*crickets*
In reality, I've been going to the Douglas because I've started rTMS treatment. I can see the confusion, because I still wake up at 5:00 AM, but really? Really??
Anyway, the Douglas is this amazing, massive hospital that only treats mental illness. It's a teaching facility, research grounds, and hospital all-in-one, dedicated to understanding and treating the various things that can go so devastatingly wrong in the human mind. Ever since I got really sick 12 years ago, in 2002, I've secretly hoped that one day I'd end up there. They have resources I've never come into contact with before. I kept hoping maybe, one day, I'd be referred there and maybe we could figure out what's wrong with me. While it's obvious that I've had 4 episodes of Major Depressive Disorder, and that I have had / have PTSD and unresolved trauma, as well as recurrent suicidality and parasuicidal acts, what is less evident is why I've lived with some level of clinically significant depression constantly for twelve years, excluding the one 'healthy' period in mid-to-late 2006 through early 2007. Is it dysthymia? Is it refractory depression? Is it something else? Does it matter?
I guess I just kept hoping that maybe if I was sent here somebody could help me, that I could have a life truly worth living. That one day I could wake up and want to live.
Technically, I'm not at the Douglas. I've been sent here for a clinical trial, and then I'll be back off to my regular psychiatrist. Ah well, one day at a time.
It's a bit of a commute to get to Verdun from the North Shore. I wake up at 5, take a train at 6:35, take the Metro from McGill to De L'Eglise, and then take the 58 bus. Some of you know I hate buses because I am terrified of getting lost on them. Surprisingly, I actually like the commute. I get to take my regular train, which tricks me into feeling like a normal, productive, worthwhile member of society. I get to take the metro, and I like riding the metro. Then I take the bus.
The bus is okay.
Luckily, I don't miss my stop because there is a really helpful giant sign telling me that I am upon the Douglas. Like a YOU ARE HERE sign for my soul.
I like the sign. I find it comforting. I also find it relieving to get off the bus, because that means I will no longer get lost. But wait! The hospital grounds are huge! Still not likely to get lost though. :)
The first time I came to the Douglas I was lucky enough to have a good friend come with me. She had an app that told us when to get off the bus, plus if she hadn't been there I would have given up at the size of the driveway. The driveway is really, really, reeeeeeally long. I would have sat down in the snow and cried, unable to carry on any further. As it is, the driveway is getting easier. It also seems shorter because it's not covered in snow.
I also noticed, for the first time today, that the driveway is not actually straight. I was thinking it was straight as a pin, but in reality it has an s-curve. It's amazing what you notice when you look up instead of staring resolutely at the ground.
Coming here makes me feel a bit...serious. I mean, I knew that it was serious. It isn't like I could ever successfully ignore it. I like to minimize, to joke, to make light of things, to turn things around, to re-frame, to positivize. I don't like to face it. But I know. I know I'm really sick. It's just that it's more undeniable at some moments than at others. Weightier.
I knew I was very sick in 2002 when I found myself standing on the roof of the Arts building at McGill, looking down at the cold ground, wondering why I couldn't just bring myself to step off. My life falling apart, failing all my courses because I just couldn't do the work, the unbelievable pain, the whole world in grey-scale.
I knew I was very sick when my local hospital transferred me to St. Jerome, where I was committed, and where I wondered if I could hang myself with the curtain around my bed. I knew I was very sick when I started spending every night in the isolation room, tied down in four-point restraints. I knew I was very sick when I tried to crush my own windpipe with the side-rail of the hospital bed, and I was transferred to the Intensive Psychiatric Care Unit. I knew I was very sick when they released me into the care of a university psychiatrist, when he had me come and see him twice a week, when I tried to jump out his window during a session. I knew I was very sick when I sat on the floor in school bathrooms and scratched my wrists with razor blades.
I knew I was very sick in 2003 when I stockpiled small amounts of my daily-dispensed medication to make a cocktail with over-the-counter drugs and alcohol, when I had my stomach pumped and woke up in a freezing cold ICU to a doctor telling me it was a 'potentially fatal combination,' and to my own feeling of utter disappointment and despair. The feeling as I lay my head on the cold marble floor, losing consciousness, and thought, what if this is it? When I answered myself, I hope it will be over soon, and that this nothingness goes on forever, like the horizon.
