humor and terror as she faces her treatments and the terrifying fear of what will happen if they don't work. The story is certainly not an easy beach read, and some readers may find her descriptions too much to deal with. For readers who have that fun depression and anxiety combo, prepare to feel a sense of kinship and understanding as Armstrong chronicles the treatments, therapy, and medications that didn't solve the problem up until this point. Armstrong's candor and bravery in her writing help fight against the stigma of mental health. The Valedictorian of Being Dead is available April 23, 2019.

Memoir consists of two things: the strength of the story being told, and the strength of the book.

This memoir is very compelling because it concerns a topic we all know, some of us too well: depression. Considered the "common cold of mental health," almost everyone has experienced it. Yet in some it becomes so entrenched and treatment resistant that it endangers the life of the sufferer. This was the case for Heather B. Armstrong, leading her to try an experimental treatment involving being very deeply anesthetized, 10 times.

The book, however, is not strong. Armstrong does not take the time at the outset to introduce herself in any compelling way to her reader; perhaps she is writing more to her blog followers than to new readers such as myself. She is also wildly inaccurate in her description of her IV placements before each treatment, describing the 22 gauge needle as enormous (not the case, this needle is much smaller than those used in blood donation), and the medical professionals placing the needles as phlebotomists (we phlebotomists draw blood but do not place IVs. Ever.). She lost all credibility with me here.

The strongest part of her narrative is her description of what it is like to be depressed, and this may appeal to those readers who are in relationship to a depressed individual and wish to better understand the hopelessness, lethargy, parenting lapses and poor hygiene that she describes.

With thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I loved this. I don't have much else to say so I'm going to repeat myself. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this. I loved this.