The Day My Brain Exploded Page 15
We thanked him and left.
Reaching home, I ran to my bedroom on the second floor and looked into the long, full-length mirror. Perhaps this had all just been a bad dream.
Nope. There were the distortions, still looking back at me.
While my parents were happy to know that there was no neurological damage, I was terrified not knowing why I was seeing what I was seeing.
All of the doctors, all of the diagnoses—nothing seemed to help. The distortions continued.
The days became a never-ending torture. Finally I decided to look through Dad’s old medical books hoping to find an answer.
And there it was: “Hysteria.”
In the book, the first section discussed the early definition of the word from the “Joseph F. Smith Medical Library.” I read the passage:
“Hysterical disorder occurs when a patient experiences physical symptoms that have a psychological, rather than an organic, cause; an histrionic personality disorder characterized by excessive emotions, dramatics, and attention-seeking behavior.”
Turning the page, I discovered that medical professionals no longer used the term hysteria. The word, I read, harkened back two thousand years, to Greece, from hystera, the term for womb. It was considered a female disease, a hyper-sexualization of the uterus which caused a woman to go mad.
I felt a wonderful stir of recognition, except for the womb part, of course.
I was excited! This is what happened! I joked about the buildings, freaked out, cried and yelled, and had a hysterical response!
But instead of hysteria, these episodes were now universally labeled conversion reactions, pathological conditions and symptoms without discernible physical cause.
I went back to Dr. Damore and Dr. Feinberg to explain to each the conversion reaction possibility.
I genuinely believed I had found the name for my unnamed affliction.
All three uttered variations of the same song:
“The idea of conversion reaction is quack science.”
“It’s what we medical experts call fantasy; we prefer to deal with actual, organic, physiological solutions.”
“Labeling an illness ‘conversion reaction’ is the easy way out, a default diagnosis.”
The doctors’ words were terrifying, since the men could find no other official medical reasons for my affliction.
After hearing me out, Dr. Damore offered a final solution.
“Ashok, this might be, er,” he said, “something best handled by a doctor specializing in . . .” he stammered, “psychogenic matters.”
His incoherence and reticence puzzled me. “Meaning?”
“You need to see a psychiatrist.”
Guess Who’s Psychotic?
Rather than being horrified that I was being thrown into the hands of a goddamn shrink, I was thrilled that I might get answers, that I might learn that these distortions were, in fact, mentally and not physically created.
So I went to the neuropsychiatrist Dr. Damore recommended, Dr. Gold.
I met him in an exclusive, very impressive high-rise in Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
After exchanging the usual pleasantries, during which I helped him with the pronunciation of my name, he led me to his office. Interestingly spartan, the rectangular room housed one large beige sofa, a reclining black leather chair, and an even more comfy, bigger black leather chair. He immediately sat on the third seat. I situated myself on the smaller chair. It faced his left side, so I was able to get a good view of him.
I immediately liked the man, really liked him. I don’t know why, but I did. Carefully looking at the square steel-framed clock, he started speaking to me.
“So, Ashok, what can I do for you?”
“Didn’t Dr. Damore mention my problem to you?”
“Very briefly. Now tell me the issue, in detail.”
I told him everything, right from the drive to Target, the day the distortions started, to my recent electrode event.
“So, we know that your epilepsy is probably not involved.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s my crisis. If not that, then what?”
“Give me specific descriptions of your distortions.”
I did.
His pen was moving continuously in his small olive spiral notebook. I wanted to know what he was writing.
“It seems clear to me what the problem is,” he said when I had finished my tale of lunacy.
I didn’t think I had ever smiled so widely in my life.
“What is it?” I exclaimed. “I have been waiting to hear this since it all began.”
His pale white face became stern.
“Ashok, you are psychotic.”
My first impulse was to laugh, which I did.
“I’m serious,” he continued. “These continual distortions you’re having . . . are hallucinations. The hallmark of a psychotic.”
I had been called psychotic before, but by friends and family in moments of irritation, never by a licensed professional. I gave an unexpected Valley Girl response: “No way!”
I expected him to give an equally Cali-surfer teen answer: “Way!”
Of course, he did not. Rather, he offered a detailed explanation.
“The hallucinations you are having are called ‘abnormal realizations’ or ‘unnatural thoughts.’ As you told me, your doctors have not found any physiological explanations. So although these distortions involve physical conditions, I think they are definitely psychogenically oriented.”
I sat motionless as I listened. Not only had my brain exploded; now I was crazy, too.
“Ashok,” he said, “these ‘unnatural thoughts’ can be healed by medication. Let me write you a prescription.”
I saw him look at the clock. My twenty-five minutes were up. He would now need a check for one hundred fifty dollars on which Dad already signed his name.
I was impressed by his quick but troublesome diagnosis.
“Thank you doctor, I’ll get the med.”
“Fine. I’ll see you in two weeks,” he said with a smile. He wrote the appointment on his calendar as I left the office.
I took that drug, but not before I went online to check out what it was. I discovered that this was a heavy-duty medicine used for only one specific type of patient: schizophrenic psychotic.
The realization did not matter, though. I was so relieved he had prescribed a cure that I took the prescription to the nearest Duane Reade and purchased the medication immediately.
