by Jean Davison
‘Shyness. And I’m so drowsy I can’t think straight.’
‘Are you still confused about religion?’
‘Yes.’ What did he expect me to say? I’d probably be confused about religion for the rest of my life.
‘Do you still feel as if you don’t know who or what you are?’
‘Yes, I do,’ I admitted, though I wished I’d never mentioned this or religion in the first place. He wrote something down.
‘Will you reduce my tablets?’ I begged again. Having to endure this drug-induced lethargy while not being allowed to lie on my bed and sleep all the time was too much to bear. I was desperate. But he just sat there, cold and unmoveable, as he observed my distress.
‘Can I be discharged?’ I was a voluntary patient but I felt like a prisoner. Living with my family was no real freedom either but it had to be better than this. Yet so subdued was I that I seemed to have acquired a prisoner mentality: it didn’t even occur to me to attempt to leave the hospital without permission.
‘You’re not ready to be discharged.’
‘But I can’t stand it!’ I said again, unable to contain my anguish.
He added something to his notes, replaced the cap on his pen and stood up. ‘I’ll see you again soon,’ he said.
Staying awake while doped up with drugs was like an endurance test and my reward for getting through the day was being allowed to go to bed. Sometimes, curled up in bed, I would stare at the green light above and wish I could stay awake long enough to try to understand what was happening to me. But the drugs deadened my brain. I would fall asleep almost immediately unless there was some kind of night-time distraction, such as, for instance, the night Connie left her bed next to mine to climb in with me, subjecting me to sexual advances. She was heavy, physically stronger than me and I was too tired to fight. She lay on top of me, fondling my breasts and kissing my lips while I, loathing every moment, waited for her to shift.
In the morning when making my bed I couldn’t remember how to do the corners of the bedspread, which had to be folded a certain way. Sister Grayston came and stood beside me with hands on her hips, watching my fumbling attempt.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ she said. ‘I’ve already shown you.’
I watched closely while she showed me again, but I felt so heavy and slow that even learning this simple task was difficult. Dr Prior had promised the shock treatment wouldn’t impair my intelligence but I knew something was having a detrimental effect.
It had been decided that I would spend most of my OT time in the ‘office skills’ class to practise typing and learn shorthand. I usually missed this on ECT mornings but once, when I arrived back at the ward after ECT a bit earlier than usual, Sister Oldroyd sent me to the OT department. ECT might cast out conscious knowledge of some experiences, whether good or bad, driving them into a deep, secret place beyond recall. But never, never, will I forget the horror and dismay of staring at a page of shorthand symbols that day with the realisation that my ability to think clearly and retain information had been severely, and I feared permanently, impaired.
I kept forgetting how to make those ‘hospital corners’ with the bedspread, so the routine became that each morning when Sister Grayston was on duty she would stand at the door of my dormitory watching me try. This made me nervous, increasing the likelihood of my getting it wrong.
‘Don’t you know how to make a bed?’ her voice would boom across the room, grating its way into my groggy head. ‘How old are you?’
She knew my age, of course, but always pressed me to tell her at this point, then she would tut and say: ‘What? Did I hear you right? Eighteen years old and you can’t even make a bed?’
I think after a while it must have really got to me; I remember answering ‘Eighteen’ in a barely audible voice, feeling full of embarrassment and shame at what a stupid girl I must be.
Sister Grayston was a strict, school-marm type, and I didn’t like her for humiliating me over the bedspread corners, but I still preferred it when she was on duty rather than Sister Oldroyd.
Sister Oldroyd stopped me one morning while I was walking past her office on my way to the bathroom.
‘I’m sick and tired of your attitude,’ she snapped. ‘You must be in need of help or you wouldn’t be here.’
‘I am in need of help,’ I agreed, feeling bewildered.
‘There you are. You’re in need of help. You’ve just said so yourself now. You’ve admitted it.’ She said this gloating in the way of people who feel their opponents in a debate have just tripped themselves up and ruined their own argument. It made no sense to me. I’d sought help myself and agreed to be admitted against the wishes of my parents. Since my admission, I had co-operated with whatever treatment had been prescribed. Not once had I denied I was in need of help.
