Get Me Out of Here (8 page)

That woke me up in a hurry. A seizure? The last thing I remembered was watching TV with Tim. But how did I get from there into the bedroom? A blackout. Scary. But it wasn't nearly as scary as it must have been to Tim who'd witnessed the entire incident.

I listened in amazement as he told me what had happened. I'd been lying on the couch. We'd talked a bit during the commercials. Then I'd begun to stare at the ceiling, a faraway look in my eyes. Then suddenly I'd started shaking uncontrollably, rocking back and forth, eyeballs rolling. Drooling. Tim had stayed by my side, scared beyond belief, afraid I'd swallow my tongue and asphyxiate. The episode stopped as suddenly as it had come on, and I'd passed out.

He'd called Dr. Padgett's emergency number immediately, and the doctor said it sounded like a grand mal seizure and told Tim to take me to the emergency room right away. When Tim mentioned the late hour and the fact that Jeffrey and Melissa were soundly sleeping, Dr. Padgett instructed him to wake me up, get me to count, keep me awake, call him back, and go the hospital the absolute first thing in the morning.

The next morning I sat in the hospital while someone pasted electrodes to my scalp for an EEG. A few days later I was injected with a dye and had a CT scan. A neurologist put me on Tegretol, an antiseizure and antidepression medication. Because Tegretol is known, in some cases, to reduce the white platelet count in the bloodstream and inhibit the body's natural immune system, I had to go to the hospital outpatient center twice a week to monitor my white cell levels.

I was probed, pricked, zapped, injected, placed in strange claustrophobic devices, referred to a number of physicians, and had various test procedures in Dr. Padgett's thorough quest to make sure that I had no underlying physiological illness or condition that had prompted the seizure. Overkill, I had thought at the time. But his concern for me was obvious—at least some consolation for my newfound status as a human guinea pig.

There were a wide number of possibilities, the most likely being an adverse reaction to Mellaril. But I was still tested to exclude every other potential problem.

After a month on Tegretol, my white platelet count was steadily plummeting and approaching the danger zone. In the meantime, I was losing control of my emotions and was out of touch with reality. I exploded into hysterical tirades with increasing frequency at home and in sessions. Finally, in late August, Dr. Padgett and I agreed that I needed to be hospitalized again. This time I would start in the intensive care unit—lockup. Ostensibly the placement was because the facility was better equipped to monitor physical conditions. I wondered, however, if I wasn't being sent there because I'd simply spun so far out of control that I was crazy to the point of no return.

If the first hospitalization could be summarized as a three-week frat party, the second was like a three-week stint as a laboratory test animal.

My blood was taken twice daily. I had an EEG. I had an MRI, gaining the distinction of being the first adult in the lab's history to somehow wiggle my way back out of the claustrophobic tunnel after the test had begun. Now I was pricked and probed, injected, and scanned on a daily basis. After a week in intensive care, Dr. Padgett gave up on the Tegretol, switched my antidepressant, and transferred me to the stress unit.

It was a series of human experiments, described in dressed-up clinical terms as “medication adjustments.” I adjusted to the new antidepressant and different anti-anxiety pills by throwing up, passing out, shaking uncontrollably, and hallucinating my way through a host of medications to find the right combination. It reached the point where I manifested nearly every possible side effect of every medication I tried.

Finally I demanded to be taken off all of them. Dr. Padgett wasn't sure if I was really physiologically averse to the drugs or if some of the reactions were a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was growing impatient with both him and his infuriatingly calm insistence that this was the trial-and-error nature of determining the correct psychiatric pharmaceuticals for an individual's chemistry. Easy enough for him to say, I thought.

The demographics of the general psych ward patients this time were considerably older and disproportionately female in comparison to my first stay. Most were veterans of previous stays, as well as psychiatric drug “adjustment” scenarios.

Because I had gained little benefit from classes and group sessions during my first hospital stay—and indeed had distracted from the benefits others may have gained—I did not go to group therapy or psychodrama sessions.

This stay was far lonelier than the first one. I spent most of it questioning whether embarking on therapy with Dr. Padgett had been a wise decision. Could I ever trust him again? And—as much as I hated to ponder it—I wondered if I were destined to spend the rest of my life in and out of the psych ward, like some of the patients I'd met who were in for the third, fourth, and even tenth time. Was I a lifer? Had I snapped irrevocably—the crazy old aunt in the attic?

Still, as depressing as the hospital ward was, I feared the life that awaited me on the outside even more. It was one I wasn't sure I was equipped to handle now or maybe ever. The news of my release order was, once again, a disappointment, although I was careful not to let Dr. Padgett know.

After my release, I proceeded to act more out of control than ever. I carried around a renewed skepticism and resentment of Dr. Padgett and a heightened fear that I had been rendered irrevocably insane—something I also blamed on the doctor. Therapy sessions followed a consistent pattern. I was either belligerent, defensive, and hostile, attacking everything that Dr. Padgett said. Or I was numb, without emotion. I'd cross my arms and state flatly that therapy was a waste of time and money, and I had nothing to talk about. Dr. Padgett was pressing even harder to get to the early childhood issues, and I resisted him with all the fury I could muster. I not only threatened my own life but also threatened to tell both the American Medical Association and the media that he was an incompetent fraud, something I sincerely believed.

“My father was right about you shrinks,” I told him. “You are nothing more than a bunch of greedy quacks, screwing with people's heads and trying to get people hooked on you.”

