A Red Sketchbook

` Yep. It's a sketchbook. It's red. I bought it while I was waiting for EdgeWalker to complete his driver's test. Later on, I took a Pilot G-2 and started to draw myself on the cover wearing a shirt with my own monogram. And dammit, it took a really long time to fill in all that black!
` I was going to type 'Under Construction' over this image, because it is and I thought it would be amusing, but for some reason I didn't after all.

` I should note here that this is actually the first time I ever remember seriously drawing anything with a pen!

` In fact, EdgeWalker is the one who photographed these drawings for me - despite the fact that he still has not replaced his stolen flash. I had actually gone to the library on Monday - like I said I would! - in order to use their scanners, which it turned out they didn't have.
` However, EdgeWalker happened to have missed a going to work that day for the first time, so he gladly photographed, adjusted, and did other things to each page of my sketchbook. On top of that, he put them all on a CD and made an awesome label composed of parts of my cover art.
` What a guy! Can't wait to add more onto the disk...
` Only one thing about the pages, however... I completely forgot about putting a backing behind each one so that you can't see the page behind it. As a result, you may notice blue areas in some of these images. Well, hey, I don't like to bother with Photoshopping things if I can help it.

` Now then, here's the first page, as well as the very first pen drawing I remember doing on paper:


` It represents the many attacks that our enormous cat, Butters, has waged on EdgeWalker- yes, that's him! You see, he is constantly having to endure this perpetually meowing, licking, biting, shedding and scratching feline terror, which is sometimes of great annoyance to him. In fact, earlier on today, he dumped her here in my room, saying; "Let's go see your favorite Spoony!"
` Or at least, he would have, had that been my real name.
` Basically, he treats her like a small, very vocal child, picking her up and playing with her - and brushing her fur - until she becomes so worked up and aggressive that he has to shut her in another room or something. Despite this, he is definitely her favorite human.

` I also want to say, I'm not entirely happy with the lettering, plus I just noticed I could have made the tall and pointy 'o' in 'Bipolar' into the pupil of a cat's eye-design (instead of drawing the ill-fitting little one I had done) and it would have worked just perfectly!
` Well, perhaps I'll do another sometime. After all, I'm very much a beginner at this.

` Moving on already, my next drawing of Butters illustrates the two sides of her personality; asleep and neurotic.


` Personally, it's one of my favorite sketches of the whole book. But I almost like this other one of her better:
` Butters as one of the little sphynxes from the movie MirrorMask:


` It's quite apt, too; When she's not attacking EdgeWalker, she's standing by her food dish meowing incessently, and sometimes she won't even stop when you pay attention to her! Butters does this so much that we're worried she thinks the only reason she gets fed is because she whines so much!
` Gar.

` Now, as for the other entity I live with - that would be Phil - I've done many pencil sketches that portray him quite accurately.
` However, this is my first relatively successful pen sketch of him:


` He says he prefers another one I did rather than this one, because he claims this drawing makes him look like a bloated corpse. Well, too bad, I don't agree. Even so, I think he makes a quite handsome zombie.

` I also have a couple more of EdgeWalker from the same page:


` I think they tended to work out better because I was sitting across from him at the cafe we were at, rather than next to him. In each case, however, I couldn't see his ear from that angle, so I messed that up both times.


` Even so, they really do a lot look like him, albeit with a scribbly ear and a few delinquent lines. Notice, off to the right-hand-side is at least a proper drawing of his other ear!
` In fact, I have an even better drawing of him, but that'll be in my next post.

` Until then, feel free to leave as many comments as you like.

The Mad Doctor - a true story not for the weak of stomach. (Part 4 of 4)

` And here we come to the final part of my true story, The Mad Doctor (which begins here).
` So, you may be wondering how I got out of the institution. Well, it wasn't so much my own doing as it was my mom's, but... oh, you'll see.