‘I’ve never said I don’t need help,’ I said.
‘Well, if you admit it, then why have you got that attitude?’
‘What attitude?’
‘Thinking you’re better than everyone else, for one thing.’
This hurt. Penny, a girl at school and Joanne at the television factory, and no doubt countless others, had mistaken my shyness for something else.
‘I’ve never thought that.’
‘You’ve been aggressive since you came here. You’ve got a chip on your shoulder. Your trouble is that you think everyone is against you.’
Abruptly, she turned and walked away.
I was attacked by a patient at OT. Rosie flew at me, shrieking and scratching like a wild cat. She yelled that I’d been staring at her, but I hadn’t even noticed her until then. The rest of the noise died down at once and only Rosie’s screams of fury could be heard. She was a tall, stout woman but apparently not very strong and, by grasping then holding firmly both her wrists, I was able to restrain her until two white-coated male attendants, who suddenly seemed to appear from nowhere, led her away.
The Head Therapist, Mrs Burton, sat down beside me. ‘I’m terribly sorry about this,’ she said. ‘We know it wasn’t your fault. Rosie thinks people are against her. She can’t help it because she’s very sick. This incident will be reported and Rosie will be punished.’
I wondered why Rosie should be punished for being ‘sick’.
I was called from OT because my ‘vicar’ was waiting to see me. When I arrived back on the ward, Pastor West had been shown into the Quiet Room. I paused with my hand on the doorknob, suddenly feeling nervous. How much had I changed since he’d seen me at home before my admission only a few weeks ago? Did I look like a mental patient now? Or was the change only on the inside?
Then a strange thing happened to me. I began shaking all over, as if a pneumatic drill was at work inside me. Feeling embarrassed, I sat in the chair opposite him while he looked surprised and concerned.
‘How long have you been like this?’
‘It’s just started now,’ I said, panic rising in me as I tried in vain to regain control over my shaking body. ‘It’s because you’re here.’
‘Why do you think that?’ he asked, his eyebrows arching into a puzzled frown.
‘Because my mind associates you with church, and church with conflict,’ I replied unhesitatingly, convinced this was the reason.
‘Yes, perhaps so,’ Pastor West said slowly. He looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘But you weren’t like this when I saw you recently at home, were you?’
He was right. I searched my mind for another explanation. Was it a subconscious way of trying to say to him: ‘Look at me. See how desperately I need help now. Why won’t your God help me?’ Or was it the drugs?
‘Well, perhaps it’s a side effect of the drugs that’s just started up,’ I said.
Although not usually so visible, the shakiness was to continue. I came to see it as a symptom of illness but learnt, much later, it was caused by neuroleptic medication.
‘Have they put you on drugs?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ I replied, wondering at his surprise.
Everyone in my ward was on drugs and I’d already forgotten how I’d been surprised when first given them.
‘I’m also having electric shock treatment,’ I announced flatly, staring at the floor.
‘Shock treatment? But, why?’
‘I’m in need of help.’
This conversation was strained, difficult, unlike all our previous chats when I’d entered into lively discussion. I must have looked a total wreck shaking like that and I was aware that I was nervously twisting my long, greasy hair around my trembling fingers as Beryl had done. But what did it matter if I was looking and behaving like a mental patient? I was one.
‘I’m going insane,’ I said, bending forward and covering my face with my hands.
‘Nonsense!’ Pastor West said. ‘You’re as sane as I am.’ He paused, then added, ‘Though, heaven knows, I don’t know if that’s any consolation to you.’ This made me smile in spite of myself.
‘I’m in need of help,’ I said again.
‘Jean, why do you keep saying you’re in need of help?’
‘Have I ever seemed aggressive?’ I asked.
‘Aggressive? Definitely not,’ he replied. ‘It’s not in your nature to be aggressive.’
