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.

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.

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.