Telling someone with test anxiety not to have anxiety about a test is like telling an insecure thirteen-year-old girl that she shouldn’t care what that cute boy in her science class thinks about her. She will care and she will obsess and she will fill entire diaries about it. I have the diaries to prove it.
“Before we do the written part of this, I am going to read you five words. And later on during the test I’m going to have you repeat them back to me in the same order, okay?”
I used to cram for exams in college and memorize answers only to forget them immediately after the exam. Like, minutes after. I ruined my memory by doing this so frequently that if you tell me your name and I don’t make some complicated mental diagram of the letters in your name and a contorted association between your face and your name—“Jessica looks like she might be old enough to have watched Happy Days starring Ron Howard whose daughter Bryce Dallas Howard has red hair, and Bryce Dallas Howard always reminds me of Jessica Chastain, so PHEW!”—I won’t remember your face or who you are or how we met. Sorry!
I nodded and then tried to concentrate as hard as I could.
“Truck. Banana. Violin. Desk. Green.” He said each word very deliberately and slowly. The first time I took the test I couldn’t remember the word “daisy” even though that was my grandmother’s name and I had considered naming a child after her. Thanks, Professors.
I repeated the words in my head and tried to draw some associations among all of them, when Dr. Mickey interrupted my meditation to move the test along.
“Okay, next. You see the numbers and letters here?” He pointed to the paper sitting in front of me. “Draw a line going from 1. to A and then from A to 2. and then from 2. to B, and so on, the numbers and alphabet being consecutive.”
I didn’t have a hard time with this part and finished by drawing a line from 5. to E. I breezed through it as if I could actually count. Me, the valedictorian! Who knew?
For the second part I had to draw a 3-D cube next to one printed on the paper, and it had to resemble the printed cube exactly. I used to draw cubes on the edges of my notebook in high school classes whenever I got bored, so this part did not faze me in the least. However, I knew I shouldn’t get too cocky.
Because the next part, oh God. I was supposed to draw a clock with all of the numbers in the correct order and in the correct place on the clock, and I had to draw it to indicate that it was ten minutes past eleven o’clock. Meaning, I had to get the big and the little hands right, too. I had to think a lot harder than I should have about where the larger hand should go and in what direction, and because I’ve neglected my penmanship through years of typing and photo editing and texting, all the numbers were illegible. When I finished and admired my work, I set down my pencil and said, “I’m sure you’ve seen people take shits that look more like the face of a clock than that, and I apologize for being compelled to say this to you.”
He laughed and waved it off like he always did when I said something inappropriate. Then we got to the fun part: identifying three animals based on detailed, very accurate outlines. First he pointed to the illustration of a giraffe and asked if I could tell him what it was.
“Is this part of the test for real?” I asked him.
He chuckled. “Yes, we’re just making sure you can recognize basic things.”
“That is, of course, a giraffe. I’ve seen one up close on a safari in Tanzania, which you definitely wanted to know about me. Ran a half marathon around the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. I’ll stop talking now.”
He smiled as he pointed to a bear.
“That would be a bear. Interesting story, my seventh grader has a teacher whose last name is Barriger, and when she introduced herself to the class she said, ‘It’s pronounced like a bear that goes, GRRR! Bear-ih-grrrrrr!’ How am I doing? Am I identifying basic things?”
“You’re doing great,” he said as he pointed to the outline of a hippo.
“That would be a hippopotamus and I could regale you with story after story about how many people have sent me hippo-related paraphernalia over the years because I once wrote about this show I saw on National Geographic about a family in South Africa who adopted a hippo named Jessica and she slept in their house and the woman would give her nightly massages. And I realized that all I ever wanted in life was a pet hippo who would routinely break her bed. But I digress, Dr. Mickey.”
Turns out being happy can make one quite talkative.
“Okay, I’m going to read you five numbers and I want you to say them back to me in the order that I read them. Ready?”