I knew I was very sick as I battled extreme emotional instability throughout the rest of my first undergraduate degree. Always certain that today would be the day when everything was too much, that I couldn't go on, but that I owed it to so many people to keep struggling, to keep going on, because everything I knew about depression told me that if I just did what the doctor told me, went to therapy, worked on myself, one day I would get better. I knew I was sick when I believed that my teachers were involved in complex plots to kill me by informing my rapist where I was and what I was doing.
I knew I was very sick in 2005-2006, when I sliced into my skin every night with an Xacto knife, every incision deep enough to require stitches, but never going to the hospital, letting the scars accumulate. I knew I was very sick when I found myself thinking, as I dragged the blade through my flesh, that if I didn't do this the army wouldn't come and save me. I knew I was very sick when I swallowed just over a month's supply of sleeping pills. I knew I was sick when I woke up in emergency and, semi-conscious, tried to pull the IV out of my arm because I thought I could stab myself with it.
I knew I was very sick in 2009 when I was on the maximum dose of Wellbutrin (bupropion), with 4 other medications to try and augment it, and it was failing. I knew I was very sick when I requested, and took, 8 months of sick-leave from graduate school in 2010. I knew I was very sick when I had to go back to school and I wasn't better. I wasn't better enough to finish my degree, and I had to withdraw because I couldn't complete my program within the time limitations. I knew I was sick when I failed at the last thing that promised me I could have meaningful, rewarding work in my life that fit within the constraints of my illness.
I knew I was very sick in September 2013, when something felt fundamentally wrong, and my doctor didn't listen to me. I knew I was very sick as I went into a downward spiral, when my psychiatrist finally agreed to try medication, when my cocktail didn't work, as I became more and more unwell. When coworkers and friends commented on it. When my boss told me to take a vacation, or a sick day, or do something, anything. I knew I was sick while I was having a very public breakdown all over social media. I knew I was very sick because I knew that if I took even one foot off the path I would fall off completely, and there would be no coming back.
I knew I was very sick when I told my psychiatrist I was so tired, and he said I'd been tired for years. I wondered when that had become acceptable. I knew I was sick when I couldn't stop thinking about slicing my wrist open, about all the blood, about what my artery might look like right before I bled out. I knew I was sick when I started practicing on my thigh, and my doctor told me that I didn't want to kill myself, that we'd get me through this. I wondered when enough would finally really be enough.
I knew I was very sick when I went into St. Mary's in January 2014 to get 15 stitches in my wrist. I knew I was sick when they were telling me I was stable enough to leave. I knew I was sick when I left the hospital one evening and swallowed a bottle of Advil and wandered around outside in February, without a coat, for hours. I knew I was sick when the police picked me up after the hospital called it in, and brought me back with a firm grip on my arm. I knew I was sick when I was returned to the hospital and strangled myself with my own belt. When my new psychiatrist told me we were going to try this again.
I knew I was sick when my case was presented on general rounds, and all they managed to come up with was that I needed to learn how to 'bother people' when something is wrong. I feel like I've been bothering people for years.
I know I'm very sick because this illness has decimated my life, destroyed capacities and opportunities that I once took for granted, and devastated my sense of self-worth, of hopefulness, of trust in a future worth hanging on for.
I knew I was very sick when my new psychiatrist and I filled out the rTMS referral and had to list all the medications I've taken over the years. I knew I was very sick. But I felt like if I could hide it, if I could hold down a job for longer than 6 months, if I could volunteer, if I could get up and go about my day and muscle through it, that it didn't matter so very much that I was very sick.
But there's something about the Douglas that makes being very sick impossible to ignore. Maybe it's the bigness of it all, the sense that now I'm at the place where the experts go when they can't solve something. Maybe it's the impressive size and spread of the facilities.
You have to admit, it's really flippin' impressive.
Once I make it up (or is it down?) the driveway, I go around to the left of the front buildings and walk down to the building where my treatment lives. Presumably, when we're not there the treatment is having wild parties with the fMRI and PET scanners. At least that's what I like to imagine.
My building is super pretty. I'd never actually looked at it until today when I decided to take this picture. I love the design, the glass, the red brick. I'm happy I looked at it, glittering in all that sun.
Finally, I go inside the building and sit in this waiting area on the red chairs, where I usually try to read. I cuddle Puffy -- my stuffed animal -- and I wait. I like the quality of the light: it's very soothing. Mine is the first appointment of the day. I like the silence, the solitude, the softly falling light.
So, this is where I go everyday, and a little bit of the reason why I go here.
These are the first pictures I've taken since August. I even re-sized them and adjusted the colour levels. I hope you like them! :)
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