Tuesday, August 21, 2007

The Move and Surgery


By the time they had gotten me downstairs at the Baptist Hospital I was in a state of exhaustion. Jack suggested to Julie (our 20 year old daughter) that she and I ride in the back seat of the car so I could put my head in her lap while he drove to the Richland Memorial Hospital. She and I got in, and I lay my head in her lap. Julie told me later it was all she could do to hold back the tears. She said she was sure if she were to break down it would frighten and upset me, so she tried desperately to stay calm and reassuring in spite of fearing the worst. So many thoughts went racing through her mind: Would the tumor already have caused permanent damage? Mama was showing signs of dementia! What about the nine shock treatments? Would the tumor be malignant? Would Mama even make it through the operation?

When we arrived at the Richland Memorial Hospital and they finally got me settled in my room and in the bed, a sweet hall nurse could see that Julie was upset and about to cry, so she motioned for Julie to come help her get a pillow from the linen closet. She then tried to calm Julie’s fears by convincing her that she was sure her mother would be all right.

That night I asked Jack what I was doing in this other hospital. He told me that I had a brain tumor that would have to be removed in the morning and that we were just going to trust the Lord and the neurosurgeons.

The next morning, Thursday May 30, my head was shaved and I was taken in for surgery. The tumor was in the best possible location for removal and was known as a meningioma, which is a tumor growing from the dura or lining of the brain. Mine was the size of a tangerine and wasn’t malignant! After the removal of the tumor a cranioplastic plate which substitutes for the diseased portion of my skullbone, was wired in place with a #28 stainless steel wire before my scalp flap was returned to its normal position. Then a sterile dressing was applied. With the tumor out of my head I was on my way to making a quick and complete recovery.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Brain Scan and Neurosurgical Evaluation

Brain Scan

Monday morning May 27, 1974 at the Baptist Hospital, I was given a CT (computerized tomography) Brain Scan to determine whether I did, indeed, have a tumor. The scan showed I did… a large frontal lobe tumor on the left side of my head. The shock treatments had been so unnecessary! So unneeded!

Neurosurgical Evaluation and Recommendations

Tuesday, May 28, a neurosurgical evaluation and recommendation were made. Dr. Danny Paysinger, a neurosurgeon, would perform the operation. When he examined me later he found: “The patient is very demented. She has a very short attention span with no memory or recall of the moment. She cannot handle figures and the examination is extremely difficult because of the patient’s inability to carry out instructions even of a simple nature”.

Then Wednesday, May 29, I was given an Arteriogram to determine more about the tumor. The location proved to be favorable; the tumor would be accessible.

Jack, in Orangeburg, was called immediately and his permission obtained for brain surgery. He was told I would be operated on the next morning and that he should come up to Columbia that afternoon and move me from the Baptist Hospital to the Richland Memorial Hospital where an operating room would be available at that time. So Jack and our middle daughter, Julie, drove up to Columbia that afternoon to move me and my things from one hospital to the other.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Pre-Senile or Brain Tumor


On Saturday May 25, 1974, a neurologist, Dr. Taber, was called to the Baptist Hospital to examine me. He wrote in a report about the examination, “In my opinion Mrs. Gray could have an organic disorder”.

Saturday night, May 25, in Orangeburg, my family was at a just-family (because of my condition)-bridal-supper given for Eleanor by friends at their home. Jack had been calling Columbia all day trying to get in touch with somebody who could give him a report on the neurologist’s examination. Finally Dr. Taber called Jack at our friends’ home and reported to Jack that, at this point, it was thought that I was either pre-senile or had a brain tumor!

O-O-O-O-Oh! Either would be terrible! We, our whole family, had known senility first-hand with Mother! …Or a brain tumor! O-O-Oh… No!! Either prognosis was awful!

(This was in 1974 and brain tumors weren’t prevalent like they seem to be today. We had never known anybody to have brain tumor! It was foreign to us… and very scary!)

These two possibilities faced my family this Saturday night… just one week before Eleanor’s wedding. She broke out in hives.

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

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 21st 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!

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Shock Treatment

Shock Treatment

Little did I know that I was in the Baptist Hospital be given a series of unneeded, unnecessary shock treatments!