` Luckily, after begging to see a doctor as many chances as I could, Doctor Carman finally agreed to see me. I figured, all I had to do was not tell her how much I constantly had the feeling that I didn't belong there, which I prided myself in not saying at all to anyone - that's usually a big mistake.
` This time, she was much nicer, though when I finally tried to tell her about when I was tortured, she merely interrupted me with; "You know, you are really so much better today than last time I saw you. Your speech isn't slurred anymore, and you seem so alert!"
` I don't know how she could have expected any different: Last time, I had been drugged to the extent that I couldn't even walk, much less speak or think clearly.
` "Do you remember that?" she asked.
` Thinking hard, I nodded.
` "Well, I'm thinking of letting you go upstairs soon," she said. "Maybe tomorrow."
` While she didn't want to discuss my being tortured, or even acknowledge that it had happened, I did manage to complain about the way the Abilify she had prescribed was causing me to constantly rock back and forth - even when I was trying to sleep.
` Seriously, the only way I could make it stop was to concentrate on it, much in the way breathing can be controlled. If I stopped thinking about it, the rocking started again, and because one cannot fall asleep without thinking of things like holding one's breath, it was almost impossible for me to sleep. At all.
` It was also making me very confused about where I was at times, I told her, and I kept doing strange and annoying things I had both never done before and had no control over. On top of this, I was shaking to the point that I could barely walk.
` Carman's solution? More drugs!

` Even so, that was an exciting night for me. To think, I wouldn't be considered 'dangerous' anymore! Though I became less and less coherant the more Abilify I was given, I still managed to write down many more observations, including the last of Christina's incessent all-night ramblings. Go ahead, read them for your own sick amusement:
` "When. When will you?" "I'm affecting your magic. I am. I'm affecting your magic." "Hgh! I can do a deal, Christina. This is Armageddon and Nostradamus." "No, don't do it. Take the eyeballs." "And you can have that." "I feel your Reiki. I see her every single lifetime. 'Cause this is your name. Vinny's gonna try to convince everyone they're God, you gotta wake them up. This is your name... except Nathan." "I'll come. Nathan? It's me. I'll come. Just pitch yourself out of your body. Go outside and hurl your soul." "Where are they?"
` She was interrupted by the other raging hallucinator, Vicki: "What'd she say? I'll kick her!"
` "I see 'em, Christine. Nothing is working out good. Nothing. No - all the angels aren't taking care of things. I'm looking at the night stars." "You're not. Nostradamus said the right year. But Satan has the scissors." "Hgh! Hgh! That's where they are. They're right here."
` "Onyx, you're hurting me. Let go of my mind... Reiki is really pissed. She is. I don't want to wake them up. And tell them their names. Be gods, be gods. Especially you, Christine, especially you. Especially you. Especially you. Especially after today."
` "Okay, alright." "Dammit, David, you still got dusted. These eyeballs. They're still purple. Make them purple with your time machine." "They will be. They will be. They will be. They will be. They will be. They will be. They just turned purple. They did. They did. They did. There, they are purple. They are. You are supposed to say you are Christina." "Didn't all the other galaxies get really pissed when you called yourself a god?" "I am. I'm a Reiki, too. Put your eyeballs in. The right one first. The right one first."
` Christina mimed putting an eyeball into her right orbit. "They are supposed to roll back in your head. Now your left one. Just stick it in there, not like that. Just stick it in." Abruptly, she looked down at her feet. "I'm splashing it, dude, I am." She bent down and picked up the eyeball, which of course, wasn't there. "Now, open your left eye."
` "Hey, you sleepy?" Vicki yelled from her room. Then, Vicki went on to curse and scream at her bathroom and called Christina a bitch for not ever shutting up.
` This type of thing went on until about three in the morning. At about five, Vicki was still awake, saying something like; "Your mother is being tortured by my son being alien intern. I didn't kill your grandma. Vicki did." She seemed to be talking about sons and aliens and 'dinotopia' for a while, from what I can tell from my notes. At one point, she was sitting on one of the lobby chairs, saying; "One of my children's gonna kill 'em." Then she mumbled something about veal, and stood up. "I think your mother..." she sat down suddenly and said innocently, "I'm just Ginger, Roger's daughter."

