by Andy Behrman
Inside the O.R. I notice Dr. Wallenstein standing to my left. He’s wearing a jacket and tie and those black sneaker-like shoes, and he’s next to what looks like an old stereo component system. He shakes my hand and introduces me to the anesthesiologist, the nurse, an assistant, and a group of residents. He seems too slick and charming to be doing what he does. He should be working at Goldman Sachs. He’s humming, like he’s out for a walk on the beach or working in his garden. I guess he feels at home here. It’s making me feel very uncomfortable, but I put my head back anyway. Everyone is hovering over me. Standing room only. I’m making small talk to keep my mind off the fact that I’m about to have my brains jolted with 200 volts of electricity while ten note-taking residents gawk. I’m thinking about the electric chair and being struck by lightning, and joking incessantly to fight off the terror. Is it too late for the call from the governor? No call. The show must go on. “Got an Amstel Light?” I ask. No response. I give the thumbs-up. An I.V. of Brevital, an anesthetic, is stuck into my arm, silencing me. The room has a peculiarly sterile smell. I feel like I’ve just smoked cocaine and drifted high into the clouds and am struggling to stay awake. It’s a losing battle; I eventually lose consciousness. But I’ve been told what will happen: an I.V. of succinylcholine chloride goes in next, relaxing my muscles to prevent broken bones and cracked vertebrae from the seizure that will occur. The nurse sticks a rubber block in my mouth so I don’t bite off my tongue, a mask over my nose and mouth so my brain is not deprived of oxygen, and electrodes on my temples. All clear. Dr. Wallenstein presses the button. Electric current shoots through my brain for an instant, causing a grand-mal seizure for twenty seconds. My toes curl. It’s over. My brain has been reset like a windup toy.
I wake up thirty minutes later and think I’m in a hotel room in Acapulco. My head feels as if I’ve just downed a frozen margarita too quickly. My jaw and limbs ache. But I am elated. “Come, Electroboy,” says the nurse with a thick Jamaican accent. I take a sip of juice as she grabs my arm and escorts me downstairs in the elevator to my room, where my parents and sister are waiting for me. They stare at me like I’ve just returned from Jupiter. I start doing jumping jacks. They look surprised. “I feel great,” I announce with delight. My mother’s eyes well up with tears. I take a break from my jumping jacks and give her a hug. It’s one of those moments when I realize that I’m oddly larger than my mother. I put my head on her shoulder. She smells like Fendi. My father gives me a gentle kiss on the forehead and holds back his tears. Nancy kisses me and starts to cry. Expected. All I can do is smile and laugh. I feel so fucking good. It’s over. Someone finally repaired my brain this morning.
I’m glad that my whole family is here with me in my hospital room. I feel like a hostage who’s just been released after six months of captivity. But it doesn’t seem right for me to cry at this moment because I’ve never felt like this. I’ve never felt this happy—or is it this healthy? I feel incredibly different than I did pre-ECT, which was just an hour ago. Like the hard concrete that filled my brain has been liquefied and drained from my skull. I’m curious as to whether I look as good as I feel. You look fine, my parents and sister assure me. But the looks in their eyes betray them. I go into the bathroom to check things out in the mirror. I look awful. More specifically, crazy. Absolutely nuts. Like a lunatic. My eyes are glassy, and my pupils are all dilated. I hope that goes away. I go back to the room and start asking lots of questions. Do I have a job? Yes. An apartment? Yes. A dog? No. The questions sound insane to me, but I really don’t know the answers. I feel like my memory’s been erased. I’m a little unsteady on my feet, so I grab onto the bed and I climb in and prop my head up on the pillows. The sheets are unusually stiff—they remind me of the sheets at Esmor. My sister looks more frightened than my parents, like her little brother has become Randle P. McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She looks beautiful but very pale. She pulls her hair back behind her ears nervously and hands me a box from an oversized glossy navy blue Ralph Lauren shopping bag. I feel like it’s my birthday and the family has come to visit their crazed son in the mental hospital, and now I’m a little embarrassed. I open it up—it’s a pair of navy blue Polo sweatpants. I am now officially designated the most fashionable mental patient at Gracie Square Hospital. I wonder if the nurses will let me wear these during my next ECT treatment. I’m not sure that these are intended to be worn by a patient undergoing a course of electroshock treatment in a mental hospital; sweats are more of an outdoor thing. They seem too athletic—too healthy—too sane—too American for the mental ward. They’ve got a neat little American flag on them. You can’t shock someone with a neat little American flag on his sweatpants. It would be like burning the flag. Entirely un-American. I thank my sister for them and go into the bathroom to try them on. They will serve as a symbol of sanity to guard me in the hospital through this nightmare. Or I’ll just pretend this hospital stay is a Ralph Lauren commercial for the insane.
