Lovely, dark, and deep...

I am keeping my promises.

Last week, an article came out in the Boston Globe about spouses and mental illness.  The picture gracing the beginning of the article may have been familiar to some of you. There we were, Paulie and myself, having a laughing moment in the Dracut Public Library, where I work.

That was one of the only laughing moments there have been of late.

I have been inpatient at Emerson Hospital for the last two weeks, as of today.  I will be here at least 3 more, as I am undergoing Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT, or "Shock Therapy" to those in the biz) for the foreseeable future.

I will receive these treatments every other day for the next 3 weeks.  I am wheeled down to a surgical unit, and an IV is started. A blood pressure cuff is placed on my ankle, and leads are glued all over my forehead.  The blood pressure cuff on my ankle is so they can see when the seizure in my body is taking place, the leads are for giving the electroshock current.  I am given a mask of oxygen to wear and breathe in deeply as the surgical staff do a "time out": they repeat my name, date of birth, procedure to be performed, and other relevant information to the procedure.  They lower the head of my bed and tell me the medicine will burn in my arm for an instant before I am asleep.  After I am asleep, they will administer a paralytic, so that when my body seizes, the only thing that moves will be that ankle and foot, below where they had placed the blood pressure cuff at the beginning of things. Once the seizure has taken place, I will "come back" into the room, awakening from anesthesia.  Then I get wheeled back to the unit, and I continue with my day.

There are those who may be horrified by the idea of what I've just explained, but the fascinating part is that this is considered one of the most effective, safe, and "miraculous" treatments for refractory (or "treatment-resistant") depression.

I live most of my days here in a feeling of profound depression.  I sleep too often, eat too little, and just want to go home. The woods of Robert Frost's "Stopping..." are lovely, dark, and deep, just like the sleep that washes over me during ECT treatments.

But I am keeping my promises.

The Snake

When I was 4 years old, I went to pre-school at the YMCA in town. I wore paisley dresses and cried when Momma and Dad came to take me home. I wanted to stay there with the books and toys and children all day. 

I don't remember a whole lot about pre-school. I remember that we went for walks sometimes. We'd get in a big line and a jump rope would be strung among us with rings attached. Each one of us would grab a ring and hold on. Off we'd go, parading down the street attached to a plastic ring that was attached to a jump rope, connecting the lot of us like a short, stout, brightly-colored snake. 

We were a snake of criers and complainers and stumblers and runners and a few laughing teachers. We were a snake of lives just beginning. We were a snake who will forever shed its skin, with new teachers laughing, and new children holding on. 

I eventually let go, and some new pre-schooler took my place, and on, and on...

I am attached to a new jump rope now. The plastic ring I hold onto is the promise of help from a hospital. My fellow walkers stumble and cry and laugh and complain. We pray that the walk ends successfully, and that we can pass the rings of a jump rope onto a new class of those who seek help. 

We are a snake that is just as stout and short and brightly-colored. We have the potential of a group of pre-schoolers, off to make our lives anew. 

Vignettes Part I

Hello again, gentle readers.  The following is the first of a few vignettes I wrote whilst at Emerson Hospital for another bout of med changes and "staying safe" this month.  All names have been changed to protect the innocent/guilty.

******************************************************************************

Carl throws a stress ball across the common room, hitting Blake in the shin.  They're talking about all the ways you can make alcohol and drugs from household items.  They have a case of what Bob would call "the spin drys".  Guys come in for 3-5 days because their wives, bosses or families beg them to get clean.  They dry out enough for the physical effects of their substance of choice to wear off, claim Jesus as their guide, and go right back out and use.  They have no intention of quitting, they just want to make their families happy, or keep the money coming in.  Blake has already managed to ingest Purell to try to stop his tremors and hallucinations.  In his mind, the ethanol in a hand sanitizer would be better than sobriety; all hand sanitizer has been confiscated from the unit.

Carl has taken to Blake and a few others who are all trying to dry out.  They laugh a little too loudly, proclaim their love of the Patriots, Red Sox, and Bruins a little too vehemently, and know everything.  All exclamations have at least one "fahhk" in some part of speech.  They are frightened little boys, wearing their fathers' jerseys and expressions, trying to be just as brave.  When their knowledgeable statements and information are questioned, they are almost always wrong, and they bluster through all the reasons why.  Their glasses weren't on, they thought you said the '77 Sox lineup, not '87, and that bitch nurse gave them the wrong med at the window this morning.  These are the guys who tell you who REALLY killed Kennedy, but can't remember their son's birth date.  Their tales come forth through gravelly, smoke-filled cords.   