For the next two weeks, the distortions never stopped. But I did encounter new experiences: I could no longer sleep without sweat, no longer breathe without congestion, and no longer urinate without feeling fire.
Thankfully, on my next visit, Dr. Gold immediately stopped the treatment.
“Doctor I can’t take this drug anymore,” I said firmly.
“You won’t have to.”
I was surprised by his quick acquiescence.
“I have thought this over. You’re not psychotic at all. True psychopaths believe their hallucinations. You don’t believe your distortions really reflect the world. This just might be a case of strong depression.”
So instead of the hardcore mind-altering pill, he prescribed the simple commonplace antidepressant standby, Prozac.
The short career of Ashok the Psychotic was ended.
Taking Prozac didn’t really help with my vision though, as my distorted world continued to exist, slowly drowning me in an escalating fury of fear. I eventually stopped taking that medication, too.
The White Rabbit Fucks Me, Long and Hard
The vision distortion changed me completely—no more exercising, eating right, or socializing. I couldn’t look at the distorted faces of people I cared for; I couldn’t bear to see them as monsters. Every day when I woke up and saw the world as abnormally distorted, I felt my sanity escape me a little more. I was now starting to believe my self-diagnosis, regardless of what the doctors said. Womb or not, maybe I did have hysteria.
Finally, during one of my interminable daily hunts through medical websites, I discovered the name of an ailment that mirrored my own problem: “Alice in Wonderland Syndrome.”
Dubbed AIWS, it was a neurological condition that affected perception.
The sufferer would see and feel everything in the wrong sizes. The syndrome was named because of its symptoms’ correlation to the changes in size and shape that plagued Alice in Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel Alice in Wonderland. The site even said that the syndrome, in fact, often perfectly matched the original illustrations of the book.
It was an extremely rare condition that most doctors wouldn’t even acknowledge.
Scholars, the site continued, speculated that Lewis Carroll may have been afflicted himself, since he suffered from migraine headaches. As she was Mr. Carroll’s creation, Alice had to suffer the same fate of distortion when she reached Wonderland.
Confused, I remembered reading that Alice’s hallucinations came from nibbling mushrooms, and that when she finally did battle with the Queen of Hearts she was allowed to escape Wonderland and leave the Walrus and the Mad Hatter behind. And best of all, she would never have to experience shape-shift again.
But as for myself, there was no Queen of Hearts to defeat, no Mad Hatter to meet, and no mushrooms to eat.
So how could I escape?
I sobbed in front of the computer screen, wondering how, and why, I ever met the goddamn White Rabbit in the first place.
Just as I suspected, my various doctors dismissed my ideas about AIWS, as well. Alice’s wonderland, they told me, was for literature alone, not for reality. But later that week, when I returned to live in Manhattan, my eyes still belonged to Miss Alice.
Hermit Spiral: 2004
Monotype
Back in my apartment, my world was shrinking a little bit more every day. I spent most of my time inside my home. Yet even before the distortions, I had slowly begun veering away from contact with society.
I didn’t have many friends and acquaintances even before the bleed, but I was confident my two closest buddies would be there for me: Zarina, who went by the name “Z,” a tall Lebanese girl who had come to America for her education, and Jorge, a chubby Nuyorican whose humor got me through college. Unfortunately, it turned out I was wrong about their love for me.
They had been a wonderful support for my family during my hospitalization, but once I was released, everything changed. Z became a Tragedy Queen, thriving on my health issues. “I can tell you’re not feeling well and it brings tears to my eyes,” she said once.
At the time, I had just eaten a delicious Italian lunch and couldn’t have felt better.
She offered to help me walk, although I didn’t need help. I once overheard her mournfully tell her friends that she was busy caring for an aneurysm patient. After three months of Z’s martyrdom, I said good-bye.
Good-time guy Jorge was a lot of fun. But the problem was that all of his rampaging involved liquor, and I no longer drank. One day he pleaded that he missed his old drinking buddy. He needed him back. But I wasn’t going to drink again and risk killing myself. He still loved me, he insisted, but drinking took precedence. So Jorge said good-bye.
With effort, I was able to move on.
But it was my forced descent into Wonderland—the White Rabbit’s vicious abduction of me—that plunged me into complete isolation. There was only one good development in all this: the distortions became limited just to the lengthening or widening of objects and people. No more bizarre distortions when I looked at my own body.
Still, the existent distortions caged me inside a dungeon I loathed. The utter loneliness began to choke me, and I couldn’t breathe. When I was working in public relations, and was constantly around people, I believed that life would be better if I could have time just for myself. Like a virgin in bed with a whore, I had no idea what I was in for.
Being by oneself, I realized, was the cruelest possible condition. Especially in a place like New York City, where nobody ever smiles at another person, aside from those they know.
I forced myself to go out, maneuvering through the city streets alone. With daylight as my companion, I traveled alone to parks, movies, museums, and malls. Walking solo among others, I noticed my loneliness more keenly. Everyone else seemed paired off, talking and laughing while surrounded by coworkers, friends, and lovers.
Mom’s Tears Return
Mom was right about the blame game she had predicted.