` And after the sun had risen, nothing had changed. Vicki was going on; "Excuse me, but you said not to talk about that shit - I am 49 years old! I should know better than you!"
` Christina, on the other hand, was speaking in a very deep, vibrant voice, slowly moving her arms above her head; "I held up the sky. Ommmmmmmm. I held up the whole sky. Ommmmmmmm. Cosmic earth."
` I made my way past Vicki, who said; "Am I watchin' you? Don't walk with me!"
` "Ah, demons," I snickered to Jennifer.
` "Some people are just prone to them," she said, shaking her head. Well, we got to talking, and it turned out that I wasn't the only one being moved upstairs soon. Both of us were quite excited about this prospect.
` Jen was telling me how the old woman who had slept in the other bed the first night I was here had said; "I don't want no bible beatin', smokin' people. I'm sick of it. Go back to the hospital you came from! Drop dead!" Jen had actually been this woman's roommate before I had.
` I told her about the other day when I thought the Milk of Magnesia had finally kicked in on my intestinal blockage - after taking it for three days - and rushed into the bathroom. No sooner had I pulled my pants down when my only roommate, Theresa, opened the door, thrown a towel across my lap, and started whispering hysterically about how she thought we were going to be killed: Apparently, someone in the hallway supposedly had said; 'She knows,' just after she had stuffed the phone number down my mom's sweater, a clue that she just couldn't keep it to herself any longer.
` Actually, later on that day, I really did think the Magnesia might have kicked in for real, however Theresa was in the shower and the orderlies would not let me into the other bathroom. That surely was another thing to complain about, although at least it was a false alarm - I was only beginning to bleed in a new and different way.
` Gee, I guess that made three bleeding orifices for me - a record that I have thankfully not bested myself at. I really was in horrible shape, sleep deprived with a whole-skull migraine and jaws that were only just beginning to unclench. Not to mention all the cramps and bleeding and whatnot.
` Truthfully, we were both very miserable down there because we were having all these problems and the orderlies just disregarded us. That, and we weren't crazy! ...Well, I wasn't anyway. Anyone could tell you that, but for the time being, I was the only one in the whole place who knew that I didn't belong there at all.

` As far as what had happened later that day, I don't clearly recall, as the drugs were quite overpowering. All I remember is being on the other side of the glass wall and climbing some stairs. I took down these notes:

` Now I'm in the upper unit. I can barely see because I didn't get much sleep. [Or so I had thought.] I'm listening to the Jerry Lewis Special on PBS. The new guy, Travis, totally hit on me and said 'I'll be ready when you are.' WTF?! [Yes, and he constantly sang my name over and over whenever he saw me.]
` This place is not like jail. It's got a bed so firm and not plastic with stuffing in them [sic], so I sit on it with no crackly, springy noises. My roommate, Kim, is ill so at least it's quiet here. [It turns out that Kim was about eight months pregnant.] My supposedly life-threatening double-period that's really bad is fading finally. [I was severely white-complexioned at that point.]
` We have a flatscreen TV, a [very out-of-tune] piano, foosball, and a shower that isn't flush with the floor so that I don't have to put in any towels on the floor to sop it up. I was lucky that the water was hot! There's actually two TVs here in two different rooms.
` Seriously, I have it made, all because I was acting like myself with Dr. Carman, and successfully navigated a group therapy thingie. Then I moved my stuff and went to lunch (Open Pit-type barbecue!!) and another meeting, and then forced my jaws open enough for half a hoagie. Getting sick of these Resource drinks!
` In other words, I am well. And I actually DIALED Phil's cell phone and he called back on the nearest pay phone from where the phone was. They also have an exercise bike and a water cooler. I think I'll have some [water] and eventually I'll get a blanket!

