Strange!

I was released from the hospital the next Friday, June 7, after just eight days. Jack came up to drive me home to Orangeburg, but…

Before we left Columbia, Jack bought me two pleated turbans, one pink and one white, to wear on my bald head. They were soft like the little stocking cap I was given at the hospital after the dressing was removed. I found the turban much more comfortable to wear than my wig which tended to be scratchy against the raw incision.

When we arrived at home in Orangeburg, something very strange happened. When I opened my closet door, none of the clothes hanging in the closet looked familiar! It looked to me as if all my clothes had been removed and replaced with some clothes I had never seen before. Then shortly I was able to remember them.

Strange!

And later, when I was told I had made those red burlap flowers as part of my therapy while having the shock treatments at the Baptist Hospital, I could hardly believe my eyes. As I scrutinized the flowers I had absolutely no recollection, at all, of having seen them… much less having made them.

Strange!

It was a disturbing feeling, knowing that I hadn’t known, for this long period of time, what was going on… or what I had done or said. I reckon it’s the way a drunk feels when he’s told the many things he said and did while he was drunk.

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.

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!

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.