In the height of my loneliness-hopelessness period, I confronted her. We were both in the living room in the Jersey home, watching a Nanny rerun. As the episode broke for commercials, I looked up at her.
“I can’t believe how awful life is,” I moaned. “You did this!”
She gaped at me. “What are you talking about?”
“You gave me that filthy AVM. Because of you, I’m half-blind. And because of you, I have epilepsy.”
“I knew you would say this to me,” she said calmly. “Fine, I take the blame.”
Unsatisfied with her response, I kept on. “With your diseased uterus, you did this!”
That comment earned me the reaction I wanted.
She started crying.
I was happy to see her suffer. “Good, cry! Maybe for one second you can feel the pain I will have to go through for the rest of my life.”
She covered her face in her hands, sobbing.
“You are evil, destroying your own child.”
Later that week, I came to my senses and begged for her forgiveness, sending her flowers, chocolates, and a Hallmark card of penitence.
Over an emotional phone call, she said she understood my sorrow, and welcomingly accepted my apology.
But I knew that she would never, ever get over what I had said to her. How could she? After all, at that moment, part of me had meant every word I said.
Sitting with the Old Man and Eating Soup with Streisand
Like vampires, we reluctant loners were brethren, connected by the bitter sadness of our unfulfilled lives. I was now able to hone in on lonely people more easily. One time, I wandered into a nameless Chelsea park. It was full of young parents and their children, playing, dancing, and simply enjoying their time together. I started to cry. I looked up and noticed an old man next to me. He looked at me in recognition. I looked back at him, a possible vision of my future, and I cried some more.
This is how my nonsocial life evolved. On weekends, I would go to my folks’ home in New Jersey, where I did nothing except occasionally watch TV. PBS had some good British comedies on Saturday nights for people with nowhere to go. But on weekdays, back at home in my apartment in New York, this is what my datebook—if I had had a datebook—would have looked like:
8–11 a.m.
Sleep.
11 a.m.
Watch either The View or The Price Is Right. (I loved Bob Barker, that silver-headed charmer.)
12 a.m.
Eat breakfast of Special K in a bowl of orange juice.
12:30 p.m.
Watch Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, the palatable version starring Meredith Vieira.
1 p.m.
Watch MAD TV.
2–3 p.m.
Write a bit, go on Internet, look at E! Online.
3–4 p.m.
Walk around Manhattan. (No set pattern: some days, East Village, others, Midtown. I probably saw every section of the damn island.)
5–7 p.m.
Job hunt.
7–8 p.m.
Nap time.
8–10 p.m.
Lupper. (I never woke early enough for three meals, so I had two: breakfast and a combo of lunch and supper, which I called lupper.)
11 p.m.–3 a.m.
Surf the net. Aimlessly.
Rinse. Repeat. Ad nauseam.
The highlight of the day—hell, any day—was lupper. Even t
hough I had a kitchen in my cramped apartment, I never cooked. I just ordered takeout from trashy ethnic restaurants. Indian, Mexican, Italian, you name it. As long as it was cheap and greasy, it was lupper.
One day, I finally summoned the courage to actually eat out. I found my way to the Vietnamese-soup restaurant next door. The experience was surprisingly pleasant. This was a habit I wanted to continue. It gave me a much-needed sense of connectedness to the outside world.
There I met Gilda.
Gilda was my invented name for the lady sitting two tables away. She came there every Saturday night. Her necklace exposed the Star of David, and she seemed to be in her early seventies.
Gilda wore at least five layers of cosmetics on her aged face. Her lips were painted far beyond her natural line. More strikingly, though, Gilda wore red, sequined evening dresses.
Obviously, her only venture into the land of the living was a Saturday night dinner. She probably spent the whole week planning for it.
During the three weeks I spent in that restaurant, I watched her every Saturday.
One night I felt fearless. After slurping down my egg-noodle soup, I went over to her table, and we exchanged names. Her real name was Lorna. Pretty close to Gilda. I was pleased with my psychic ability.
“Lorna, you must really love this place. I see you here often.”
“They know me here,” she said defensively. “Feels good.”
“But I bet you also love the food.”
“Food’s okay. But leaving my place is even better. It’s a cramped studio on Fourteenth Street.”
“It must be a bad apartment, I guess.” I smiled at her, and then asked with a laugh, “That’s the city for you, huh?”
“Actually, it’s not too bad. Young man, would you like to visit for dinner sometime?”
I then recognized how devastating loneliness would become as the years went on. But would I want to be her dining companion? Sure, it’s sexy for a young man to be with an older woman. But would it be sexy if she’s an old Jewish white woman and he’s a twentysomething Hindu brown man? How would it look for a geriatric Barbra Streisand and a young Mahatma Gandhi to go from dinner to the bedroom, to enjoy a sweaty, raunchy kink-o-rama?
I shook the gross image from my head. I felt dirty. I told Lorna I wasn’t sure if I could come for dinner and that I’d let her know. Obviously, it wasn’t the possibility of future kink that freaked me out. It was the possibility that, with my continuing solitude and loneliness, I was quickly becoming her. She gave me her number, a look of excitement on her face.