` Yes, all of this was truly a big deal to me as I had been deprived of regular food, water, and orderlies who would pay me any attention. In fact, twice a day we even got to go outside into a large fenced-in area with picnic tables, a basketball court, and sometimes, deer. We also had a laundry room and a kitchen, so we always had clean clothes and snacks to eat.
` And, 'blankets?' - no idea why I'd written that. Perhaps because I still had a chill and needed to wear one in order to stop me from shaking too much.
` But the extra medication I had been prescribed was already doing that to most of an extent. I could walk almost normally, and my perpetual rocking was a bit easier to control.
` Unfortunately, this medication also made me go nearly blind for a while. As a result, I had to stop writing about anything that had happened for the rest of my stay. In addition, the Abilify had really begun to affect my memory, so half the time I didn't even know what was going on, though at least I can remember more clearly now.
` For example, I remember that I had been in some kind of group therapy twice a day and had actually gone to a cafeteria to eat real food three times a day. It was really good, too!
` Unfortunately, the staircase on the way down smelled strongly like burnt margarine and chlorine - to everyone's dismay - and so it didn't help much with my appetite. Strangely, though, all of the orderlies were so used to it that they assured us that there was no such smell.
` The chefs were really nice, too. They were always making the greatest food, from pancakes to pizza. However, one day I couldn't possibly make myself eat lunch. Afterwards, one of the chefs asked why I wasn't eating much and I said I was sick. He said; "Oh, but you'll eat tonight, I'm sure!" I insisted that I could not, and he insisted that I could. So, my face burning, I said; "I've been constipated for a week and a half! So there!"
` However, even though everybody who worked there seemed to know this about me, if I was ever in the bathroom for more than a minute, someone would come around and knock at the door at intervals of thirty seconds, calling; "Are you alright?" I'd say; "I'm fine." Thirty seconds later, they'd knock again, asking about my well-being. This got old real fast. I was like; "I might be better if you'd leave me alone!"
` Eventually, I did get better, too; after that point, only one orifice was bleeding. And it was not my mouth, either, which had healed up sufficiently after about a week from being torn up.

` I recall, mainly, being very confused a lot, especially in group therapy. I was always speaking as much as possible and saying things I wasn't sure were true or not because I couldn't remember. It was around this time where I kept thinking to myself about my strange and hyperactive behavior; 'I can see the light! I really am crazy! I just can't sit still! How could I not have noticed before?'
` The truth, of course, was that I was normally a human lump, no matter what there was to be done, and I generally had very little energy for anything. Having such a short memory, however (It had seemed like I'd lived in that hospital forever!), I thought that this was somehow the way I'd been my whole life.
` I remember meeting this conflict when I volunteered to talk about something I knew nothing about - the other patients. I said; "I'm sorry I don't know anything, but I was just saying this because I usually am so shy around other people and just can't talk to a group of people."
` Strangely, they all applauded my effort. And yet, what had I been doing each group? Constant motormouth, my mind racing. It didn't make sense, but my perception was colored by the Abilify - plus everything else going on around me - and I just could not remember who I was.

` One day, Phil and my own mother dropped by. I don't really remember this, but my mom recounted later that she'd said then that she'd left something on the top of the microwave oven and I'd began to run off to get it. Then I'd stopped and turned around and looked at her strangely, saying; "Oh, the microwave's at home, and I'm not there."
` I do remember, however, that I could not stop pacing in my free time - I couldn't sit still at all! - so in order for Phil to talk to me, he had to keep up after me around the corridors, of which I had three rather than one! I don't really recall what he'd said, other than the fact that he was about to be forced to leave on family vacation and I wouldn't see him for another couple of weeks. I also remember that I'd kept stumbling every so often because my inner ears had a tendency of randomly going out on me: I would suddenly feel as if I were falling and lurch forward in order to try to catch myself.
` After the fact, however, Phil told me how amazingly lifeless I had been that day - I had no spirit whatsoever, seemed to be perfectly contented with life at the mental hospital. Really I didn't even care if I lived there for years! It was like I didn't want my old life back.
` Of course, I couldn't even remember my old life.
` While Phil was talking with me, however, my mom was speaking to Doctor Carman about my situation with the Mad Doctor torturing me and all. She said that earlier on, Carman did think I might have had schizophrenia - thanks to my know-nothing psychiatrist in Medina, Dr. Kwak, who had told me earlier that year that she couldn't help me because she didn't know what was wrong with me. (Try Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?) Well, it is no wonder that a lot of other Medina mental health professionals called her 'Dr. Quack."
` Anyway, Carman realized from what my mother had told her that I was not at all delusional about what had happened to me, and didn't even seem to be psychotic one bit! She said she'd let me go pretty soon, in fact.