“Oh God. Fine.”
He nodded and slowly read off of the sheet in his hands, “Two. Four. Eight. Five. Three.”
I took a deep breath. “Two. Four. Eight. Five. Three.”
“Okay,” he said with no emotion. “Now I’m going to read you three numbers and I want you to say them to me in reverse order.”
“You’re killing me. I hate this part.”
“Five. Two. Seven,” he said slowly.
“Seven. Two. Five. Like, ‘It’s seven to five in the morning! He’s supposed to be up cooking breakfast or something!’ ” He did not get the reference and I didn’t think he would and if you don’t, that’s okay. A video went viral many years ago from a news segment in Oakland about people who were modifying the mufflers on their cars with whistle attachments, and other cranky people were complaining to the police about it. Someone they interviewed pointed out that all those grouchy people who heard the muffler sound in the early hours of the morning should already be awake and fixing their families breakfast. I have used that sentence at least once a day since I saw it when anyone complains about anything. You paid $200 for a haircut you hate? You’re supposed to be up cooking breakfast or something!
The next part of the test had rattled me the first time I took it, because (1) I have no sense of rhythm, and (2) I startle easily. He was going to read me a list of letters, probably thirty in a row, and I would have to tap the desk each time he read aloud the letter a. When I first took this test, I kept jumping the gun whenever he read aloud an f because the beginning sounds like the letter a. At one point when I did tap the desk when he read aloud f, I’d shouted “I TAKE IT BACK!” Turns out you can’t take back a mistake on a cognitive test.
This time he only read aloud three f’s in the long string of letters, and I’m pretty sure I aced that part, too.
Next he read two sentences to me and I had to repeat them back to him exactly as he’d read them. I don’t remember what those sentences were, but I know I got them right because he smiled, nodded, and didn’t make any notes. Even though I wanted to waste everyone’s time by doing a victory dance, he moved immediately to the next part.
And then, oh God, one of the worst parts of this test—and, you guys, I graduated with a degree in English and make a living as a writer: I had one minute to name as many words as I could think of that began with the letter f. Surprisingly, I just didn’t sit there and repeat the most obvious one over and over again, although I was tempted.
I reminded myself that the best way to get out as many words as possible was to go through all the vowels: words that begin with fa, words that begin with fe, words that begin with fi, and so on. I cannot recount how many words I got out in one minute or what each one was, but I do remember that fart was the first word I said. It begins with fa!
Dr. Mickey then asked me to describe the similarity between a train and a bicycle.
“They are both modes of transportation?” I asked.
He didn’t hesitate. “Okay, what about the similarity between a ruler and a watch?”
“They are both used to measure things?”
“Good,” he said, and I relaxed in my chair. Then he told me about the next part of the test. “Now it’s time recall the words I read to you at the beginning of this. Can you tell me what those words are?”
I think the sweat from my armpits had soaked through the shirt Lauren had admired not even tw
enty minutes earlier. I’d made a mental image of each word in my brain in the seconds that Dr. Mickey had given me after reading those words to me.
“Okay, let’s see . . . ,” I said, hoping to impress him with basic mental skills. “Truck . . . um . . . banana . . . violin . . . desk . . . and . . . um . . .um . . . GREEN! GREEN! I got it! I know it’s green because I sat at a green desk in seventh grade next to my friend who played the violin—I played the clarinet which wasn’t nearly as prestigious, though I’ve gotten over that, maybe, but will I ever be as accomplished as she is?—and I know my favorite dessert in seventh grade was banana pudding, and since I grew up in the South, I am somewhat familiar with pickup trucks. Phew.”
Turns out being happy can turn one into one’s super-talkative Mormon mother.
In those moments, Dr. Mickey always accommodated me with a smile, and I will be forever grateful for that generosity. That and the whole saving-my-life thing.
