I have been encouraged by the response to my little stories and character sketches inspired by my stay in the hospital.  In the last week, I have been able to write 8 or 9 more, in preparation for collecting them in book form.  While I don’t expect to publish any more of them here in their entirety, I thought I would give you a taste of what awaits when the book comes out.

Charlie’s Story

            It was sometimes hard to tell the patients from the staff on the psych ward.  The techs were encouraged to dress in street clothes rather than scrubs, and to do their best to fit in with the community; so clothing was not always a clue.  The first night I was there, I was convinced that one of the patients was a tech, and that one of the techs was a patient.  There was also a visitor that I thought was a patient, but then again she probably should have been, so she doesn’t count.

            Some of the others you couldn’t miss.  There were the ladies that shuffled around the ward in hospital gowns and robes.  There was the elderly man with a walker, who wouldn’t speak or even look up when spoken to.  There were the patients who would stand too close and speak too loudly and tell too much of their stories to strangers.  There was one young man who wandered the halls in a daze, day and night.  And then there were the Charles Mansons.

            There were three “Charlies” on our ward.  These were men who had neglected their own physical well-being.  Painfully thin, they looked like they had not eaten in a month or two, and their piercing eyes made you wonder what—or who—they might be hungry for.  With long uncombed hair and bushy beards, they tended to stare at anyone who came near.  One moved a chair into the hall near the nurses’ station, and sat cracking his knuckles and intimidating the visitors (and some of the patients).

            I got to know one of the Charlies as our circumstances drew us together throughout the day.  Though frightening in appearance, he was one of the gentlest and most tragic figures I have ever met.  And his name really was Charlie.

            At 6’4”, he towered over all the other members of the community.  He couldn’t have weighed more than 180 lbs. (160 without the hair and beard), though he told me that just months earlier he had been over 300.  He lay in bed all day and all night, his feet hanging over the edge, and his eyes watching the hall through the doorway.  He said he slept, but if he did, it must have been so lightly that the slightest sound or movement would awaken him.  He told me that he had slept away the past 9 months of his life, and that he might sleep away the rest of it.—he had nothing to wake up for.  I took that remark as an invitation to ask him his story.

            Oh—before I forget—he wore a red union suit.  You know the kind; the one-piece long underwear with the drop-flap in the back?  That’s what he wore, in slightly faded but still devilish red; and that’s all he wore, regardless of how often the techs would bring him other clothes to substitute or put on over his own.  One day he wore a shirt to attend dinner, but I never saw him with pants or shoes.  At least he kept the flap buttoned up.

Interested? I’ll let you know when the full version is available.  Sorry, Beth–you’ll have to wait a little longer for Charlie to tell his tale!

This is another in the series of fictionalized accounts inspired by people and situations I encountered during my stay in the hospital.

Maureen’s Story

As I was becoming acquainted with the members of the community on the ward, I saw Maureen.  To be honest, I thought that she was a tech the first time I saw her.  She was sitting in the activity room reading, and each time Eva or Gwen had a question or problem, they looked to her for help, and she responded in a calm and comforting voice.  When she got up, she carried herself with the confidence of a professional, and when Eddy need a translator, she stepped in and told the nurse what he was saying.  But, at the same time, there was something about her…

The next morning we met again in community meeting, and she volunteered to go first in listing her goals for the day.  Her goals were reasonable and attainable, unlike some of the ones mentioned by the others.  The only thing that gave a clue to her illness was her last goal:  that when her husband left after visiting her in the evening, she would like to say goodbye without breaking down.  So she was there for some sort of psychological condition that made it difficult to maintain emotional control.  I could certainly understand that, in light of my own problems!  And the more meetings we both participated in, the more I felt like I knew her.

The second afternoon I felt comfortable enough to speak to her.  We were sitting alone in the activity room when I asked her if she would mind if I asked some questions, since she seemed to know what was going on.  She told me to go ahead.