` But when, exactly, I didn't find out until eight hours after I was supposed to have left. I was in my room, attempting to read alternately by using one of the nurses' reading glasses and waving my hands in front of the paper. Yes, my eyeballs were beginning to work because I had stopped taking the medication that prevented me from constantly rocking. And that meant that I was constantly rocking. All the time. But it was better than being blind.
` I looked up to see this blurry shape in my blurry doorway, with a blurry something in her hand-like blurs, telling me that I was supposed to have been discharged at noon. Excited as all heck, I got up and called my mom straightaway.
` Naturally, her response was; "Aw, do I have to come get you? It's eight o'clock at night!"
` No, it really, she said that!!!
` Nevertheless, I made her come right down and get me. Afterwards, I was packing up the clothes and things she'd brought me, when another blur entered my room. Or maybe it was the same one, I couldn't tell. Anyway, she asked me about my intestinal blockage-thingy and I said; "Oh, it's been over two weeks and not much luck."
` She said to hang on and left for a little while. She came back with a glass bottle of Citrus of Magnesia, though she made me drink it right away in case someone raged into my room and smashed it against something.
` It tasted very, very good, actually - just like fresh-squeezed lemon and lime juice, though it was carbonated. I can barely sip those things they sting so much. But, as I was about to leave soon on an hour-long car ride from Chagrin Falls back to Medina, you can guess that it had begun working profusely before I'd gotten home. I'll say no more, other than the fact that my mom's car was perfectly clean, thank you.
` And then, I finally did arrive home. I finally got to do so many things I'd missed; first, using my own bathroom, then holding my Katie-cat, sleeping in my own bed with my Katie-cat, and getting on my computer - though I had about three hundred e-mails waiting for me.
` That Mad Doctor Benninger had called a couple of times while I was gone, asking about how I was doing, but this was little more than harrassment. Soon after, I was able to open my mouth wide enough to have my stitches removed with nice, cool scissors by my dentist, Dennis Schirippa. He said he wasn't surprised at this kind of behavior from Benninger. (Actually, so were a lot of people I'd heard from who described the guy as an asshole who didn't care about how they were feeling or whether or not they were bleeding when they left his office.) In fact, he called Benninger to verify my story, and Schirippa's conclusion was that he now had thorough reason to stop sending his patients to him at all!

` But that's not the end of the story. I would like it to be, but there was still much to come - not the least of which was the two hours I spent crying because Schirippa later told me he didn't believe that Benninger was capable of changing someone's consent form. My orthodontist, Dr. Fuller, also had the same opinion, despite the fact that many of his patients didn't.
` But I'm getting ahead of myself: The first thing of all was getting off of Abilify - a.k.a Aripiprazole. After being home for a few months and not being able to stop rocking back and forth, constantly getting into fights with Mom and her eponymous-brewery boyfriend Tom Burkhardt, being often told that I had lost my sense of humor, and doing hundreds of very alienating things such as going up to complete strangers and talking to them in a funny voice (because I was actually failing to not say anything at all and squinching my throat up as tight as I could), I realized that I had something very wrong with me that wasn't there before.
` I think, though, that it was more the panic attacks which were what finally broke the straw. Really - have you ever been so afraid that you feel sick to your stomach, yet so frightened that you can't vomit? Like you're up against a wall and there's some horrifying, monstrous beast that's just about to do something you know will be unspeakable, and you just wish that you'd spontaneously die before it got to you?
` Have you ever been terrified that you'd swallowed broken glass for days, even when you knew you hadn't? In fact, I remember once being horrified that somehow I had gotten pregnant, even though I was (and am still) a virgin (for obvious reasons), plus my boyfriend had been on his dreary vacation all that time. Really, I didn't actually believe these things, but I couldn't get rid of the awful feelings that seemed to come from nowhere!
` About every day, I'd be having panic attacks, flashbacks, and panic attacks with flashbacks. They were really quite something. Sometimes, I'd scream agonizingly at the top of my lungs - *ahem*, you'd think that someone was cutting my very flesh and bone! - and of course, if my mom heard me, she'd come over and tell me to be quiet.
` Well, that wasn't very nice.
` And one night, I actually screamed so loud near a sneakily open window I didn't know was there, and someone who was outside heard me and called the police! I was quite interested at first for some reason, but then I had the awkward fortune of trying to explain to Mom and Tom just why they were there.
` Anyhow, after another night terror caused my mom to come into my room and restrain me from thrashing around and getting all bruised (a rather strange behavior of her), I resolved to stop taking the Abilify. A few days later, I began to notice that I had some control over myself, although the shaking took a few more months to wear off. (It was really interfering with my driving ability, too, as putting on the brakes without pumping them involved standing on the brake pedal.)
` Later I learned from two mental health professionals that this bizarre behavior - completely uncontrollable impulses to do things against my will, panicky feelings from nowhere, and the inability to stop rocking - was caused by the fact that I did not have the thing wrong with me that the medicine was supposed to correct. Normally, its effect goes the other way around, you see - people who think and do strange things and rock back and forth are supposed to stop doing those things!

