Electroboy (32 page)

The next day I’m even more scared waiting in the hallway before my treatment. Although I’m looking forward to the anesthesia, I still fear what they’re going to do to me while I’m unconscious, although most of the thoughts are ridiculously crazy. Maybe they’ll electrocute me by accident. Maybe they’ll cut into me and remove a kidney or liver. Maybe I’ll never wake up. But what frightens me most is the control the doctor and his team have in the operating room—they rule the anesthesia, the oxygen, and the electricity. They can kill me.

I’ve become addicted to the premedication—the high is as good as freebasing. It brings you up to a certain height and suspends you there for a few brief seconds. It re-creates the euphoria of mania. It’s a substitute for everything I ever liked to abuse—alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, sex. When I’m wheeled into the operating room, the first person I greet is the anesthesiologist. He’s my favorite guy in there. We’re in this together. He’s the only one on my side. He’s not only keeping me from feeling any pain, he’s making me feel real good.

When I wake up after my next round of ECT, there are about ten people lying on gurneys in the recovery room, all in different states of alertness, all fighting for the attention of the nurses. I just want to know where I am. It sounds like an army hospital—patients are moaning, whining, and babbling. We’re all lost and confused. It feels like a battlefield. I should have bullet holes in my stomach and shoulders. I should be bleeding through my gown.

My brains feel scrambled. I can’t imagine what a straight line looks like or the shape of a circle. I don’t think I can write without trembling or walk without shuffling. I’m out of order. My memory is totally fucked, too—I have difficulty making any connections and associations to stored information. The wires aren’t hooking up with one another. I struggle to remember even the most simple details like my middle name and address. But oddly, I feel fine-tuned and tremendously relieved. The tension and clogged feeling in my brain has now completely disappeared. I imagine the neurons that were so jammed up in my head now floating free like tiny islands in my brain matter.

Dr. Gelman asks me about my mood change after the second treatment. I can’t really tell the difference between the first ECT and the second. Maybe I feel slightly better. It’s kind of like the fine line of distinction between your first beer and your second. After each treatment, my brain tension is almost gone and the pressure inside is reduced. It’s as if a masseuse has worked the knots and kinks out of my brain. I’m focused on the dramatic relief of being able to breathe.

Even though physically my sense of balance is quite off, emotionally
I’ve never felt more stable. It feels like there’s an equal amount of cells on the left side of my body and the right. An unusual calm and quiet reverberates throughout my body. I can hear my voice and other people’s voices more clearly. The ECT dulls my ability to feel depression or mania. I feel somewhere in the middle, functioning at a normal pace, a pace that seems unusually slow to me. Everyone seems to talk and move slowly. I also feel like my speech has been slowed down considerably, and sometimes I catch myself doing things in slow motion—I’m a calmer version of myself.

But this process is demeaning. I have no real curiosity about my treatment because I’m too confused to ask the doctors questions and don’t know what I would ask them anyhow. I have no idea what’s really going on once they inject me with Brevital. All I know is that I keep having these shock treatments every other day. I no longer have the capacity to be anxious. I hear everybody around me saying that they hope I won’t have to have more than five treatments (five is somehow the magic number) and that I’ll be pronounced well enough to leave the hospital and get into a cab and go home. My condition is supposed to be stabilizing more and more after each treatment, but it’s difficult for me to assess because of the confusion. My memory worsens with each treatment. I often wonder where I am, what I’m doing here, why people are coming to visit me, and where I live. I’m afraid they’re going to keep doing this to me endlessly. Maybe it was a big mistake to sign myself in.

After my third treatment I walk into my bathroom and stare at myself in the mirror. I wonder what the inside of my head looks like by now, if the ECT has actually changed the shape of my brain—really shaken up neurons like the doctors told me it does. I imagine the neurons bouncing around like in one of those big bingo tumblers.

