“ ‘Apparently’ based on what?” I asked.
“Based on what I have heard in writing from Dr. Millington,” she said, “and what I have not heard in writing from Dr. Naarden, but what I have heard reported from Dr. Millington, is that there is no structural cause for your seizures.”
That was jumbled. I knew what she was saying, but I had to think of a way to get her to repeat it more clearly. “Mm-hmm,” I said.
“Is that right?” she asked. “They have done everything, that all the tests confirm that there is nothing structurally wrong?”
“Yeah.”
So, she said, the same way I would want to protect myself, the school wanted to be protected too. I had no idea what she meant and asked her for clarification.
“Well, if there is a problem, i.e., if you have a bad accident,” she replied.
The more we spoke, the more confusing the conversation became. I decided I needed to push back, to tell her that Millington—by thinking “nothing structurally wrong” meant the seizures were psychological—was showing his ignorance of epilepsy.
“There’s a couple of things that I think you should know,” I said. “First of all, the fact that there is no structural problem—I guess this is something that Dr. Millington does not understand.”
“Why?”
Because I had told Naarden that the school used this explanation, I said, and he had told me that the absence of a structural problem in the brain did not mean the epilepsy was psychological. He had told me that Millington was absolutely wrong.
“Seizures do not show up as a structural problem necessarily,” I continued. “They can be caused by a brain tumor. They can be caused by calcification. But there is something called idiopathic seizures. ‘Idiopathic’ means no known cause.”
I decided to point out the illogic of the school’s position. What difference did it make what the cause of my seizures was? The episodes would be no different if Millington’s misinformed position were correct. So what was the point of this debate?
I stopped. I was arguing again. Not the goal of this call. She had mentioned before that she was acting under professional advice. I reminded her that she had told me that.
“What advice was that?” I asked. “I keep hearing that, and I really want to know who said it.”
“Well,” she replied, “you were not passing your courses.”
Wow. That was the fastest topic change since this had all begun. Okay, on to my academic performance.
“Now, that’s the second question I’ve got,” I said. “How do you have that information?”
“From your professors.”
Time to remind her. “I didn’t take a test, I didn’t have a paper, and I didn’t have a homework assignment done yet. We hadn’t done anything in my courses.”
“All I know is that I spoke to your professors.”
“They said I wasn’t passing?” I asked.
“Well, that’s the impression I got. Well, he didn’t say that you weren’t passing but that you were not performing well.”
He. One professor. Probably Hollister, I thought. I’m sure he must have told her that I needed a tutor, and she took that to mean I was failing. I wondered if he had told her about my medically induced inability to comprehend symbols.
The conversation meandered on as I lured Dickerson into repeating many of the things she had said to me before. I decided to find out, once and for all, who was behind one of the strangest events in the whole saga of my battle with the school.
“Why did you call my brother at medical school?” I asked, referring to the first decision that had been made to dismiss me. “Why did you not call my family, meaning my parents? It wasn’t until my brother called my family…”
She mentioned something about Naarden, who I knew had nothing to do with her call, and the fact that she knew my brother well. Someone had also shared with her that my father had been in denial about my epilepsy, which had not been true since August. I immediately knew where that bit of information came from: I had told Whitaker in our first session when I was recounting the whole story. Within a second, Dickerson confirmed my convictions.
“It was my advice, frankly, from Lee Whitaker, that if we were thinking about this, that, well, frankly, thinking about this, that, not asking you to leave but that…”
Her words were becoming confusing again. Whitaker had told her something. “Yeah?” I said.
“…it might be better to call Eric to find out whether it might be better to approach your parents or not,” she said.
The insanity of the whole situation captured in one sentence. A psychologist had told a dean information straight out of a counseling session. He had told the dean to call my brother—a kid in his early twenties—to ask whether they should notify my parents that they were planning to kick me out. I would have laughed at the absurdity of it all if it had not been part of a deeply traumatic experience.
Dickerson mentioned that Naarden had said the seizures were the consequence of a psychological problem. I was sure he had discussed the psychological challenges of having epilepsy; he had done so with me many times. Stress brought on by fear could trigger a seizure. But this interpretation—either it was a lie or a grotesque misunderstanding.
“Can you think what it would be like to be having epileptic seizures and not have a psychological effect?” I asked. “That there’s a difference between cause and effect? Now, what Dr. Naarden is talking about is effect. There is, however, the fact that the effect can be a trigger. That does not mean that there is something psychologically imbalanced.”
I raised Millington’s calls to Naarden and mentioned that I had heard the last one. Dickerson said Millington had reported to her that Naarden’s behavior had been significantly different in the second call.
“Now, we don’t know what the cause of that is,” she said. “I mean, it could be that, ah, Dr. Naarden is your father’s colleague and that—”
“Dr. Naarden did not even know my father before August.”
“Well, all I know is that Dr. Millington was surprised at Dr. Naarden’s response.”