‘Well, have I ever given you the impression that I’ve a chip on my shoulder or that I feel everyone is against me?’
‘No, not at all,’ he said. ‘Why are you asking?’
I was asking because I was trying to understand Sister Oldroyd’s comments. I was asking because I couldn’t see why I was being given ECT and drugs. I was asking because I was trying to salvage something of my crumbling sense of identity.
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘It’s not important.’
After tea I saw the three patients nearest to my age, Maria, Sheila and Tessa, go into the Quiet Room. Knowing what I must do, I didn’t allow myself to pause at the door, lest my courage would fail me.
‘Mind if I join you?’ I asked, trying to sound casual, as three pairs of eyes looked at me. They greeted me with friendly smiles and didn’t seem to notice how awkward and shy I was feeling. I began to relax. We were sitting on the floor looking through some pop records discussing our favourites when Connie stuck her head round the door and said Sister Oldroyd was looking for me. Sheila grinned when I pulled a face. ‘She’s a right cow, isn’t she? We’ve noticed how she picks on you.’
‘If she picked on me like that I’d tell her to bleedin’ piss off,’ said Maria, the girl who, a few days earlier, had been proclaiming she’d had intercourse with God at Lourdes and was the chosen vessel for the second birth of Jesus.
Sister Oldroyd opened the door and glared at me. ‘So there you are. Go get a bath. It’s been filled.’
Most of the other patients, it seemed, simply told a nurse when they wanted a bath and I, too, would have bathed regularly without needing to be told, but she always sought me out like this. Today it was particularly annoying because I so much wanted to stay and talk with the others, having at last found the courage to approach them. But I sighed and obeyed. After all, what point was there in arguing? What point was there in anything?
When I’d been packing my case to come into hospital I’d packed my favourite soap, talc and perfumed bubble bath. How ridiculously unnecessary these things seemed now, for having a bath was no longer the leisurely, lingering pleasure I’d previously enjoyed. The first time I’d entered the bathroom I’d been disconcerted to find I couldn’t lock the door, nor could I get any water out of the bath taps to adjust the temperature of the already filled bath. No sooner had I stripped naked when a confused patient wandered in and out of the bathroom. Then Sister Oldroyd peered round the door and stood there for a while, silently staring at me as I eased myself into the water. Shortly afterwards, a nurse came with scissors and asked if my toenails needed cutting. I hated these humiliating, and in my case needless, invasions of privacy. Privacy: perhaps I shouldn’t have expected anything so precious as that in a mental hospital.
One day Lynette, a small hunch-backed woman sitting opposite me, refused to eat her dinner, saying she felt unwell. Sister Oldroyd tried to ram food down her throat then, to my surprise and horror, when Lynette vomited into the food on her plate, attempted to force-feed this back to her before dragging her, screaming and crying, from the dining area.
I stared down at my plate eating mechanically, desperately trying to ignore the stench of vomit wafting up my nostrils, so fearful was I of feeling unable to eat and being dealt with in the same way. Along with nausea and anger I felt a sense of shame to discover that I was capable of witnessing such assaults on another person without taking action. Should I have intervened? But how could I?
I was leaving the medication trolley after taking my pills when Sister Oldroyd swooped on me and opened my hand, almost clawing insanely at my palm, in an attempt to snatch something from it that was not there. On finding nothing, she looked surprised, hesitated, then grabbed and opened my other hand. After eyeing me up and down suspiciously, she abruptly turned and walked away. I was aware of the other patients looking at me and felt hot with embarrassment at becoming the centre of attention.
Sister Oldroyd’s job was obviously having an adverse effect on her. Of course we were all bound to have an effect on each other – staff on patients, patients on staff, patients on patients. But at least the staff could go home when their shift was over, whereas patients remained in close proximity at all times.
An argument between two patients progressed one teatime from shouting across the tables to throwing crockery. Lynette started crying but Andrea smiled complacently as a flying saucer whizzed past her ear. She told us, almost proudly I thought, that this was nothing compared to the fights in a ward where she was once transferred after trying to hang herself with a scarf.