My brain feels like a piece of Silly Putty. I feel tempted to take it out and play with it and think it’ll come out my left ear or out one of my nostrils and I’ll roll it around in my hands and make some adjustments to it and then reinsert it and correct the manic
depression permanently. I believe that this is called do-it-yourself brain surgery. Maybe this is something I should suggest to one of the doctors the next time I go for a treatment. A treatment, singular, sounds like a massage or facial; treatment, by itself, sounds like chemotherapy.

Many of my friends visit me at Gracie Square, including Annike. One afternoon she arrives wearing a brown skirt and blouse, bringing a small gift for me, a drawing of hers, and a candy bar from Germany. She is glad to see that I am feeling better but doesn’t like the course of treatment or the hospital environment for me. “You’ve got to get out of here,” she says. “I’ll be out soon,” I tell her. “You don’t need to be in here,” she says. I ask her about the D.A.’s office. She tells me that she seems free from any prosecution, and I’m relieved that they’re not pursuing an indictment. I didn’t think they would. Our meeting is very brief, but it is good to see her. I don’t think she realizes how sick I am.

There’s not much to do in the hospital. I talk a lot on the phone to friends and otherwise lie in bed and think of stupid things like how many chickens were used to make all the chicken salad sandwiches I’ve ever eaten in my life and how many eggs were used to make all the egg salad sandwiches I’ve ever eaten and how many tea bags were used to make all the iced teas I’ve ever drunk. I write the numbers down on a pad. Very important. And maybe someone will give me a dollar for each one of those chickens, eggs, and tea bags. Or maybe someone will send me to a mental hospital just like this one.

Sometimes I lie in bed wondering if putting my head in the microwave for thirty or forty-five seconds wouldn’t do the same thing as the ECT. I guess it’s my fault for not asking enough questions about exactly what’s going on in the operating room with those electrodes and that voltage. But no, I’m hopeful that I’m making progress, that the depression is leveling off and I’m on the road to recovery.

Michael and Amanda, my friends from the ward, come to my room to visit me. They look like a happy couple on vacation in hospital gowns. But just this morning they were hooked up and jolted with 200 volts. It’s amazing. They ask me if I want to play backgammon. I tell them I hate backgammon. I hate the name. I hate the triangles. So we don’t play. They pull up some chairs. “Cool sweats,” Michael says. “My sister gave them to me,” I tell them. Michael’s a lawyer. Amanda’s a senior at college. There’s a long silence. We all just stare at one another and start laughing because we’re sitting around in our robes with nothing to do. “Let’s play backgammon,” I say.

My parents have brought me a huge stack of books and magazines, but I have difficulty reading and can only look at the pictures. I read a paragraph and then forget what I’ve read, reread it, and then forget it again. The fashion layouts and the advertisements are easy for me to digest. My poor memory frustrates me, and I don’t know when and if it’s going to come back. I only remember who has visited or called or who has sent flowers because I keep a journal I’ve brought with me because I’ve been warned that I will probably forget everything.

