Kathryn Cohan Inner Science

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And things were swell. For a long time. I married, started a career, planned for children

... oops ...

was it safe to take temporal lobe epilepsy medication and have a baby?

... better check that out. So I did. I found the fanciest scientist in Boston that I could and low and behold his opinion was that I did not now nor had I ever had temporal lobe epilepsy.

"Interesting," I thought. "Affirming," thought my inner scientist ... who never theorized that I had temporal lobe epilepsy at all. That conversation with self lasted less than a minute, as I did what most women who want babies do: I plotted and planned and prepared to GET one. And in the piles of diapers and sleepless nights and jars of baby food and allergies and rashes and equipment that come with the territory of having babies, I never thought once about what I had experienced ten years before. I was just too tired and too busy to care. Besides, a very important scientist had told me there was nothing to worry about ...

Fast forward five years.

I am now thirty-three and mother of two ... I work full time in a mental health center and I have finished college ... I own my own home ... I pay taxes ... I am "productive" ... I am on the brink of divorce. I fall off the brink and separate from my husband of twelve years. I fall into depression which confuses me greatly. Aren't I supposed to be relieved that the rat is gone?

This depression was observed by yet another scientist who gave me medicine for it. My inner scientist had, by this time, been beaten into submission as regards her theories ... she had never once been right and although she didn't agree with the "temporal lobe epilepsy" scientist, she had to agree that he had worked magic. So as I placed myself in the care of my new outer scientist, my inner scientist retired. Maybe she relocated too, because it would be many years before we met again.

My new scientist found me perplexing. No matter what she did, I didn't get better. I did not respond to any of the drugs in her arsenal. Prozac, zoloft, paxil. Oooopps! I sat in her office in hot pants and pounds of makeup and spit while I spoke disjointedly of many, many things simultaneously. Then lithium, tegretol, depakote. Moban, Navane, Risperdol, Stellazine, Haldol, Zyprexa ... nope. Escalating symptoms ... wild mood swings, euphoric spurts followed by agonizing lows ... now a voice saying "die you bitch" and fear of being poisoned ... music all the time ... the national guard is looking for me ... the Nazis are invading ... I slipped farther and farther away from consensus reality and closer and closer to the conclusion that for the good of all, I should just die.

top || continued

[Who am I now?] [Strategies for Self-Determination] [Talking Points]
[Inner Science] [The Hard Questions] [Provider Psychopathologies]
[Inviting In The Wolf] [Recovering Self Esteem] [The ECT Suite]
[Consumer Satisfaction Surveys] [The Therapeutic Value of Cyberspace]
[The Self-Help Lens] [The Language Barrier] [Waves of Change]

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© 1999, 2000 Kathryn Cohan