Later I’m stretched out in bed and my parents and sister pull their chairs up alongside me. For a brief moment I’m confused as to where I am. I think I’m in Connecticut, and I forget what I’m doing in the hospital. My father reminds me that I’ve had ECT and that I’m “at Gracie Square Hospital on East 76th Street in New York City.” I laugh. My brains have really been scrambled. I’m very confused. I feel like these well-dressed people have walked into the middle of my dream. I hold my mother’s hand. If I could just snap out of this fog I’m in, I’ll be okay. I’m happy to be with my family. It’s nice that they’re all here. But most important, I’m glad that the pressure in my head has been relieved. It feels like one big pipe in my head has been cleaned out with a plunger and everything is finally circulating. I hope that I can hold on to this sensation for a little while longer. I wonder how long this ECT treatment will last. I tell my parents and sister as much as I remember about the operating room, about seeing Dr. Wallenstein beforehand, and about waking up in the recovery room. But I can’t tell them anything about the actual ECT—it’s almost as if I missed the second act. But watching them shift in the fiberglass hospital chairs, I can tell how frightened they are. My sister walks out of the room for a soda, and I’m alone with my parents. My mother is drinking a Diet Coke and holding my father’s hand. I’m focusing on her wedding band and her engagement ring. I feel like I’ve done something horribly wrong to my parents. I’ve dragged them across the George Washington Bridge into this mental hospital. I feel tremendously guilty about having this invisible illness. I should just be able to shake it. Sweat it out. Make it go away. I wish I were here for something concrete, like an inoperable tumor in my brain that the doctor could show my parents on a CAT scan. Do they even buy this whole manic depression story? I’m not even so sure I believe it yet. I just don’t want them to be angry with me. I must be putting them through hell. I think back to them watching my trial and visiting me at Esmor. Technically, being hospitalized is the third strike. They should just give up on me now and walk right out of this hospital. But they’re hanging in there again. How much more shit can they take? I’ll do whatever I can to get better and get out of this place quickly and get home and get back to normal for them. I’ll try to fix whatever I’ve done wrong that’s landed me here and make this whole situation better. I feel like I’m ten years old again and I’ve done something terrible like taken their car for a drive around the block and smashed it up. But for now all I can really focus on is the pain in my aching arms and legs, and I ask my father to rub them. He kneads my calves, and the pain from the voltage that I’ve been zapped with slowly dissipates. When I was thirteen and going through a painful growth spurt, he sat with me every night until I fell asleep. This is the same ache. And he’s relieving my pain. We’re talking to each other, and I realize that I’m not hearing anything except their telling me “we really think you have a chance to get better here.” Well, of course, isn’t that why I’m here? My sister comes back into the room with a Diet Coke. Now we’re all
drinking Diet Cokes except for my father. The three of them get up and huddle outside my room in the hallway and leave me alone to rest.
After my parents leave the room, I notice that the manic depression that was cycloning in my head hours before is now sleeping like a baby. I’m frightened of waking it, so I lie totally still, flipping the TV channels with the remote.
