Heather B. Armstrong was never a mommy blogger who presented an idyllic picture of parenthood. Her Dooce.com — which began in 2001 — is full of candid posts about her postpartum depression, divorce and struggles as a single mother.
But in 2016, Armstrong reached a nadir: She woke up every day wishing she were dead.
“I had this demon in my head saying, ‘You’re never going to feel better,’ ” the 43-year-old told The Post.
So she decided to take part in a clinical trial that would temporarily leave her brain-dead — 10 times.
That experience is the subject of her book “The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times in Order to Live,” out Tuesday. In it, Armstrong details her brutal 18 months of treatment-resistant depression, as well as the medical experiment, in which doctors used propofol anesthesia to flatline her brain activity for 15 minutes.
Armstrong, a Salt Lake City resident, has suffered depression since high school and had her first nervous breakdown while at Brigham Young University. After she gave birth to her daughter Leta 15 years ago, she checked herself into a psych ward for postpartum depression. (She also has daughter Marlo, 9.)
Yet the 18 months before she began the clinical trial were the worst she had ever experienced. It started in 2015, when she signed up to run a marathon. The intense training proved too much, with travels, work and family. Armstrong felt so overwhelmed that she stopped showering and brushing her hair. She also stopped taking her medications, which weren’t working.
“I just sort of got into a hole that got deeper and deeper and deeper,” Armstrong said.
Her psychiatrist told her of a study for treatment-resistant depression: Ten sessions in which doctors would take her brain activity down to zero. She would be only the third person to try it (the risk of death, she said, was about 1 in 10,000).
Armstrong wasn’t scared. In fact, she felt hopeful.
“If it means I don’t have to feel this way through the rest of my life, let’s maybe do it?” she thought.
The treatment is meant to replicate the benefits of electroconvulsive therapy, which shocks the brain into a seizure, causing it to flatline. (Armstrong likened it to rebooting a computer.)
Although ECT has a 75 percent success rate, side effects include long-term memory loss. (Actress Carrie Fisher, a proponent, spoke of this happening to her after the treatment).
According to Scott Tadler, the lead anesthesiologist in Armstrong’s trial, scientists wanted to avoid that — and wondered if it was not the electrical shock but the period after the seizure, when the brain was quiet, that made patients feel better.
“It turns out anesthesia can induce that state without [the patient] having to have a seizure,” he said.
Armstrong was injected with a mix of propofol and fentanyl (to help with resulting headaches). Doctors kept her brain activity all the way down for 15 to 18 minutes, though often it would take her some 90 minutes to stir from the coma.
At first, Armstrong feared it was a bust: She suffered nausea, migraines and constipation. But little by little, she noticed shifts in her behavior.
“It was after the second treatment when I suddenly realized, ‘Oh, I showered without even thinking about it!’ ” she said. “After the third treatment … I started doing my hair and wearing cleaner clothes.”
And then, after the fifth treatment, “I was sitting outside watching my kids playing, and I actually felt happy,” Armstrong said.
She decided to relaunch Dooce.com, which she had been writing for only sporadically since 2015. (At the site’s peak, around 2011, she had some 100,000 visitors a day and, The New York Times reported, she was earning $30,000 to $50,000 a month from it. During her hiatus, she supported her family by managing communications for a nonprofit.)
“I know [blogging] has contributed to bouts of sadness throughout the years,” she said, adding that it was difficult dealing with critics who trolled her parenting style. “But the outpouring of people saying ‘thank you so much for talking about this’ far outweighs the criticism.”
Two years after completing the study, “I’m better than ever,” Armstrong said. She has found a cocktail of antidepressant medications that work, as well as a supportive partner. And after dying 10 times, Armstrong hasn’t since wished she were actually dead.
“Life is just as chaotic as it’s ever been, but I’m handling it way better,” she said.
Heather will be speaking and signing copies of her book on April 24 at 6pm at Barnes & Noble in Tribeca (97 Warren Street).