So I asked her about ECT.  Ever since I had arrived on the ward, the nurses and techs seemed to be urging me to ask my doctor about some therapy that “worked wonders” to restore stability in depressive patients; but I didn’t know anything about the treatment or even what the letters ECT stood for.  I asked her to tell me what it was and how it worked.

Electroconvulsive therapy was a shock therapy, she told me.  The doctors hooked electrodes to the forehead and gave a little electrical current to reset the mind to an earlier, healthier state.  She showed me where they would put the electrodes, and explained how it was different for left-handed people.  She knew what she was talking about, and explained the technical medical procedure to me in terms that I could understand.  Even so, I was surprised by it all.  Her description called to mind something out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and I wasn’t aware that anything like that was still being used.  It certainly didn’t sound like something I wanted to do.

I thanked Maureen and complimented her on her knowledge and ability to explain things.  She told me that she had been a nurse—a hospice nurse until she couldn’t handle it any more, and then an in-home caregiver.  She told me how she would get discouraged at work—so disturbed by her discouragement that on two occasions she had driven her car off the road on the way home.  Another time, more recently, the mere thought of having to go to work made her so anxious that she had backed her car into a tree in their front yard.  That event had landed her on the psych ward and in the ECT program.  She spoke about her experience in a matter-of–fact way, and I felt free to ask more; with Maureen it was more like talking to a family member than to a stranger.

Why do the nurses and techs promote ECT so much?

The doctors who work on this ward specialize in it.

Is it considered experimental?

She didn’t think so—her insurance covered it.

How did it work?

The science wasn’t definitive on that, but apparently when the appropriate parts of the brain go into convulsions, some harmful neural connections were disrupted.

Is it a one-time thing, or do patients need more that one treatment?

It varied, but always several sessions were needed, and sometimes many were necessary.  She herself had received more than twenty treatments, and was scheduled for another the next day.

She was so calm—so matter-of-fact that her statement took me by surprise.  Here was this young lady who appeared healthy in every way, telling me that she had a severe mental illness requiring drastic treatment measures!  It was more information than I could process right then; so I thanked her once more and excused myself.  I went to my room and tried to take a nap, but I couldn’t get Maureen or our conversation out of my head.  It was like I felt an emotional connection with her—not a romantic one, but something else I couldn’t explain.  Finally I got up and asked the nurse to give me something for anxiety.

After dinner, it all became clear to me.  Maureen had company, and they were sitting in the music room.  As I passed by, I looked in and did a double take.  I knew Maureen’s family—better than I wanted to.  And then I knew Maureen.

She had been married to my cousin a few years back, and the break-up had been very unpleasant, with both families more involved than we should have been.  The last birthday party where relatives on both sides attended had been broken up when the neighbors called the police. 

Whether it was the passing years or my mental state, I had not recognized Maureen until I saw her with her new husband.  Once I realized who she was, I began to think about the awkwardness of our situation.  Could we be in the same emotionally-charged group meetings without some family friction coming out?  I thought that I could handle it; after all, I wasn’t the one who had called her those things (that was my brother).  But I wasn’t sure how she, especially in light of her fragile mental state, would handle it.  I asked to speak to the nurse privately, and described the situation.  She agreed that it might be a problem.  She told me that she would speak to Maureen’s therapist, and one of us might need to be moved to a different ward.

The next morning I was informed of the decision:  it would not be a problem for Maureen to be in sessions with me as long as I was all right with it.  My presence wouldn’t bother her at all.

After all, she didn’t remember me.

She didn’t remember my cousin.

In fact, she didn’t remember ever having been married before.

The treatments had wiped out the memories.  Maureen was blissfully unaware of that tragic chapter of her past.

I wondered if maybe I should look into getting the treatments myself.

Here is another in my series of fictional accounts inspired by people I met while I was in the hospital.

Ethel’s Story

            Ethel sat at the table and sobbed out her story after lunch.  Most of the community members had wandered off, but I sat back and listened, and a couple of others came and went.  Her roommate Dierdre sat across the table from her as Ethel             melted down and opened up.