That evening Dr. Gelman, the ward psychiatrist, knocks on the door. He’s a soft-spoken man in his early forties. My stories of my ankle bracelet and house arrest make him laugh. But he’s more curious about the success of my first treatment. I tell him that I think it went extremely well and that I feel great, with the exception of the aches and pains and the memory loss. The pressure in my head is gone and I’m relaxed. I admit that I enjoyed the premedication quite a bit—the Brevital’s real good stuff. Can I get a private session with the anesthesiologist? He chuckles. He tells me he’ll speak with Dr. Wallenstein but that we’ll probably wait another day until I have a second treatment. How many treatments will I need? He tells me he’s not sure yet and that it’ll depend on how I respond to each subsequent treatment. Like Dr. Wallenstein, he’s a believer in voodoo ECT. So am I.
The next day my parents escort me into the dining room, where they watch as I inhale some turkey and mashed potatoes for dinner—I haven’t eaten since last night, and I’m starving. They pass on regards from family and friends. It feels like another visiting day at Esmor and I’m locked up again, just counting the days this time instead of the months. I always seem to be eating or drinking something in these visiting situations, and we always end up talking about such normal things—movies, restaurants, trips, and the grandchildren. And they are always so well dressed in these institutional settings. Visiting hours are about to end, and my parents tell me that they’re going to meet friends for dinner. Their imminent departure throws my situation into stark relief, and I feel cheated that I’m eating dry turkey and gluey mashed potatoes while I know they’ll be eating at a restaurant that’s just been written up in The New York Times this week. I’m the one doing the time again. I’m just not the lucky one in the family. (I’m also the one in the family who had the allergies, too.) I wish I could get a pass to go out to dinner with my parents. I slowly start convincing myself that I’m really okay and that further treatments are no more necessary than a salt rub.
Once my parents are gone, I walk the long hallway back to the patients’ lounge. The television is blaring, and all the nuts are sitting around it in a semicircle. I focus on their faces instead of the television. Lena is staring out the window watching the traffic go by. Michael is peeking through his hands at the television. Amanda is fidgeting with her bandages. Bob, my roommate, a schizophrenic in his fifties, is sitting off to the side mumbling something about the CIA. By degrees I realize the extent of my illness. I’m not sure what I was thinking before, but this place isn’t Canyon Ranch. I’m not here for herbal wraps, mud baths, facials, or five-mile hikes. After thirty-three years it hits me that there’s something really wrong with me. I have a mental illness.
When we get back to the room, Bob starts speaking rapidly and incessantly. I try to avoid contact with him as much as possible, mainly because I’m so tired but also because he frightens me. He talks nonstop about the government plotting his death, and I don’t even have the energy to respond, so I just ignore him. “Do me a favor, go downtown and check and see if the Statue of Liberty is still there,” he barks at me. “If it’s not there, we’ll overthrow the damn government,” he screams. “Bill and Hillary Clinton are trying to kill me—slowly,” he says. Quickly, I hope. If I were manic, I might play along with this game. For the first time I’m comforted by my condition. He’s in much worse shape than me.
10:00 P.M.
Bedtime at Gracie Square. Lights out. Doors shut and locked. I have trouble falling asleep because I’ve slept all day, so I ring for the nurse and ask for a sleeping pill. She brings me an Ambien. I go over to the window and watch the cars driving by and the rhythm of the traffic lights changing. I’m controlling it with the blink of my eyes. I try to time it perfectly and keep my eyes shut in time with the red. Green means “go downtown.” I dream that I put on my jeans and a T-shirt and jump into a cab and go downtown and meet some friends for a drink even though it’s 2:30 A.M. Shit, I’m wide awake. Does this mean I’m still manic? Maybe this ECT isn’t working. Bob is talking in his sleep. I can barely understand what he’s saying, but he sounds more relaxed. Nobody’s chasing him.
There’s no CIA, FBI, IRS, NRA, or KGB. Maybe ECT is working for him.
It takes about twenty minutes before I fall asleep. I dream I’m lying naked on a stainless steel gurney. Two guards wheel me into a room where a team of doctors start working on me while I’m conscious. I’m in a car wash. I’m hosed down first, shampooed, soaped up, hosed down again, dried off. My hands and feet are manicured, my teeth scrubbed. When I’m done, I’m wheeled into recovery. I come out wearing a tuxedo.
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.
