Read Installment 1 here
Read Installment 2 here
Read Installment 3 here
4th installment of
WHEN ANGELS KNOCK
by
Janice Barrett
CHAPTER 2
By late afternoon, I am taken out of lockdown and put into room 206, a semi-private room in the mental ward of the hospital. It looks like any other room in any hospital. I have no roommate and don’t like being isolated; it gives me more time to wonder about my wacko behaviour, speculating about whether mom’s disease is inherited. I have my mother’s colouring but my father’s features.
Alone in the room, alone in my thoughts, knowing what sent me other the edge, wondering what is happening to my life, I’m startled by a rap on the door. A nurse pokes her head into my room, “The Psychiatrist would like to see you. Follow me,” she says.
I tag along watching her back not really paying attention to where I am going. There is no nameplate on the door we enter. It’s a stark office with a desk, three chairs and no personal family photographs, books or certificates. Nothing to signal ownership. A white-coated doctor sits behind a desk and looks at me, then drops his pen on his pad. He says thank you to the nurse who leaves, closing the door behind her.
He motions to the chair across from his desk. “Have a seat.”
He is dark skinned and I wonder what nationality he is. Looking at his name badge doesn’t help. There is no way I can pronounce that name.
“Do you have no any concerns?” he asks.
I’m sure I must have looked at him shocked. Between his heavy accent and his words, I can’t understand what he’s said. And he’s looking at me like I’m slow, because he says again almost irritated, “Do you have no any concerns?”
A few more now. They’re growing by the minute. Of course I’m concerned, I’m in a mental ward. Is that a question? How am I to answer that? It’s too general. I need a specific question; concerns about what? About my hospital stay, the room, the nurses, about my life and what part of it?
“I think I am paranoid schizophrenic like my mother.”
There I did it. That’s a legitimate concern. Maybe it will be all right after all.
“No any paranoid person would walk in my office and articulate that. They would try to hide it and that was the one thing you say first. So you no any paranoid.”
Oh My God, I think I understand him. I don’t know if that makes things better or worse. And think of the eye doctor when he’s examining your eyes and asks better or worse and when it gets to that point where you just aren’t sure; that’s where I am. But his words are a relief. I’m not schizophrenic. I had worried for years that I would be like my mother. I trust what he says as truth.
The Psychiatrist picks up his pen again. “Do you know why you are here?”
“I went crazy.”
“You remember?”
“Yes.”
“What number medications did you take?”
“Medications? I don’t know what you mean.”
And then I recognize Bob’s gym bag on the corner of his desk. He stands up to place the bag between us on the desk.
“You recognize this?” he asks.
“Yes, it’s my husband Bob’s gym bag.”
The Psychiatrist opens the bag. “Your husband find medications. Did you buy?”
“Yes. They’re vitamin pills.”
“They are 37 medications.”
When the vitamin pills are scattered between three bathrooms and kitchen cupboards, it doesn’t seem a lot until you see them dumped in one bag. Most of these bottles have been kicking around our house for years and are long expired, but getting rid of them is a hassle. You can’t flush them down the toilet or put them in the garbage. I always forget about them on hazardous waste day when I get rid of my paint cans.
It’s a bag of failure, a multitude of good intentions, inspired by doctors on television, or magazine articles over the past ten years to eat right, exercise and supplement with vitamins. A reminder that, I can’t stick with any program.
The Psychiatrist stares into this bag without examining the bottles. He doesn’t even put his hand in the bag to move them around. He sits forward in his chair, looking at me, expecting me to come up with some revelation of some kind. They are frigging vitamin pills. What does he want from me? Yeah there are a bunch, but many of the newer bottles only have a few pills out of them, because when they make my stomach bloat, I stop taking them and try and find other ones which my body can tolerate. He looks at them as some kind of evidence; for what I can’t imagine.
“What number medications you take from the bag?”
“I am not on any prescribed medications from my doctor. I took vitamin A, C, D, E, and the two homeopath liquids my Chiropractor gave me, a liver-detox and lymph something drops.”
“Here 37 bottles your husband find and put in bag. You take each?”
“No. Four vitamins and the homeopath stuff.”
“How you are feeling now?”
“There’s something physically wrong with me. It’s really serious. Whatever this thing is I have, it’s weird. I’m weak and my stomach bloats up huge.”
The Psychiatrist lays his pen down, falling back into his chair.
“I feel like I’m going to collapse, am weak all over and get tired out fast. My head is in a fog and I get confused with pressure in my head. Sometimes my words get mixed up and my eyes are gummy and blurry.”
He stops looking at me, his eyes roaming the ceiling, his arms crossed. This Psychiatrist is just like my family doctor, Dr. Smith. Just like this Psychiatrist, Dr. Smith won’t even acknowledge that there’s something physically wrong with me. He looks at me like I’m fat and lazy. Like I won’t help myself by dieting and exercise.
If it weren’t for Nurse Hill, I wouldn’t know what’s wrong with me. She’s the only one who listens and believes me.
***
I’m at Dr. Smith’s office so much, I don’t even bother sorting through the magazines. I’ve read them all. Nurse Hill calls my name and takes me to a room she works out of.
“Dr. Smith is on holidays so you will be seeing a locum doctor,” she says.
I wonder what kind of a doctor that is; locum at least it isn’t “loco,” but I never question, it isn’t my nature.
The nurse does the usual blood pressure and temperature.
“So how are you feeling?”
“I’m really sick but I have so many weird symptoms.”
“Like?” Nurse Hill takes out pen and paper and lists them as I speak. She believes what I’m telling her! I don’t have to convince her I’m sick. I can relax, reassured that she’ll help me.
Without any hesitation, she says, “This sounds like Cushing’s Disease.”
She taps diligently on her computer keyboard until the screen displays large letters reading: “Cushing’s Disease and Syndrome. “Yes, you have almost all the symptoms listed here. I’m going to recommend blood work be done to investigate this. The locum doctor will be in shortly,” and she leaves.
I let out a big sigh. That it could be so easy after all these horrible months of suffering. Back and forth numerous times complaining about these same symptoms, with Dr. Smith dismissing them and me over and over again.
I wait, hopeful. The locum doctor sits down. He examines me and questions me further and writes out a requisition form for me to take to the lab to have blood work done at eight AM, precisely.
I’m the first one in line at the lab the next morning. It’s a quick procedure and I am out the door in no time and back home. I check many websites on the internet about Cushing’s disease. The more I read about it, the more certain I am I have it. These sites are describing what is happening to my body.
***
And now here I am stuck in this hospital when I need to follow up on the blood work results.
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