What Naarden had said, I told her, was that if school officials wanted to know whether I was returning to Swarthmore, they should call me.
“But the point is that Kurt doesn’t make a decision as to whether Kurt is coming back to Swarthmore,” Dickerson said.
“Really?”
“That’s right.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“And that it is Swarthmore’s decision as to whether, as to whether Kurt may return, and that’s why he—”
Time for the killer question. “Swarthmore has the right to dismiss me because I have seizures?” I asked.
“That’s what we did,” Dickerson replied.
* * *
—
After she hung up, I ran to my parents’ bedroom, removed the recorder from the handset, and rewound the tape. The call had gone perfectly; I could only hope the recording had worked and was audible. My heart beat fast as I pushed PLAY.
The opening seconds were a dial tone, then some clicks. I heard the line ring. Dickerson answered. Every word was clear. I listened for a few minutes with angry satisfaction. This might not have been usable in court—for all I knew, I had broken the law by taping her—but no one could doubt what she’d told me. Then I heard the crucial statements, the one from her that I knew was a confession to violating antidiscrimination laws.
“Swarthmore has the right to dismiss me because I have seizures?”
“That’s what we did.”
I listened a second time, hit REWIND again, then clicked off the recorder. Afterward, I headed into the family room to watch some television. I wanted to stop thinking about Swarthmore.
* * *
—
As soon as my parents arrived h
ome, I grabbed my tape recorder and stormed into the kitchen. I didn’t say hello.
“If you don’t believe me,” I said, “maybe you’ll believe Janet Dickerson.”
I pushed PLAY. My parents listened to the conversation with growing horror. People at the school had lied to them directly, pretending I was making up stories.
The tape ended. No one spoke.
“Well?” I asked.
“I’m calling your lawyer,” my mother finally said.
“And,” my father added, “let’s call your friend at Health and Human Services.”
He shook his head, a fury on his face unlike any I had ever seen. “We’re going to destroy this school,” he muttered coldly.
* A year later, Whitman told me this story. I immediately called my parents to share the amazing tale. My father exploded in anger. He reminded me that I had never authorized any of my doctors to send an EEG to Swarthmore and the school had no equipment to conduct one. Whitaker had never had possession of, nor could he have lawfully reviewed, any of my EEGs.
In a conversation with
DR. ALLAN NAARDEN, 2017
It was life-changing. You were a young college kid. You wanted to do whatever you wanted to do with your life. I also knew, parallel to all of that, that there was so much prejudice against people who had a seizure disorder, that this was just another example of that. How they had put you in a category, a box if you will, and they weren’t treating you like a person. They were treating you like a thing, and that really bothered me that that had happened because the goal of giving you medication was not to tick off a little box saying “I gave you medication.” The goal was to try and get you to the best place that you could be with regard to seizure control, and not have it be the center of your life. That getting on with your life, doing what you wanted to do, was really the most important part of this.
It really angered me that they were using epilepsy as a weapon. If you want to talk about weaponizing epilepsy, that’s what I thought they did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
My mother drove me downtown the next afternoon for a two o’clock appointment with Morrison at HHS. I’d told him that morning about the recording, and he wanted to hear it right away.
A few hours earlier, I met with my lawyer, Cunningham. He had assured me before that he could use the law to force Swarthmore to take me back, but after listening to the recording of Dickerson, he changed his advice. “You have to leave that college,” he said. “They’re going to get you. They’re going to do something.” Once I settled in at another school, we could sue Swarthmore for discrimination.
Before I made a final decision, though, I wanted to hear from Morrison. He listened to the tape with a faraway look. None of us spoke until the recording finished.
“That psychological evaluation she’s talking about is a setup,” Morrison said. “There’s no way you pass it.”
“I know.”
He seemed to replay the words he’d just heard. “Get the hell out of that school,” he said finally. “You can go to any school in the country, but not Swarthmore and not one in that area.”
“Wait, not even on the East Coast? Why?”
He leaned forward at his desk.
“I’m sorry, but this is the way the world works,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I can get you back in, but there’s no law that says they have to like that. They can pull anything on you. From what I have heard on this tape and from what I have seen, they will pull anything on you. Transfer somewhere else.”
“Why are they fighting this so hard? What’s the big deal?”
“Several possibilities. One is, they’re just uncomfortable around epileptics. Or maybe their psychologist or internist is lying to the decision-makers. Or they’ve got a lawyer who told them how badly they screwed up.”
I thought for a second. Franz had mentioned that he’d heard from Dickerson. She told him the school knew I was looking into laws regarding my dismissal and they had consulted a lawyer. I relayed that to Morrison.
“The dean is talking to your friends about the school’s legal activities?” he asked. “Why?”
“No idea.”
Morrison considered this new information. “Okay, then here is what we have to assume. You’re in a legal Catch-22.”