The last part asked me about my physical location—place, city, state—and about the day, month, year, and day of the week. Because I was not coming out of anesthesia, I easily nailed the year. Usually, I refer to my phone or watch to see what day of the month it is. I was really nervous, because I took a few seconds too long to come up with the right answer, and the only reason I got it right was because I counted forward three days from St. Patrick’s Day, the day the switch had flipped.
I’ll always have that association: the day of luck being one of the luckiest days of my life.
I was about to regale Dr. Mickey with a long explanation for why I have a hard time remembering dates but figured I had put him through enough. He then gathered my paper, placed it over his, and straightened them up.
“Like I said, I knew you’d do well,” he said, stood up, and then motioned to the door. That’s when I remembered, Shit, my crew, the entire state of Tennessee, is waiting for me. I hate making people wait for anything, and here I’d made them wait an extra twenty minutes while I drafted complex associations between bananas, violins, and trucks in my head so as to impress the doctor in charge of killing me.
Just as we made it back to the waiting room, a nurse said that they were ready for me. I looked over at my mother first, and she nodded at my brother and sister, who stood up slowly. We all entered the room with my gurney sitting at the opposite side, a flurry of activity going on around it. I confirmed my name and birthday as I walked toward the gurney, and before I could ask for a warm blanket, a nurse was offering me one. She handed it to me as I sat on that thin, crinkly mattress, and suddenly I had a terrible thought enter my head that I didn’t have much time to process. It hit me so unexpectedly and with such force that I asked Dr. Mickey if he wouldn’t mind coming closer so that I could ask him about it. He nodded and walked toward me while my mother arranged my crew around the walls of the room across from me.
“Could . . . could this treatment possibly reverse the effects of what happened last time?” I whispered when he was mostly out of earshot of everyone else. “I don’t want to go back to life before last Friday.”
His response startled me. He smiled more widely than I’d ever seen him smile, and Dr. Mickey is as boyish as a shy kid who is routinely given giant lollipops.
“No, I’m certain that it will not,” he promised me. “In fact, the way this works, or is supposed to work . . . what we’re replicating is a process wherein you only get better with each subsequent treatment. That is, if there is any room to get better. Since ECT usually involves ten to twelve rounds of treatment, we’re trying to show that we can accomplish the same thing with fewer side effects. That’s why each participant is doing ten. I’d never recommend you do another treatment if I didn’t think it was only going to add to what you’re experiencing.”
I nodded as a nurse reached over and asked if I would lie back so that she could affix the Velcro wire to my forehead. I saw my mother pointing at me, most likely explaining everything to my brother and sister. Dr. Tadler was on call that day—thank God for Dr. Tadler. His presence was so comforting, maybe because he was considered the lead anesthesiologist for the study, or maybe because he had touched my arm like a concerned father before I entered the abyss for the first time. The anesthesiologist on call each day was written on a whiteboard outside of the waiting room, and we hoped to see his name every time we came to the clinic. When we did, my mother would do a move wherein she silently pumped both of her fists into the air followed by an awkward thumbs-up. God, I love her so much.
You tend to remember weird details about things when you’re going under anesthesia. That time I remember looking up and not being drawn to my mother’s eyes. I had found my sister’s face, her beautifully angled and tan face. Her skin tone is so different from the blindingly pale tone of my own that some people have asked if we have the same parents, and so I introduce her as my half-Mexican sister. Her countenance was so heavy and burdened. That was the specific detail I remembered before . . . nothing. The nothingness. That deep and dark state of nothing. The abyss.
When I woke up, I blinked. On a few of my eyelashes I could feel the remains of the tape they’d used to keep my eyes shut. My brother’s face came slowly into focus. I don’t remember if I said anything outrageously drunk, only that my brother saw that my eyes were focused on him. He immediately sat up straight in his chair and looked back at me sternly. And yet, it wasn’t unfriendly or punishing. It was a signal for me to take him seriously.
“That was incredible,” he said. “I don’t know how to put into words what just happened in there. Just . . . incredible.” He shook his head a little.