` And then, of course, let's not forget the fact that the part of my tongue that touches the roof of my mouth as well as part of my genitals went completely numb at one point. It started getting better over the course of a couple of months, then worse, then better, then it plain spread throughout my body in February.
` Since then, it's been steadily getting worse, though the pattern of empty spaces in my brain does not reveal a neurological basis for this particular problem. After CAT scans, MRIs and an EEG, it's clear that this is caused by a type of mental blockage they call 'conversion disorder'. And supposedly, the Ancient Egyptians called these related phenomena 'the wandering uterus'. I have no idea why.
` Anyway, I know that I will, at some point, break myself of this strange mental habit of making oneself feeling not like much of anything on the outside; I just have to be untroubled and unafraid enough to do so.

` However, it was still a mystery to me why I had been sent me to that mental hospital in the first place. Apparently, my G.P., Doctor Madrilejos, who I'd talked to in the ER, didn't believe my story at all and thought that I must be delusional if I thought Doctor Benninger would have done such underhanded things to me. You see, they were friends, and Medina wholeheartedly supports the 'Good Ol' Boy' system.
` And yet I didn't know he thought I was crazy because he didn't tell me at all! Sure, he told me other things, such as the fact that I had strep throat twice in two months, and that I'd never stop having problems unless I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, but he didn't tell me he thought I was off my rocker! Instead, he told my friend, and Phil's mother, Rhonda! Apparently Madrilejos doesn't think much of that doctor-patient confidentiality thing.
` Of course, I didn't find that out until this year, because Rhonda is one of those people who can't seem to not keep secrets from other people - not even ones they'd like to know about! She explained she didn't want me to find out because I already had enough law suits on my hands.
` I should also mention that Madrilejos is also friends with that Dr. Kwak, who really never did find out what was wrong with me. Neither did I, until I came to Everett and began attending PTSD classes.
` Anyway, there's much more to the story, really, though I'm sure you're all quite tired enough of reading of my ordeal, and so am I, frankly. I am going to go and have a nice, sane day with some nice, sane and considerate people, in a nice little city about 2,400 miles away from The Mad Doctor of Medina.


` I'm also sure you will all be pleased with the ceasing of this horror story and the beginning of a new era, of my blog anyway. Aside from writing about these events here, I have also been obsessively working on digitizing some artwork for your viewing pleasure.
` In fact, I have it all ready to go!

The Mad Doctor - a true story not for the weak of stomach. (Part 3 of 4)

` Well, part two was definitely not nearly as traumatic to write about than part one - that was really the most frigtening experience I could have ever chosen to write about.
` Now, where was I?

` Oh yes, I was lying on the thin slab of foam, which bent up so sharply around me that the fitted corners of the sheet had probably instantly slid from its slippery plastic edges - which turns out to be the type of thing sheets do on plastic-covered pieces of foam.
` In fact, I spent the next three days on the plastic-covered foam, enduring stinging injections at regular intervals, barely able to move and totally unable to eat: Not only was the pain raging through my mouth, sinuses and ears intensely enough to keep me from laying my head sideways on my pillow, not only did my uvula feel as if it would be ripped off every time I tried to swallow, but I just couldn't open my jaws. They seriously wouldn't move any further than was necessary for tooth-chattering.
` In fact, my teeth tended to chatter like mad - especially because I had developed a chill - and the only facial expression I seemed to be capable of was a perpetual grimace coated in lukewarm blood-spittle.