The standard under law, Morrison explained, was that disabled students could be dismissed if they no longer qualified for the school program—for instance, if they flunked out. But the strongest proof that a college had broken the law was if a disabled student was readmitted.
I raised my hands in exasperation. “That doesn’t make any sense!”
“Yes, it does,” Morrison replied. “If they let you back in, they’re conceding that you’re qualified for the program. That means they’re confessing the original dismissal was illegal. If they’re consulting a smart lawyer, they know if they let you back in, they have no defense if you sue them.”
This is insane! “So, they can’t let me back in because throwing me out was illegal, and letting me back in proves that?”
Morrison nodded.
“Oh my God,” my mother mumbled.
A pause. “How are your seizures?” Morrison asked.
“What does that matter?” I snapped.
“Just an idea. Maybe if we can tell them your seizures are under control, we can craft some way for them to back out gracefully, like telling them you’re better because you stayed home and thanking them.”
“Well, I’m not better! In fact, my doctor delayed my treatment because of their lies! I’m having a grand mal seizure about once every two weeks.”
My mother interrupted. “That’s not quite right. They have gotten somewhat better since Dr. Naarden increased the medication.”
“Okay, fine,” I said. “I’m still having seizures, but I’m better. The changes that were going to be started in early November, but were delayed until December, are making me better. But I’m not going to crawl to them and apologize because I’m still having seizures!”
Morrison urged me to relax. “Don’t misunderstand. I’m trying to come up with another approach. Because without one, it’s really too dangerous for you to go back to school.”
“But if I’m back in…”
“They know you can sue at any point. So if you flunk out after you return or do anything else that warrants dismissal, they can use that as proof you were never qualified for the program and the forced readmission was in error. That would eliminate the danger that you could win a lawsuit.”
“I won’t flunk out.”
“Unfortunately, it might not be up to you,” he replied. He described a case where a university had illegally dismissed a disabled student. Lawyers got him readmitted. Suddenly, after previous semesters of good grades, he flunked several courses. He was tossed out a second time for poor academic performance.
“I won’t flunk,” I said.
“Neither did he,” Morrison replied. Years later, some professors revealed to HHS that the administrator behind the dismissal had threatened their tenure if they let the disabled student pass once he returned. The administrator had wanted to eliminate the dangers of a lawsuit.
I didn’t believe the story. “You’re kidding!”
“I wish I was, but no. That happened. This is not a fight you want to take on. They can flunk you; they can trump up charges, anything to end liability. Whatever they do will go on your record, and any other school you apply to will see it.”
I stayed silent.
“Kurt,” Morrison said, “if you go back to Swarthmore, you might end up never getting an education.”
There has to be a way. “Do you know people that have returned, that fought it?” I asked. “I’m not talking about fighting in court right now. Court’s down the line. But do you know people that fought it and won?”
“I thi
nk there are about five that I know of,” he replied. “That’s not in this area. That’s nationwide.”
Five. So it’s not impossible.
“Okay, then I’m going to fight it.”
My mother responded first. “Kurt, why? You might never graduate from college! Swarthmore has been terrible to you! Why do you want to go back?”
I stood and grasped the back of a chair.
“Because the administration isn’t Swarthmore,” I argued. “If I go back to school and I have a seizure in front of people, then I’m just Kurt who had a seizure. If I go somewhere else, within two weeks, I’ll be ‘the epileptic.’ If you think Swarthmore is scared of seizures, imagine how strangers will feel! I’ll always be alone. I’ll have no friends. I’ll be pitied. I’ll be defined by epilepsy.”
I started pacing. “And I am not going to let this goddamn school transform me into ‘the epileptic.’ I’m going back to my friends, back where I want to be, because that’s where I want to be! I have that right!”
I stopped to think of my next words; Morrison and my mother remained silent. They seemed to know I wasn’t finished. “More important, Tom—you say you see this every day. Okay, so let’s say I give up, I let Swarthmore chase me away because I’m scared of what they’ll do.”
My voice rose. “What about next time? What do I do if another school gets rid of me or I get fired from a job? Run away again? I either fight now, or I will hate myself for being a coward, for saying, ‘Maybe I’ll have the backbone next time.’ There is no next time!”
Morrison started to speak, but I interrupted.
“This stops now!” I barked, jabbing my finger down with each word.
A metaphor popped into my head. “Look, Swarthmore got in a sucker punch and knocked me to the mat before I even knew the bell had rung,” I said. “I could say, ‘I’m just going to lie here, because I don’t want to get hit again.’ But maybe if I get up, maybe if I punch back, I’ll find out they have a glass jaw. Maybe I’ll knock them out in one punch. If I don’t try, I’ll never know. I’ll just be the guy who wouldn’t get off the ground because I was afraid. For the rest of my life, I’ll be miserable because I won’t know if I could have won.”
A Mind Unraveled Page 26