It was hard to remember that there had ever been soothing moments and harder yet to figure out why, despite all the hatred I felt toward him, I was still paying $120 a session, three days a week, to see him. I couldn't imagine life without him. It was too late to walk away now, I thought. I was already hooked and convinced that the only way out of this downwardly spiraling trap was to die.

Clearly the therapy had lost its stride. We were rehashing the same issues, and I was throwing up explosive roadblocks to the exploration of anything new. I was quickly losing confidence, not only in the process, but also in myself.

Thus Dr. Padgett suggested a more intensive form of therapy: use of the couch. The couch, the therapist in a chair vaguely nodding, the patient on her back, staring at the ceiling. It was the epitome of the psychotherapy stereotype. Vienna-style. At the beginning of the next session, I headed straight for the couch.

“Umm, this is weird,” I said, staring at the ceiling to spot its imperfections and distract myself from a surprising jolt of anxiety. “Dr. Padgett? Are you there?”

“Yes,” I heard his voice, the gentle tonic. “I'm here, right here.”

I was surprised by how much his words reassured me. Without the eye contact, I felt strangely isolated. This, indeed, was more intense than I'd thought it would be.

“Dr. Padgett?”

“Yes.”

“What do I do here? I mean, what am I supposed to say?” Anxiety was beginning to overwhelm me.

“Say anything that comes to your mind. Just relax. I'm here. Just say what's on your mind.”

After a short period of silence, a vision flashed in my mind. I began to whimper. I wanted to stop, but I couldn't.

“It's okay,” he said in a hypnotic voice. “What's happening right now?”

“I'm in my room.” I was breathing heavily, my heart pounding. I began to sweat. “Looking out my window. It's black out there. Total darkness. Scary. And I'm thinking about what happens when I die, about where I was before I was born, and it's really scaring me. What was I before I was born?”

“How old are you?”

“I'm little. Maybe six.” I could feel myself starting to hyperventilate.

“It's okay. I'm here. Why don't you go tell someone? Why don't you go get your parents?”

“I can't! They'll get so mad at me. I'm a baby—afraid of the dark. I think about such stupid things anyway. They hate that. They're already mad at me. I can't bother them anymore. It's late, they'd … they'd …”

I was visibly shaking by now.

“It's okay. I'm here. What would they do?”

“I have to go to the bathroom. Really bad.”

“So why don't you?”

“Because I can't leave my room. I'm afraid. He's in his underwear; he's mad; he told me he didn't want to see my goddamned face anymore tonight if I know what's good for me. He'll see me; he'll … he'll …”

“What will he do?”

“He'll take out the belt. He told me to shut up and go to bed. I
have
to stay here. I'm too scared.”

“Too scared to go to the bathroom when you need to?”

“He told me to shut up and go to bed. I can't leave here. I'm scared! I kind of wish I could be dead, but I can't because I don't know what happens to dead people. I don't know where I came from.”

“Haven't you talked to them about death? About how much it scares you?”

“I can't! Grandpa just died. They don't wanna talk about it. She cries all the time; he never cries at all. No one talks about it. They tell me I think too much, and that's bad. Very bad. I just think I'm too smart for my own good, but I'm not that smart. I just want to be the center of attention. I can't tell them! I can't go to the bathroom! I can't even die. I'm too scared. Please help me!”

“It's okay. You're here in my office, and I'm with you. These are feelings, that's all. The feelings can't hurt you. You aren't there anymore; you're here. And you're safe with me.”

My breathing slowed a bit.

“So you're feeling very frightened. You want to die, but you're afraid of it because you aren't sure what happens. You need to go to the bathroom, but you're afraid to do that too. So what happens? What do you do with these feelings?”

“I … I … I can't tell you that.”

“Why can't you tell me that?”

“Because it's a dirty, horrible, filthy, disgusting sin, and I'll burn in hell for it.”

“There's nothing a six-year-old can do to make her burn in hell, but if you don't want to tell me, it's okay.”

As if I didn't hear him, I continued. “Daddy caught me once, started snapping the belt. Told me how dirty and shameful I was. Told me if he ever caught me doing something that shameful again, he'd use it on me.”

“The belt?”

I nodded in tears.

“Did you feel ashamed?”

“Yes! It was really bad. I … I … I was playing with myself. I was masturbating. I'm gonna die and go to hell! Grandma's looking down on me, saying how nasty and shameful I am. She was a saint, and I'm horrible, and she hates me!”

“Does it feel pleasurable to masturbate?”

“Yes! That's what's so bad about it. I know it's nasty and sinful. It's shameful. But I like doing it. I can't stop. I do it every night, really quiet. Sneaky. I'm really bad.”

“No, you weren't bad. You were very afraid, so you were doing something to mix some pleasurable feelings to drown out the terrible ones so you could stand it. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing shameful or bad. You were only six, doing what you needed to do in a very scary place.”

I was crying in a nearly piercing wail by then, flooded with feelings of the scene, almost trapped in it.

“We only have ten minutes left in the session,” said Dr. Padgett. “Why don't you go ahead and sit up. That's good.”

Looking in his eyes, finally, I was transfixed by them. He wasn't crying, like me, nor visibly anguished as I was. But even through the blank screen of his face, I could see the sadness in his eyes and felt a rebirth of connection. We'd been through something together, something intense and shameful to me, and he'd stood by me, guiding me through it. He hadn't laughed, judged, scolded—or left me.