It was surprising that there weren’t more fights even in our showpiece ward, considering the stress we were under, herded together day after day in such an unnatural environment. Perhaps the humiliation of being under the supreme power of the staff kept us all subdued and passive.
CASE NO. 10826
Remains rather withdrawn; not so preoccupied with religious conflicts. Thought problems are not very prominent but still disturbs the patient – ‘I do not yet know – who am I’, ‘Confused about heaven and hell’ etc. Seemed to be more concerned about not being able to mix well. Prominent thought-block is being expressed with distress. Has gained some insight but not sufficiently. Asking for discharge. She is taking very little interest at the occupational therapy or the ward routine.
Dr Prior
CHAPTER FIVE
TWICE A WEEK I received electrical assaults on my brain. Lightning flashes. Convulsions. Blast it all out, forget everything. I slipped off the ladder and couldn’t stop falling. I awoke the same but not the same. A searing pain inside my brain. Branded.
I heard someone moaning when they were being given ECT. I was sitting outside the treatment room, nervously twisting my fingers and thinking of the Simon and Garfunkel song ‘I Am a Rock’ as I awaited my turn.
‘Don’t worry,’ a nurse said to me. ‘She can’t feel a thing because she’s unconscious.’
The moans were terrible; the most poignant, eerie sounds of protest I’d ever heard, springing deep from a woman’s unconscious mind. Would I soon be moaning like that? Even the rocks can’t remain silent.
During one ECT session there was a group of students peering over me ready to watch my convulsions. Just before being seized by the dreadfully unpleasant sensation I always experienced in the seconds before losing consciousness, a wave of resentment hit me as I gazed up at the sea of curious faces. But I resisted the temptation to yell at them: ‘I hope you enjoy the goddamn show!’
It was at the ECT block where I saw thirteen-year-old Debbie again, who had been moved to another ward. At first I didn’t recognise the pathetic, drooping figure who was sitting in the waiting area, white-faced and trembling.
‘Now don’t be silly, dearie,’ a stiff-un
iformed nurse was saying, offering a tissue to Debbie. ‘It’s nothing to be scared of. You won’t feel a thing.’
‘It’s all right for you to say that,’ a small, shaky voice protested. ‘You’ve never had ECT, have you?’
‘No, but I do know what I’m talking about,’ the nurse said, confident in her textbook knowledge. How could she know, damn her? I thought indignantly. How could she know?
My heart cried out with pity for Debbie who knew so much so soon. What, in the name of sanity, was she doing in this place? Dear God, she was only a child.
My fear of ECT gave birth to a gut-twisting anxiety. Admittedly, the treatment itself, being administered when anaesthetised, was painless. But imprinted in my memory is the sensation of lying helplessly as the injected anaesthetic seared my brain and played havoc with my senses before the blackness of oblivion. I tried hard to remain relaxed after being given the anaesthetic but that was like trying to suppress a strong survival instinct; not once did I succeed in ‘going gently’ into the night.
Next come the after-effects; the post-ECT fog. It’s bad enough being given drugs every day, which make you feel dim-witted and slow, but add to this the disorientation following an ECT session and you’re living through a nightmare. First, you wake up and wander round with other confused, dressing-gown-clad patients in a daze, not knowing what day it is, what time it is or where the hell you are in this planet of pain. You try to think clearly, realise you can’t and fear you must have finally gone completely crazy. Back in the ward, it’s difficult to remember the simplest of things, such as the location of your locker, bed or the toilet. You don’t want dinner. If you can manage it while Sister isn’t looking, and if you can remember where it is, you empty your food into the slop bin, but then the after-dinner drugs rumble around queasily in your empty stomach. Along with your usual drugs there are two extra pills. These are painkillers, which are supposed to take away that dull, sickening pain inside your head, but you’re lucky if they touch it. You long to lie on your bed, to escape in sleep, but instead you must face your usual afternoon stint at OT.