` The first time I tried to get up was the dreadful morning I'd arrived. I was too dizzy and weak to be coordinated enough to walk - my mobility was actually worse than it had been while I waited in the Emergency Room. I halfway crawled to the bathroom - which was just behind my bed, on the other side of the door to the hall.
` I happened to look up out at the hallway to see a woman with dreadlocks standing there. I said to her something like; "I can't seem to get up this morning."
` "I suggest you try," she said, with a Jamaican accent.
` The 'Jamaican Lady', as I referred to her, seemed to be more or less a bitch, though she did change my sheets every day. That was good at least, as I had a habit of peeing on them once a day from not being able to get to the bathroom.
` She even gave me extra blankets for my chill, which helped me feel less cold. She said I was burning up and probably had a bad fever, but I couldn't take the extreme coldness and shivering on top of everything else. She also gave me these little boxes full of a chocolate supplemental beverage called 'Resource', which I was to drink through a straw despite the fact that it gave me what the nurses there called 'dry sockets'.
` It must have been the second or third day that I was sprawled out on the foam slab, surrounded by my bunched-up fitted sheet, when an actual medical professional came to see me. I was trying to distract myself from the pain by listening to a television set burbling in another room and scraping the caked blood off my neck when a woman with short, gray hair came in holding a clipboard.
` Other than raw sensory information, I remember very little of this incident. I had just been injected with a sedative, so my speech was especially slurred and the only thing I could think of was the pain, the flashbacks, and the fact that I felt too hot and too cold at the same time.
` I tried to tell the doctor that I needed some painkillers and someone to talk about the incident with Benninger. She didn't seem to want to listen to it herself, however, and soon left me to my suffering.
` Well, at least this wasn't quite as bad as having labor contractions for no discernible reason and then being screamed at for it. Nevertheless, it was still somewhat overwhelming.

` A little while after this, I was given some kind of pill, which I took grudgingly with some more Resource. Eventually, I managed to pathetically crawl from the tangle of bedclothes on the floor and get to the bathroom this time. Bracing myself on the sink, I was able to stand high enough to glimpse myself in the mirror.
` I was a mess.
` My face was solid brown with dried blood from the nose down, and my hair resembled some type of bird's nest. Not only this, but I also smelled of a mixture of rotting chicken fat and urine, and my mouth positively reeked of blackened flesh and blood.
` That day, I actually felt quite priveleged to be able to use the bathroom like everyone else rather than pee on myself. I was also somewhat grateful for a severe intestinal blockage I'd had for several days.
` Luckily, I managed to get myself cleaned up before my mom walked into my room, to my great surprise. I don't remember anything about seeing her other than my schizophrenic roommate practically shoving a scrap of paper with a phone number down her sweater in fear that someone else would see this transaction.
` Also, she'd said that Phil and Rhonda were coming soon - which, in fact, happened shortly after she left. It was odd, and I think it was because I'd just been put on this new medication. They seemed familiar at first, and then they didn't, and then they did. Never in my life had anything like that ever happen, though I can remember nothing else about this encounter.
` Phil told me later, however, that he'd talked to as many people as he could about me, and they seemed to think that I was some kind of hopeless mental case - hence my being held in the critical ward. These same people also looked shocked to learn that he was my boyfriend. He said; "She's not crazy, and the reason why she says she was tortured by a surgeon is because she was!"
` This was evidently news to those people, who were certain that I was schizophrenic. And, after Phil came in to visit me, he walked around a natural foods store called Wild Oats, feeling awfully guilty that he was capable of doing so.

