No. 239 – Echoes

Performer: California Guitar Trio

Songwriters: Roger Waters, Rick Wright, Nick Mason, David Gilmour

Original Release: Echoes

Year: 2008

Definitive Version: None, although I’ve seen a few even-more-stripped-down live versions on YouTube that are incredible. I mean, who would even try an unplugged Echoes? You owe it to yourself to check these guys out.

I’m writing this just days after the incident in Washington. I don’t know all the details—certainly as much as some armchair quarterbacks on the Internet—but it seemed to me that the cops did what they had to do to protect the general public.

That said, I have a lot of sympathy for the woman who died. I’m well aware of the medications that she reportedly was taking. If you’re on those, you’re dealing with some huge mental health issues. And there’s no guarantee that the meds will work. Different meds work differently for different people. Basically, the treatment of mental illness in this country amounts to a crapshoot.

I don’t know whether the woman stopped taking her meds or whether they just didn’t work for her, but “what caused this” was obvious to anyone who has experienced mental illness first hand: The woman had a psychotic breakdown. I believe that she was incapable of rational decision-making and thus had no real grasp of what was happening. I’m shocked she was able to even drive a car.

The woman deserves pity, not righteous indignation. Anyone who would cast a stone, all I would say is pray to your God that it never happens to anyone you love. Believe me, I know what it’s like to watch someone you love just disappear into the fog as even the best doctors search for clues. In all honesty, the only difference between the woman in Washington and Laurie in May 2008 well could be that the woman in Washington didn’t have as solid a foundation of support around her when she disappeared. It’s a tragedy, nothing more.

Anyway, May 2008 was a thick slog. As June drew closer, everything that Laurie had planned for the summer had gone by the boards. I tried to hang on to the last play, the one that Laurie had scheduled for August in Berwyn and was a huge role for her, as long as I could, but finally the director—a friend of Laurie’s—pulled the plug.

I knew when she did it that it was the right call for everyone concerned—even Laurie—but I felt as though it was the last piece of the life Laurie had before her breakdown. I clung to it out of desperation. Part of Laurie’s recovery, when it finally began, would be to reacclimate her to her life, but it seemed that her life had been yanked away. At least she still had her job—and still was receiving her full paycheck, thanks to all of the sick time she had accrued over the years.

But nothing seemed to work to help Laurie get well. Dr. Anderson had become concerned that Laurie was playing out a bit of drama in her illness—she wasn’t eating, wasn’t always taking her meds. I was dubious that this was willful, but the motivation was immaterial. What was important was that Laurie had to eat—she lost 20 pounds since she had been in the hospital—and she had to take her meds.

Toward the end of May, Dr. Anderson started Laurie on lithium, which is a basic anti-psychotic and thought to be the drug that would be Laurie’s stabilizer when she left the hospital. It was an unmitigated disaster. In addition to ramping up Laurie’s paranoia, it also made her incontinent. Lithium was stopped after a few days, and Dr. Anderson introduced Depakote to the mix of Zyprexa and Atavan.

The good thing about Depakote was that it came in a powder, so we could mix it into the pudding or applesauce that Laurie got with dinner. It was not unlike hiding a pill for a dog in a piece of cheese, but I was fine with whatever worked. My recent experience with my niece, Leah, aided me in spoon-feeding someone who might be a little willful about eating. She took it—without me having to make airplane noises—but it didn’t seem to help either.

Physical issues started to affect Laurie. In addition to the rapidly lost weight, Laurie developed edemas in her feet from standing up by the door to her room round the clock on certain days, so she had to wear support hose and prop her feet on a pillow when she was in bed. She also developed this neck issue that never was explained, at least by basic medicine.

Laurie’s neck was bent forward so far her chin rested on her chest. She couldn’t lift her head even to take food without great difficultly when she was awake. This made it so she could barely speak and her breathing was labored. I brought a neck brace I had from when I sprained my neck playing softball in Flint. That helped, minimally.

As May slipped into June and the one-month anniversary of Laurie’s admission loomed, the good days that Laurie occasionally experienced in the hospital became less good; the bad days grew worse. When June started, the good days stopped completely.

The only positive development was that I now was fully in the information loop. Apparently, I had proved myself beyond being just some flighty boyfriend, and the discussion returned to ECT.

I mentioned how I was OK with Laurie not doing ECT, but as the days piled up, it was clear to me that the drugs weren’t working to snap Laurie out of her psychosis. So I was becoming a bit more willing to try something new—as scary as it might be.

Dr. Anderson said we couldn’t get a court order forcing Laurie to do the treatment (it had been mentioned in passing as a possible way to get things moving), so Laurie’s aunt, Ann, came back to take another shot at getting Laurie to consent to ECT. It went over like the Hindenburg. Laurie apparently made it clear that she wasn’t going to do ECT under any circumstances. It would be drugs or bust.

That strategy didn’t produce much optimism, but everyone remained steadfast: Laurie would recover, even if no one knew when. My jaw was set: I was in it for the long haul, however long it would be, but the joy of life was being tapped out of me.

During this time, in addition to work-related things that fell by the wayside, social activities that Laurie and I scheduled also went by the boards. We skipped a Cubs game (we were part of a season-ticket package), and two concerts for which we’d bought tickets—Crowded House and Eddie Izzard—came and went.

Finally, the husband of one of Laurie’s friends got Cubs tickets from work and invited me to go along with a group of his friends. I didn’t want to go and pass up a visiting shift at the hospital, but everyone in Laurie’s Posse insisted I take a break and go. I went and didn’t regret it, but I didn’t enjoy it either.

Dinners became about the only thing from where I derived pleasure, and one time a couple friends and I went to El Tipico—mine and Laurie’s favorite Mexican restaurant—for margaritas and fajitas. Brendan said he wanted to schedule a birthday get-together for me, which was nice. I didn’t even mind that he held it a week before my birthday.

But I was sliding into a funk. When my actual birthday rolled around, I got two batches of chocolate chip cookies from Jin and flowers and a stuffed bear from Dad and Laura. That was nice, and I enjoyed talking with everyone who called that day, but I just felt empty.

I had been looking forward to the following Sunday. I was going to take another break from visiting the hospital, at least during the day shift, and hit Sportsfest. An attempt at resurrecting the card show that started a decade earlier as a competitor to the National (and where I had my car broken into in Philly) was being held in Schaumburg in 2008.

It would provide a nice diversion, so I went. I walked around as usual, but I quickly discovered that I wasn’t interested in going through any card bins. I just didn’t feel like doing anything, and I left after about an hour. I don’t think I bought anything. The weight of the past month finally came crashing down on top of me.

I went to the hospital in a fairly desultory state, stayed till it was time to leave and drove home just feeling depressed. This nightmare I’d been living for the past month just wasn’t ending; it didn’t seem like it would EVER end.

When I got home, I called my boss and said I was taking a vacation day, because I didn’t want to go into work. I was beaten down. I just wanted to climb in bed and not leave.

Fate, however, had different plans in store for me.