Something Needs To Be Done

I can hardly remember anything about my stay in the Baptist Hospital and nothing at all about the nine shock treatments. I don’t remember having made the “red burlap flowers” that seem to be a part of the therapy program for mental patients. Neither do I recall that Eleanor, on her 21^st birthday in May, which was about midway into the shock treatments, brought me a dozen daisies. What a sweet thing for her to do… (Now, wasn’t that special!) But, mentally, I was beyond being able to take anything in; I could hardly function.

I can’t remember much about anything after that first appointment with Dr. Huggins, nor remember the remainder of April and all of May because of being given the shock treatments. It wasn’t just a Lost Week-End, it was more like a lost two months.

Eleanor, at this time, was in Columbia taking a course at Columbia College before her graduation and her wedding. She would come faithfully to visit and check on me. It was not easy for her… seeing her mother going downhill each time she would come. She needed to be concentrating on her school work and her wedding… not having to worry about her Mama.

When she would come, she and I would usually take a little slow walk down the hall together. But this one time, Friday, May 24, I was having an especially hard time trying to walk. I was just hanging on to the side rail in the hall in order to move one foot in front of the other. As I moved slowly along, taking one step at a time, Eleanor noticed that something was terribly wrong; I was dragging my right foot! Nobody else seemed to have considered that something other than depression might be the cause of my trouble! And it had even been noted already that I had not been responding to the shock treatments in the usual way!

It seemed very doubtful now, as to whether or not the shock treatments, as Jack had been assured by Dr. Huggins, “would be the best thing for Ashlyn and she would be feeling much better in time for Eleanor’s wedding”.

When Eleanor got back to her college dormitory she called Jack to tell him what she had noticed and that something needs to be done!