- Please, shut me down.
I had to agree. She wasn’t my first patient, she wasn’t unique or much different to any other patient I had in the past or was attending in the present. It just seemed nothing could do anything for her any more.
We tried every therapy we knew: psychotherapy, medication, dance, drawing, knitting… the most extreme were surgery and electroshocks. There was nothing that could bring her back. She wasn’t eating, she wasn’t sleeping, she wasn’t engaging with others, and one afternoon, after no talking with nobody for over a month, she asked me to shut her down.
- I’m tired. I just want to sleep.
We were trying a new therapy, or better put: a way for the patients to get away for a while. We hadn’t had much practice with a real patient. Or any: all subjects had been healthy, mental illness free volunteers so we had no idea what would be the outcome for an ill person. Trials were still running. I denied this treatment and sent her back to her unit.
Then it started: she was in a state of stupor. She would respond to some stimuli but it was useless, nothing could bring her back, not pets, no talk, no music, nothing we did was working.
- And, if we give her what she asked for?
- I’m at the end of my rope, but it is very risky to put her in a state that can be irreversible. What if she stays there forever?
- She is already there, yesterday I saw her staring at a blank wall, lost, and just sitting there, nonresponsive. She might need this, she wanted to sleep. We can grant her that favor.
Hesitating I entered her room. She was laying in bed, with her eyes wide open whit crystalized eyes.
- We’ll do it.
She turned her head and muttered “thank you”.
It was kind of a cryogenic method. Beds all wired up to make life in limbo comfortable. What it really did was to put a person in a desired state, the problem, the big problem, was reality. You come back to your reality at some point and if this reality is disappointing, you are at square one: still depressed, still psychotic, still what you are. Wouldn’t that be a threat?
But the moment I entered the room and said it was ok, she showed enough progress to “shut her down” as she put it.
The therapy went on; we woke her up every so often to be sure that she was doing fine, that she could eventually come back. Every time it got very violent, to the point to use sedatives so we could manage her. She would scream, scratch, kick, bite. She even bit one of the orderlies so bad that we though he would lose a chunk of his forearm. She was physically fine, she was responsive but violent. She was not in long stupors anymore, but she would slam herself on walls doing significant damage to her body.
The only place she found peace, was in her cryogenic crib. I always wondered what was happening there.
…
Here I can see the sea and the meadows. I can go to the shore and let the water soak my feet, sometimes my dress gets wet. I can walk and dance and run. And whenever I want I wish so hard that some of the people I know come and visit. We have breakfast, and go for a walk. They would hug me… how much I’ve missed hugs! I can have that now again, with true affection. What was I afraid before of? I don’t know, maybe that if I asked I would be denied. Maybe because out there I had to protect myself from the misunderstood attention or because I always felt a little ridiculous when I asked, and people tend to look at you funny. Not here. That doesn’t happen here.
…
Later on, she passed away. It was getting so hard to control her, one day she just ran and jumped of the window. There was nothing we could do… she slipped into a coma for a few days and died. I was afraid of this: she wasn’t fit for the real world.
I always wondered what made her so peaceful during her sleep.