“Hey there,” I heard a familiar voice to my right side. It was Chris, and it was good to recognize someone in that final room of all the rooms I had to walk through to get to the other side.
“Hey, Chris!” I said. “My name is Heather B. Armstrong! Beat you to it!”
“Excellent!” He was most likely being enthusiastic to amuse me. “Can you tell me what year it is?”
“It’s 2012,” I answered.
My stepfather started to laugh, and my brother let out a chuckle. I suppose my mother had prepped him for my stellar skill at getting the year wrong each and every time I came out of anesthesia.
“Why are you laughing?” I asked with drunk conviction. “Why is the fact that it’s 2012 so funny? I don’t get it.”
“Are you sure it’s 2012?” Chris asked.
I blinked a few more times and could feel the weight of the sticky eyelashes on my right eye hitting my lid. 2012, I thought; 2012. And then, as if someone were pulling me out of that year like a bucket out of a well, the years 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and finally 2017 appeared.
“Why do I do this every time? It’s 2017. Sorry about that.” And I always did feel sorry, like I was making their job harder to do. As a patient I only had one job to do. Well, really, only two jobs: one, die; two, wake up and get the date right. Why had they not fired me already?
Someone brought me a cup of apple juice without my even asking; I would later learn that my mother had gone around to each person working on the treatment to make sure that all the things I liked and needed were prepped and ready to go (including the warm blanket earlier). When I found my sister standing near my mother, I could see that her face was a little red, a warmer tint than her normal tan. I was a little too out of it to ask why, and I barely remember getting into the car and traveling the winding roads home—only that I hugged both siblings before they left and I climbed into my bed for an hour-long nap. Turns out that a weekend of feeling pretty happy about life is exhausting.
When I woke up, my mother and stepfather were in my living room waiting for me. The girls were at the library with the babysitter. I was awake enough, aware enough, to realize that I hadn’t really gauged the reactions from my siblings. What had they really thought about it? Did they think I was insane? Did they think this was some sort of quackery?
“Just the opposite,” my mother informed me.
“What do
you mean?”
“Your sister, Heather. Your sister. As they were hooking you up to everything, I explained what was going on, how they all work together like this little machine to get you set up.”
“I remember you pointing at me and talking to them.”
“Well, Dr. Tadler held up the propofol and said he was ready to start. Do you remember that?”
Oddly, I hadn’t remembered that part, and I usually did. I only remember looking up and seeing September’s face, her concern and her worry.
“She saw your arms fall to your sides as you went under and she did not say a single word the whole time you were out.”
“The whole time?” That’s a long time to remain silent. I know it varied, the time it took me to wake up out of the anesthesia, but it was never less than seventy-five to ninety minutes from beginning to end.
“The whole time,” my mother repeated. “In fact—and she told me I could tell you this—she cried the entire time. She cried, silently. Tears just rolled out of her eyes and didn’t stop until you took that first breath on your own.”
“I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“I knew what she was feeling, and I told her that we were witnessing something sacred, something very spiritual.”
“That if I attended any church, this would be it?”
My mom didn’t laugh but gave me a gentle look. “No, it’s so much more than that. Those people in that room have your life in their hands, and they don’t have a machine telling them how much propofol to give you, or how far to take you down, or how long to keep you there. They are all working together as a team and trusting each other with the trust you have put in them.”
We had talked about this before, this aspect of the treatment being so “human” in its machinations, but it took on so much more significance knowing that my sister had been there watching it play out. She got to see what I, the patient, did not.
“And given what her own kids have been through . . .” This is when my mother’s voice began to crack. “. . . given what those kids have battled and worked to overcome and the sleepless nights your sister has stayed up worrying about whether or not they would pull through, I know this had deep meaning for her: that she is a mother and was there watching me with my own child, hoping you would pull through. You give her so much hope about her own kids.”
The Valedictorian of Being Dead Page 17