            To be honest, none of us knew Ethel.  She had arrived sometime in the past day or two, and kept to her room.  I hadn’t seen her in community or group meetings, or in any of the activities.  Dierdre had convinced her to come to the dining hall for lunch once or twice, but only after most of the others had left.  Though most of the women either wore casual clothes or hospital gowns with robes, Ethel wore a dress.  It had been stylish 30 or 40 years ago.

            I was accidentally aware of part of her story already.  My room was across the hall from the pay phone, and with my door open (as it always had to be) I couldn’t avoid hearing some of the conversations.  Ethel had been called to the phone earlier that morning; and, though I could only hear one end of the conversation, I could tell that it was her employer, and that it wasn’t good.

            “Yes, sir; in a day or two, I’m sure…No, sir, they don’t think it’s anything serious, but the doctor wanted to admit me for a day or two for observation….No, sir, I’m sure it had nothing to do with the job; I just haven’t been sleeping well…No, sir, I’m going to be fine, and…sir, I understand I don’t have any sick time left but…No, sir, please don’t do that.  I promise I’ll be there in a day or two…yes, I know how busy you are…I understand, sir, and I would never ask you to hold my position if I weren’t…Oh…Oh…I see…Yes, sir, I understand, but can’t…Yes, sir.  I’ll be in to pick up my check…Goodbye.”  And that was the prelude to the crisis in the dining room.

            What I didn’t know until that afternoon was that Ethel’s husband had passed away within the last month, and that, in her own words, she was stuck.  She had to adjust to living on her own, and she had no idea how to cope.  She didn’t drive; her husband Ron had always taken her everywhere.  She had never written a check or paid a bill or used a credit card; Ron had handled the money and gave her cash each week for grocery money.  They had never had children, and she had always stayed home as a housewife until a year or two earlier, when her husband had asked her to get a part-time job to help out.

            She had enjoyed being a housewife.  She loved to cook and sew; she made her own clothes.  Her pies were always a hit at the church socials, and all the neighbor kids looked forward to trick-or-treating at her house, where they always got her homemade pumpkin popcorn balls.  Her life had been what she had always expected it to be:  breakfast at 7; pack a lunch for Ron; household chores like washing and ironing and dusting and mopping the floors until noon; soup and a sandwich for lunch; a soap opera or two on television, and then dinner on the table at 5:30.  Evenings were often spent with knitting or needlework while Ron listened to the ball game, then to bed at 10.  If it was a rut, she was glad to have been stuck in it.

            It wasn’t that she couldn’t have had a career if she had wanted one.  After high school she had taken a secretarial course at the local business college, and she was a good typist, and better than average at taking dictation in shorthand.  But then she met Ron, and there was no need to work.  He always had taken care of her, and even apologized when he sent her out to work.  And then he wasn’t there any more, and all she had to count on was her job.  And now she had lost her job, and she was stuck.

            Dierdre had been listening intently, and questioned her about losing her job.  Didn’t she know that her employer couldn’t legally fire her because of a disability, and the problems that landed her here counted as a disability? 

            Ethel said that she knew, but it would mean she would have to tell her boss where she was, and why—that she had “gone crazy”—and she couldn’t do that.  She worried what the church ladies would say if they knew she was in the “nut house”.  She said she was just glad that she didn’t have any children; her mother had been “put away” in her later years, and now here she was herself.  At least it would stop here.

            Nonsense, Dierdre argued.  Nobody thought like that any more—this is 2012, for goodness’ sake!  Mental illness is a sickness—a treatable, curable sickness that she shouldn’t be ashamed of.  In fact, Ethel should be proud of herself that she was getting help!

            Ethel just sobbed and shook her head.  She couldn’t accept what Dierdre was telling her.  She expected that she would be locked up for the rest of her life, and even if she got out, what would she do?  No one would hire a crazy lady for their office.

            Dierdre shifted gears and suggested that Ethel could work from home.  She understood that a lot of medical transcription was still being done that way, and she would be able to use her skills in a productive and profitable way.

            No, it wouldn’t work, Ethel maintained.  She didn’t have her typewriter any more, so how could she work from home?

            She was stuck.