A Brave Girl and E.C.T
Without Prejudice
She is so brave and so devastated at the same time. Sucking up pain and rejection like she somehow deserves it and. I know she doesn't. A happy smiling face turned into a mask. A mask of no expression, ennui, stoicism and I wonder if I will see that smile which shows her dimples again. I am angry, angry at life that has brought us here.
The gentle Asian Psych who was running late until I demanded attention from the quiet receptionist, not wanting to make her wait any longer. He came running into the waiting room apologising profusely and humbly and I soften my stance a little. She has brought a plastic bag with a few possessions
In anticipation of a hospital stay.
I am supposed to be going to a funeral today and I know already my chances of making it are slim. i'm not going to make it I think as he looks up the notes on her illness. Her eight month illness of not feeling the least desire to eat. Her lack of energy, no mania, thank God, just a depression so profound she has come to a full stop.
He states she has had a traumatic life, physical abuse from the one significant male who should have loved and cared for her. He knew how to give love to himself in spades but not for her, not for her. Nor the other middle daughter, but making plain his favour of the oldest child. Causing problems for her and the other girls.
The psych explains she will need years of therapy. Long sessions of counselling for the physical abuse, he used to throw her against walls at 8 and watch her slide down in disgust, her face bloodied and bruised. And I would try to stop him, stop him berating a child and cop it myself. And I would hold her after and rock her, smelling the sweat on her head, my sweet baby again.
She was a happy bonny baby, full of the joys of living, every day as a toddler she would wake with a smile,
" I waked up now", she would say.
Placid and happy, a gorgeous child with chubby cheeks and dimples.
Then she didn't do well at school, she was over active and immature, still sucked her thumb, wandered around classrooms, interrupted the Teacher. Was sent to the Krongold Centre at Monash Hospital for assessment. They said she was fine and had at 7 the reading age of a 13 year old.
Her over activity and impulsiveness didn't win her many friends except for naughty kids. The police came first when she was eight. Questioned her about broken windows at school, her and another girl who was a bit slow. The other girl confessed and named names. Or one name, our daughter.
She answered the police questions with aplomb, boys had broken the windows she said and threatened her and the other girl to say they had done it. Her big blue eyes widened at the cops and they went away totally believing her. She told me as an adult it was really her, but didn't want a hiding from her Father.
He started to despise the middle two girls, rebels, just like he had been. He would barely speak to them from then on, not in any real way. And the violence went on, the silent horror of domestic violence. I left him twice in the first year but had no where to go. My Mum and Dad hadn't wanted me to marry him. He had a violent confrontation with my Mum when I was married and having my first baby.
She was mentally ill at that time with Graves Disease, an over active thyroid. He and her argued in the bedroom and she said he hit her. He said he simply pushed her away and she fell over a suitcase. She had a black eye. He was my husband and she my Mum, but I believed him and she returned home to Sydney the next day.
He said re the black eye, she probably punched herself in the eye later to make it look bad for him.
No one believed it of him, in those days there was no Single Parent Pension to help you have your own money. If you didn't work you had to rely on your husband for money. There was no decent child care, there was no 50 percent of women in the work force, girls were brought up to get married and have babies. He would not let me work, preferring the girls to be at home with me minding them.
He didn't like dummies, bottles or me. Right from the get go we were fighting. I was pregnant and he organised a wedding. I was 17. Anxious to be out of home, anxious to be independent and working. I worked in the U.K. At British Home Stores in the Office as a mail clerk. once back in Oz my brother and I grew weary of not working in Wagga. There were no jobs.
We ran away to Sydney to my soldier brothers place and joined them on a trip to Victoria for Easter. I stayed in Melbourne and was employed immediately at Myers in Chadstone. Children's books. Then Lindsay's in children's wear. I had 2 babies by then. We had a house by then in Keysborough. We were to stay there twenty years.
Nothing prepared me for his violence. I was embarrassed by it, devastated, humiliated. I didn't know men that hit women, nothing like it ever crossed my path during childhood. My Dad an extreme pacifist never allowed the boys, my brothers, to put a finger on us. He had a brutal Father and swore he would never hurt his own kids and never did.
But my husband had no such promise. He was first violent towards me six weeks after our first baby was born. It was like he waited until I was tied to him hand and foot. So I began night work and weekends at KFC in Springvale so that I had money of my own. He never ever gave me housekeeping money in our entire marriage, I had to earn it. Or save it from child endowment.
I learned to be very frugal with money.
But she sits my 37 year old child, determined to be heard, determined to be believed and like a snail with her home on her back, she clutches the plastic bag full of pyjamas and says she is not leaving until she is admitted to the hospital. She begs for ECT, now, back in February she didn't want it, ran from the Hospital then, lying and telling them she was eating. But she wasn't.
She passes the criteria for E.C.T. Two psychiatrists and two anti psychotic drugs, anti depressants. None of them have worked. The family doctor was shocked at her appearance last Friday. He smiled at her, his patient, he delivered her 37 years ago. He said he worked at Pine Lodge all the time and the new studies said that I'd meds didn't work, electric shock was the next step. And was proving successful.
They are not sure how it works but they know it does. Rewiring a depressed brain. He said it was not like the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. It was safe, muscle relaxants given before the zapping, the patient anaesthetised, the electric current zapped through the brain for a very short time.
Three treatments in hospital, each treatment assessed after for a day or so. She might lose some short term memory but it will come back. Her kindly Father like Doctor she trusts implicitly. He states it must be done as soon as possible.
That he has seen many patients like her, crying, shaking at what they perceive as the end of life and two weeks later are back to normal.
