Better Living Through Chemistry

I'm feeling like a bit of a fraud. The one remark that I hear over and over again from all of my wonderfully supportive friends and family is that my attitude is "great", "amazingly positive", etc. I suppose I am pretty positive, but I have to admit that my attitude is chemically enhanced. Yes, I have the wonderful Vicodin and Percocet which make me kind of loopy. But while I was in Kessler, I was also put on, what I like to call "happy pills". The brand name is Celexa and it is an anti-depressant.

While I was in Kessler, Joyce, the center's psychologist, came to talk to me in the gym one day. The woman had me pegged within 10 minutes. She said she could quite literally see the control I was exerting as the emotions roiled right beneath the surface. After talking further she said, "What would you say if I suggested putting you on an anti-depressant?' I said, "You wouldn't be the first." I was never the most emotionally stable person to begin with for a variety of reasons. I was in kind of a holding pattern type of depression before the accident, unable to figure out how to get to the next step in my life. I also tend to tamp down the emotions and keep a tight rein on them. I hate letting people see me cry.

Three weeks after the accident, I had never really let go of my feelings. I had cried a little in frustration while waiting for my hip surgery to be scheduled. I had cried a little in anger and frustration when I had to ring 3 times and wait 30 minutes for someone to bring me a bed pan, When the aide finally did bring it, she asked why I was crying and I said, "They're not tears. It's urine leaking out of my eyeballs because I have to pee so badly." One thing that made me not want to let go of my emotions while I was in the hospital was multiple admonishments from nurses and aides when I did cry a little. They would tell me that I had no reason to cry because I was alive and I would walk again and that was more than some people.

I think another reason why I hadn't really cried about the accident and the situation was that I was still sort of in denial about the severity of the accident and my injuries. When I was in the emergency room, I called my boss to tell him I didn't think I would make it into the office on Monday. When I got done with the surgeries I figured I'd be going back to work in a month. A bit unrealistic I know now.

That morning, three weeks to the day after the accident, I woke up and I could feel it coming. All I wanted to do was cry. Of course, since I don't want others to see me cry, I struggled to keep the lid on it as I ate breakfast and got dressed for the day. As soon I was set in my wheelchair, I wheeled myself out of the room, down the hall and out the door to the patio. I kept my back to the building and the torrent unleashed. I cried. Not a couple of tears, but huge body wracking sobs. The nurse came out and asked if I was okay and I told her that I just needed to be alone for a few and let it out and she left. As the tears kept coming, another woman came out and set a box of tissues down on the table next me and sat quietly on the bench. Eventually as the sobs petered out, she said, "Sometimes you just need to cry. It's okay." She had been visiting with her father and saw me out the window. We talked a little about my frustrations and my pain. My loss of independence and control over my life. Actually, I talked and she listened. She didn't offer platitudes or tell me I had nothing to cry about. She was just there. I never found out her name, but I will never forget her and her kindness.

I think the major component of my good attitude is a sort of acceptance. I've always been the type of person, who when confronted with an obstacle or challenge, just sets out to deal with because there is no choice in the matter. My brother and I would joke in the hospital that there was no such thing as dignity and modesty in a hospital. So I accepted it and just went with the flow, it made life easier. I joked when the ortho residents, two young guys I referred to as Tweedledee and Tweedledum, came in to change my surgical dressings. I mean, what else can you do when your naughty bits are exposed to the world while they are sticking gauze to your ass and then on your abdomen, taping it in such a way, that I think the hospital will charge me for a Brazilian bikini wax. Another time, while under the influence of lots of morphine, they rolled me to get to the ass bandages and I ended up with my face right in the crotch of a very cute resident. I looked up at him and said, "You're very cute, but I usually at least get dinner first." In another bed pan incident, I had rung for a bed pan and the aide who came in was a young man named Michael. He paused and said, "Would you like me to send in a female aide?" I told him no and that I was sure I didn't have any bits he hadn't seen before. (Although I'm also pretty sure he wasn't interested in my type of bits...) He turned out to be one of my favorite aides.

By my last days at University Hospital, I was so tired of being poked and prodded and taped and answering the same questions over and over and then being discussed like I wasn't even there. Since the hospital was a teaching hospital, every morning the roving band of students (who we referred to as "the pod" or "the horde") would come in and go over my case. One morning, they walked in and I said, "So Doc, have you figured out what's wrong with me yet?" One student laughed out loud, but the rest just looked confused.

Ultimately, I think my attitude about the whole situation comes from the idea that if I don't laugh about it, I'll cry. Things are what they are. I can't change what happened, all I can do is get through it. And the way to get through it is to focus on the good things and the funny parts. Of course a little chemical boost makes this a lot easier. Scott says that I've become a lot more even tempered since starting the Celexa. I suppose that's one more good thing.