I ask one of these gentlemen why he's so angry.  He says "I'm not angry at nothin'. Nothin' bothahs me anymoah." This is the same gentleman who thought Purell would make a good mixer.

It seems to me that I sometimes see these sober men for the last time on earth.  They are walking and talking ghosts, who won't ever be in this corporeal and sensitized state again.  Alcohol and opiates will numb their pain, desensitize the body, until they sleep forever.

But What If I Can't?

I am many things, one of which is a singer. I've sung for as long as I can remember, which for me is 2 or 3 years old.

My first musical memory is of my father standing me next to the piano and teaching me the song "Dites Moi" from South Pacific. Dad played, I sang, and an obsession was born. I can still hear the 4 bar piano intro in my head, V to I, in staccato chords. Dad would play the first note of the melody at the end of the 4th bar, so I knew where to start. But I didn't need the help. I couldn't HELP but know where the song started. It just made sense. It couldn't be anything else.

My love of music grew and grew, from a tiny spot in the center of my little body to the ends of the earth. Momma and I would sing songs from Disney movies and Broadway shows. I knew the words and melodies to every rock song Dad played with his band (I can still feel the foam microphone cover on my cheek as I sat at his keyboard during rehearsal breaks). My Fisher Price record player played everything from John Denver and the Muppets to the soundtrack of "Pollyanna" to Michael Jackson's "Thriller"-- a 4th birthday present from Dad. 

My family likes to joke that I started my "stage life" when I was negative 6 months old. Momma was pregnant with me during a run of "Trial by Jury", a G&S operetta. How could I help but love the theatre? I knew it before almost anything else!

Then when I was 6, I began piano lessons. I had been sitting at the piano "pretending to play" for so long that Momma and Dad knew this was the next logical step. My piano teacher was a little Italian nun with whom I had a love-hate relationship for the next 12 years. She was a part of the Irl Allison Guild; this is an organization for which you must play an "audition" every year in front of a judge, and receive an annual award commensurate with the material you present.  (Translation: If you don't screw up your songs too badly, you get a medal.) I loved these auditions because it was an adrenaline rush like no other.  You sat precariously on the edge of a piano bench, willing your hands to do what you'd worked so hard at all school year, in front of an audience. Then you got to do it AGAIN for a family recital in June..... now my obsession for music included the thrill of live performance.

And so it continued, with piano recitals, stage shows, choral concerts, band concerts, musicals, Pops concerts, Tanglewood concerts, Symphony concerts, more stage shows, TV tapings, movie soundtrack recordings, and on and on and on.

Last year, I came to a violent curve in my musical road.  I was onstage, and suddenly the feeling that I always cherished, that sense of "right" that music and performance gave me, was slipping away.  It turned to panic and rage.  My blood pressure skyrocketed, I broke out in a sweat, and I had to sit down in the middle of a performance.  My wonderful flying feeling from music was crashing and burning in front of my eyes. I tried to brush it off, as a simple flexing of the nerves, or a hypomanic episode.  But it keeps happening, and happening, and happening....

Since then, I have had a few other close calls and cancelled performances.  Two weeks ago, I was singing for a Marvin Hamlisch Tribute at Symphony Hall; we were doing all numbers from "A Chorus Line" with the original Cassie..... holy shit!  This is what young Broadway fans dream of!  How exciting!  But for me, it turned sour again.  I couldn't enjoy it.  I was so bogged down in sadness and anxiety that I had to actually keep myself from sobbing whilst another soloist sang "Sunshine, Lollipops, and Rainbows".  I COULDN'T SING FUCKING SHOWTUNES WITHOUT CRYING. As the 2nd evening of performance progressed, I made a decision.  That night, I would go home, get settled in for the night, and kill myself.  This was it.  Music held no beauty for me anymore.  I sang and felt nothing. What was the point? What will happen to me now?  My sublime comfort in all the chaos had been music, and standing on a stage singing as though the devil were chasing me. It was gone. And soon I would be.