I
To be continued
She is so brave and so devastated at the same time. Sucking up pain and rejection like she somehow deserves it and. I know she doesn't. A happy smiling face turned into a mask. A mask of no expression, ennui, stoicism and I wonder if I will see that smile which shows her dimples again. I am angry, angry at life that has brought us here.
The gentle Asian Psych who was running late until I demanded attention from the quiet receptionist, not wanting to make her wait any longer. He came running into the waiting room apologising profusely and humbly and I soften my stance a little. She has brought a plastic bag with a few possessions
In anticipation of a hospital stay.
I am supposed to be going to a funeral today and I know already my chances of making it are slim. i'm not going to make it I think as he looks up the notes on her illness. Her eight month illness of not feeling the least desire to eat. Her lack of energy, no mania, thank God, just a depression so profound she has come to a full stop.
He states she has had a traumatic life, physical abuse from the one significant male who should have loved and cared for her. He knew how to give love to himself in spades but not for her, not for her. Nor the other middle daughter, but making plain his favour of the oldest child. Causing problems for her and the other girls.
The psych explains she will need years of therapy. Long sessions of counselling for the physical abuse, he used to throw her against walls at 8 and watch her slide down in disgust, her face bloodied and bruised. And I would try to stop him, stop him berating a child and cop it myself. And I would hold her after and rock her, smelling the sweat on her head, my sweet baby again.
She was a happy bonny baby, full of the joys of living, every day as a toddler she would wake with a smile,
" I waked up now", she would say.
Placid and happy, a gorgeous child with chubby cheeks and dimples.
Then she didn't do well at school, she was over active and immature, still sucked her thumb, wandered around classrooms, interrupted the Teacher. Was sent to the Krongold Centre at Monash Hospital for assessment. They said she was fine and had at 7 the reading age of a 13 year old.
Her over activity and impulsiveness didn't win her many friends except for naughty kids. The police came first when she was eight. Questioned her about broken windows at school, her and another girl who was a bit slow. The other girl confessed and named names. Or one name, our daughter.
She answered the police questions with aplomb, boys had broken the windows she said and threatened her and the other girl to say they had done it. Her big blue eyes widened at the cops and they went away totally believing her. She told me as an adult it was really her, but didn't want a hiding from her Father.
He started to despise the middle two girls, rebels, just like he had been. He would barely speak to them from then on, not in any real way. And the violence went on, the silent horror of domestic violence. I left him twice in the first year but had no where to go. My Mum and Dad hadn't wanted me to marry him. He had a violent confrontation with my Mum when I was married and having my first baby.
She was mentally ill at that time with Graves Disease, an over active thyroid. He and her argued in the bedroom and she said he hit her. He said he simply pushed her away and she fell over a suitcase. She had a black eye. He was my husband and she my Mum, but I believed him and she returned home to Sydney the next day.
He said re the black eye, she probably punched herself in the eye later to make it look bad for him.
No one believed it of him, in those days there was no Single Parent Pension to help you have your own money. If you didn't work you had to rely on your husband for money. There was no decent child care, there was no 50 percent of women in the work force, girls were brought up to get married and have babies. He would not let me work, preferring the girls to be at home with me minding them.
He didn't like dummies, bottles or me. Right from the get go we were fighting. I was pregnant and he organised a wedding. I was 17. Anxious to be out of home, anxious to be independent and working. I worked in the U.K. At British Home Stores in the Office as a mail clerk. once back in Oz my brother and I grew weary of not working in Wagga. There were no jobs.
We ran away to Sydney to my soldier brothers place and joined them on a trip to Victoria for Easter. I stayed in Melbourne and was employed immediately at Myers in Chadstone. Children's books. Then Lindsay's in children's wear. I had 2 babies by then. We had a house by then in Keysborough. We were to stay there twenty years.
Nothing prepared me for his violence. I was embarrassed by it, devastated, humiliated. I didn't know men that hit women, nothing like it ever crossed my path during childhood. My Dad an extreme pacifist never allowed the boys, my brothers, to put a finger on us. He had a brutal Father and swore he would never hurt his own kids and never did.
But my husband had no such promise. He was first violent towards me six weeks after our first baby was born. It was like he waited until I was tied to him hand and foot. So I began night work and weekends at KFC in Springvale so that I had money of my own. He never ever gave me housekeeping money in our entire marriage, I had to earn it. Or save it from child endowment.
I learned to be very frugal with money.
But she sits my 37 year old child, determined to be heard, determined to be believed and like a snail with her home on her back, she clutches the plastic bag full of pyjamas and says she is not leaving until she is admitted to the hospital. She begs for ECT, now, back in February she didn't want it, ran from the Hospital then, lying and telling them she was eating. But she wasn't.
She passes the criteria for E.C.T. Two psychiatrists and two anti psychotic drugs, anti depressants. None of them have worked. The family doctor was shocked at her appearance last Friday. He smiled at her, his patient, he delivered her 37 years ago. He said he worked at Pine Lodge all the time and the new studies said that I'd meds didn't work, electric shock was the next step. And was proving successful.
They are not sure how it works but they know it does. Rewiring a depressed brain. He said it was not like the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. It was safe, muscle relaxants given before the zapping, the patient anaesthetised, the electric current zapped through the brain for a very short time.
Three treatments in hospital, each treatment assessed after for a day or so. She might lose some short term memory but it will come back. Her kindly Father like Doctor she trusts implicitly. He states it must be done as soon as possible.
That he has seen many patients like her, crying, shaking at what they perceive as the end of life and two weeks later are back to normal.
I
To be continued