P. KENNETH HUGGINS, M. D.

1401 LAUREL STREET

COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA 29201

April 30 1974

Mr. Jack Gray _

Orangeburg, S. C. 29115

For Professional Services

Rendered to Ashlyn Gray

Initial inpatient evaluation $55.00

Inpatient psychiatric care (32
days @ $16 per day) 512.00

Electro-shock therapy with anes-

thesia (series of 9 treatments

@ $44 each) 396.00

$963.00

Shock treatments, as described for an article in The News and Courier newspaper by Margaret Salley Harrison who had had more than 100 treatments at different hospitals, are: “My memory is cloudy about some things, but not about the assembly line of stretchers lined up to go into shock. You’d be wheeled into a large room with massive machines and grotesque electrodes. They’d insert a mouth piece, cover my face with oxygen, and strap me down. Then I’d get a shot that put me to sleep… patients are put to sleep, then given a drug which temporarily paralyzes them so they don’t flail about when given the electric jolt and suffer injuries. It was very degrading.”

So it’s not so funny when shock treatments are jokingly described as someone hooked up to jumper cables.

Baptist Hospital


Monday, April 29, 1974 with Eleanor’s wedding just one month away I saw Dr. Huggins a third time. It had already been decided, without my knowledge, that I was to enter the Baptist Hospital in Columbia the next day, “now that my diagnosis of depression had been confirmed.” Jack, after having been assured that “it would be the best thing for Ashlyn and that she would be feeling much better in time for Eleanor’s wedding”, signed a paper giving his permission to go ahead with treatment.

So, I was admitted to the Baptist Hospital on Tuesday, April 30… not really knowing why or what was going on. Unable to think well enough to even question, I was just doing what I was told to do. I was led up to the ninth floor and through two big, heavy doors which slammed shut behind me. And I was locked in.


Thursday, August 2, 2007

Second Appointment

Second Appointment

I can’t remember very much about the April 17 session but I’m sure I would have talked with Dr. Huggins about the fact that after Daddy died in 1980 a Mrs. Turner had been hired by my brother to live with Mother as a companion and take care of her, and that Mother had begun showing signs of senility, and that Mrs. Turner was going to quit because Mother was so “out of touch” with reality. It seemed that Mother would go to the back door and call my daddy who had been dead for some time, “Milton… ah… Milton”, thinking he was in the backyard tending his rose bushes. Then, later, she got where she didn’t trust anybody so she hid the silver goblets under her bed and her checkbook between the mattress and the springs. One time, when dressing, she put her slip on over her dress. When she reached the point that she was no longer able to control her bladder and required constant care, it became necessary to put her in a nursing home. She, then, would tell us that “they” were digging a hole at the end of the nursing home building and wanted to put her in it. And that “they” had poison in the paint on the ceiling which would fall, as she lay on her back in her bed, into her eyes and make them itch.

I would have explained to Dr. Huggins that Mother had hay fever every spring and that was the reason for her eyes itching. When we would tell Mother that there was no hole being dug at the end of the building and no poison in the paint on the ceiling, she would insist that we didn’t know what we were talking about. Before Mother died in ’72 she was transferred to Craft-Farrow in Columbia and Eleanor, being at Columbia College, would visit and check on her nearly every day. I can remember, at that time, hoping that I would never have to end up like mother did.

What’s Wrong?

It all started in the fall of 1973… I was 46 years old. The medication described by the Orangeburg County Mental Health Department didn’t seem to be helping me. I didn’t understand why I was depressed. I had no reason to be. I had married a loving husband after my graduation from Duke University and we had had four precious children, three daughters and a son, and were soon to have a son-in-law. What was wrong? I knew something was! But I didn’t know what.

Eleanor, our oldest daughter, had already set her wedding date for June 1, 1974, to be right after her graduation from Columbia College. I was trying hard to go to the bridal parties given for her during her Christmas holidays, but my general slowness in everything I did and my inability to cope with everyday situations was becoming more and more distressing to me… and my family. At times my mind would just go blank in the middle of a sentence and I wouldn’t be able to remember what I had started saying. As the wedding date drew nearer Eleanor chose the gowns she wanted her bridesmaids to wear and I, already finding it hard to make decisions, took far too long deliberating on which gown to wear as the mother-of-the-bride. Finally, I chose a pale green one… and later had my shoes dyed to match.

My condition steadily worsened. By late March, 1974, I was referred, by my family physician, to a psychiatrist, a Dr. K. Huggins in Columbia, SC for psychiatric evaluation… and treatment, if needed. I was given an appointment for April 1.

At the session, Dr. Huggins asked me some questions. Yes, I had already been on medication prescribed to me by the Orangeburg Mental Health Department. Yes, I had lost both my father in 1970 and then my mother in 1972. And, yes, I had felt so terribly frustrated cleaning out their large attic, trying to decide what to do with all of their many things. Should I throw this away… or not? Maybe I could use this myself… but where? … This to go to the Orangeburg Historical Society… or would they even want it? Give this to one of the children… but which child? So many decisions! Dr. Huggins wanted to see me again in two weeks. Before I left I was given a second appointment for April 17.