I managed to remember my promise to Paulie and cling to life until the next morning when I got help from my therapist... into another hospital. Now, I can get through the day without wanting to die, most of the time.  I tried hard not to cry for that week in hospital, and the week thereafter when I thought about the fact that I may never be able to perform again. I can't find my fire. I can't find my love of this precious gift that was given to me when I was 2 years old, standing next to Dad at the spinet in the living room, right along the stairs.

I listen to music and sing along softly to the radio. I sing jazz as fiercely as I want while doing the dishes.  I can't practice.  I'm trying hard to keep my chin up, knowing I do have some musical obligations.  My conductor at the Hall is being gracious and wonderful and letting me try a few weekends of Tanglewood this summer. I am determined to find my sublime comfort again, in the memories of a toddler singing in French with her father......

.....but what if I can't?...........

Life on the Inside: or, How to Take a Shower in Fifteen Minutes or Less

When one is on a psych ward, there are at least 2 constants: crazy people, and "checks".  Checks are the constant "checking on" every patient throughout their day.  One staff member per hour walks about with a clipboard, making sure that everyone is safe and accounted for EVERY 15 MINUTES.  They bang on every closed door, including the bathrooms.  A running joke amongst "serial patients" is that if you get REALLY good, you can get into a bathroom, shower, change, and leave before someone comes banging down the bathroom door, insisting that you scream out your first name, last initial over the sound of running water whilst you scrub your hair.  It's like a guillotine that comes out of nowhere, blasting your last dignity; a hot shower where, for a short time, you can forget that you are so crazy you live in a locked space.

Life on an inpatient unit is a real lesson in diversity and similarity.  It's a study in opposites, and how they co-exist.  In this particular case, everyone is here because "coping on the outside" has become impossible.  We are a danger to ourselves and others.  How we handle this ranges from sleeping 20 hour a day to running around the halls in socks at all hours of the day and night, making signs for "those that are not aware of how things work" and refusing all medications.

We squeeze stress balls and wrap ourselves in hospital blankets.  We talk to each other about the "good old days", when we used, drank, cut ourselves.  We compare scars and "The Lists"; lists of the hospitals we've been to, lists of the restraints we've been subjected to, lists of the drugs the docs have "tried out" on us.  We eat far too much, sharing candy and treats visitors have brought us.  We are from the city, country, suburbs.  We live in mansions, ranches, split levels, apartments, group homes, and cars; mental illness is the Almighty Equalizer.

I have watched as a young man cried into the shoulder of an elderly woman, finally accepting his addiction.  I have been the recipient of a piece of candy and a smile from a Hells Angel who loved classical music as much as I did.  We are a beautiful and highly dysfunctional family.  We scream and yell and laugh and cry and try to be "normal".

Today I am reeling; mania has taken over my life in a very real way.  I am inpatient now, trying to mix meds and coping skills into a kind of "cocktail" that might work. 

Mania has made me angry, violent, and frustrated.  My mood is labile (Holy understatement, Batman!) and I find myself getting into arguments with friends and family for no "good" reason. I cannot sit in a group for more than 15 minutes without having to leave.  I have a nasty twitch in my hands if I try to stay any longer.  I find myself pacing the halls, biting my nails so I don't scream at nothing and no one.  I shake violently just trying to keep my brain from leaking out my ears.  Sitting in a group starts to give me a glimpse into the life of Bruce Banner.

Up until yesterday, I would have said that I continue to have great faith in the medical profession to get me through.  Now my feelings are mixed.  While speaking with a doc on Tuesday, we discussed the medications I have taken in the past.  One of them is Depakote; I took it from about 1998-2001.  The doc immediately interjected "Well, I would never put you on that again; it obviously already did its worst." When I asked what she meant she told me that Depakote has been shown to cause PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome).  This is the condition that prevents me from ever having children.  Now the truth comes forward; the very medication that was supposed to "help" me ripped away one of my biggest dreams: motherhood.  The Brahms "Lullaby" plays over the loudspeakers here as I write this, indicating a baby has just been born.  Everytime it plays a bit of my heart bleeds faster. 

And now here I sit, at the end of a little twin hospital bed, writing on a tray table, begging God and all the saints and angels to come and bear a little grief and mania with me.  Maybe if they do, I can finish this latest of life's showers in less than 15 minutes.