One afternoon, about a week into my stay and a few hours after I have rested following a treatment, my father takes me for a walk outside the hospital. I’m wearing my Ralph Lauren sweatpants. I have been indoors for about five days, so I have to adjust to the street noise and the bright light. The city smells wonderful compared with the mental-hospital odor, and I breathe in the smell of hot dogs from the cart on the corner. It’s a beautiful day. I shuffle across the streets, not paying attention to red lights and stepping in front of cars. My father pulls me back several times. We go to a gardening store and find a flat, gray, smooth stone with the word
create
engraved in it. It fits into the palm of my hand. Create. I guess I think it will somehow inspire me to write in my journal, or think, or dream, or maybe just recover more quickly. I’m not exactly sure what I think. But it means “do something while you’re here.” Or maybe it just means “I’ll get better soon.”
I like the smoothness of the stone. My father buys it for me. It is my good-luck charm for my hospital stay, and I put it on my night table. That night, before I go to sleep, I rub it between my hands and pray that I will get better quickly. The following morning, after I wake up, I realize that the stone’s missing. I can’t find it anywhere. Since I am horribly confused from yesterday’s ECT, I assume that I have misplaced it and begin looking all over the room but can’t find it. I am particularly disturbed because my memory is failing me and I’m not even sure that my father left the stone with me and think that he might have taken it home. I call him to check. No, he’s sure that he left it on my night table. Maybe I threw it in the garbage by accident. No luck. Finally, at lunch hour, when all of the patients assemble in the dining room, I see Rosie, a black schizophrenic patient in her thirties, carrying the stone around with her, showing it off to other patients as if it were a new diamond ring. She’s smiling as she shoves it in front of each patient’s face. I approach her and ask her where she found it. On the ward a few days ago. I tell her that, coincidentally, I have the same one and I suggest that the one she has might possibly be mine. She refuses to give it back to me, and I ask the nurse to intervene before I attempt to get her to return my stone by force. After all, this is my good-luck stone from my father and I just want it back. I’m not angry at her. She’s sick. This is the stone that is going to get me well and get me out of this mental hospital. Rosie refuses to return the stone and barricades herself in her room. It takes three nurses to get her to come out, and they finally make her return it to me. But this game of cat and mouse goes on for days. No matter where I hide the stone—even underneath my pillow—she steals it, and the nurses have to search her room for it. Even when she is caught with the stone, Rosie claims victory, jumping up and down. It ends up being a fun game to kill time on the ward.

I’m looking forward to my fourth and final treatment, because if all goes well, I’ll probably be discharged the following day, and I’m not really enjoying my stay at Gracie Square Spa. I’m also
hoping that this will be my last ECT treatment ever and that I can be put on a program of medication that will stabilize the manic depression. In the operating room I thank Dr. Wallenstein and tell him I’ll be in touch with him. The final ECT is a breeze. I’m already a pro. I feel great the next day and spend it watching television, and packing up my things, and saying good-bye to my shock buddies and the nurses. At lunch Lena asks me if I feel I am cured. Her question surprises me because she’s been ill for so long and it seems as though four electroshock treatments have done the trick for me. I tell her that I am feeling better than when I came into the hospital. “That’s how I felt,” she tells me. This worries me. Will I be coming back soon, too? I’m feeling guilty for leaving the group behind, but there’s no reason to hang around. The next day, when it’s time for me to leave Gracie Square and one of the nurses escorts me down in the elevator, Rosie stays behind, watching me as I leave the ward, the stone clutched in my hand.

My father brings me home and I reacquaint myself with my apartment. I’m not really sure it’s mine. It feels as if I’ve been away on vacation for a few months, and I have a very vague memory of where I’ve been and none of the actual ECT. I’m completely exhausted. I unpack my bags and try to make myself comfortable but feel incredibly out of place, as though I’ve crossed a few time zones and just returned from Tokyo. Ten days in the hospital seems like it was crammed into one afternoon. I spend the entire weekend in bed, unable to move my body. On Monday I drag myself out of bed to go to work, and the crowds of people on the subway overwhelm me. I’m suffocating. Going back to my job at CASES feels like a huge mistake. There’s no way that I’m ready for this. When I walk into the office, everybody looks at me kindly, and I just smile. They all know that I’ve been hospitalized, and the director had no choice but to allow me the time off. I sit down at my desk and just stare at “Page Six” of the
New York Post
until I’m called into my boss’s office. He asks me to have a seat. He looks concerned, and I assume he’s going to give me a pep talk, but instead he gently lets me know that he has to let me go because
things aren’t working out. I’m relieved. I know that I’m barely even capable of sorting paper clips from rubber bands. I stand up, thank him, and walk out. I go back to my office and organize my Rolodex, some files, and my briefcase and say a brief good-bye to the friends I’ve made in the last couple of months. I go upstairs to Human Resources to take care of the details of my departure. I’m thrilled to be leaving. I get into the subway and head home. When I get into my apartment, I fall onto my bed and drift into a deep sleep until one in the morning.