` After the third day - the day on which I'm fairly certain my mother, Phil and Rhonda showed up to see me - I was able to get up and shamble around fairly well. A large part of the reason for this improvement was that I felt so helpless that I stopped calling out for painkillers. That stopped the nurses from injecting me with sedatives - which burned quite badly when they spread throughout my body.
` Yes, I had been officially broken by this mental hospital, which was really something I was quite sick and tired of. One of the first things I did, however, was find the large open area at the end of the hall, which had a television set and many lobby-style chairs occupied by the other inmates, a motley crew I'll get to in a few paragraphs.
` Beyond this area was a glass wall and glass door with a hinged window just to the right of it. I swung the window in and stuck my head through - which rather reminded me of Mister Ed. Accordingly, I was in fact treated like a talking horse - not seriously at all.
` I demanded strong painkillers, was denied them, and so I demanded to speak to a doctor, which I was also denied, and then I demanded a therapist, and was denied this as well. So, I blew up and started on about how much I couldn't stand the pain, how much I couldn't stand being denied my rights to medical treatment as an American citizen and how sick I was of being treated like I wasn't. "I'm a human being for god's sake!" I screamed.
` This earned me about three faceless people bursting out of the door, yanking down the back of my pants, and administering another stinging shot into my quite sore hips.
` For probably about a half hour after this, I did nothing but sit on my bruised buttocks in despair, bitterly weeping and drooling blood. Apparenly, the glass wall here was used much like the one at the primate house at the zoo, and there was nobody to ask the animals what was on their minds, despite their ability to speak.

` And yet, as I was in the same cage, I did learn to talk with the other animals. My roommate , Theresa, seemed to actually be quite normal most of the time, and even showed me how to lay towels on the floor to keep the water from coming out of the shower. (Yes, there was no barrier on the floor to keep the water from flooding the entire bathroom floor - but then, my showers were always quite short due to my chill and a consistent total lack of hot water.)
` I also learned that Theresa had made the sparkly blue thing she wore over her hair, and that she's been in a lot of very traumatic situations. Even so, I didn't have many problems communicating with her.
` Like the time she got me up in the middle of the night, teary-eyed, cupping my slimy face in her hands and telling me that her husband and children were being shot and we were next. She suggested we move my bed across the door, apologizing for wanting to barracade me in the room with her, though I decided to act 'the brave one', and scout out around the hallway.
` I said; "I don't see or hear a thing. Everything's okay."
` And just after this was actually when I first really paid much attention to Christina, a beautiful young woman with a head of long, wavy and vivid orange hair. She was still awake - as usual - walking around the TV area. Unable to sleep, I sat down in a chair and, being given pencil and paper by my mother, wrote down the many things she had been saying that night, which were punctuated by tosses of the head with what sounded like the snorting noise a horse makes.
` I noted that she was talking about some sort of business with magical eyeballs that could be put into one's eye sockets. It starts:
` Seeming to reassure someone in a rather monotone voice; "I have been doing this for two days straight. This is my job. This is my job." Then, another, younger-sounding voice; "Seriously, dude? Seriously? I love you dude." Then, the other voice; "Oh, get out, quick! Hgh! One down. Hgh!" "No, seriously! You get it out, you did."
` And then, a not-very happy voice: "Christina, this is Onyx!" Then, presumably whichever one Christina was; "Toss 'em back down to the devil and pray. Toss 'em back down to the devil and pray. I will never put them in your face again, Onyx." And Onyx said; "Free me from hell and I'll keep my promise." "If you keep your promise, I'll keep mine. Hgh!"
` "Yes we will! Yes we will. Yes we will. They can see the scissors. They can. They can see the scissors." "Christina, I don't want them getting them right now."
` Wellll... maybe I wouldn't talk to her just yet. But the next morning, I was once again shambling down the hallway, my new medication now making me shake more than ever along with my chill. Even worse, I was in even more pain because a freak menstural cycle had been somehow triggered by what I'd been through, so I had to stuff my pants with toilet paper to keep it from running down my leg.
` Luckily, it wasn't anything as bad as the contractions I used to have for reasons which still mystify me, but it was still bad enough to keep me from standing up straight. So here I was, doubled over in pain and shuffling along when the other raging schizophrenic - Vicki - a middle-aged woman with a black thing like Theresa's over her hair, came along in her usual pacing.
` "Excuse me, do you have to walk with me?" she spat.
` "Uh, no." I said, through my gritted teeth.
` "Then get outta my way!" Over her shoulder, she added; "We'll see what my father has to say about this!"
` Yes, Vicki was not fun to be around due to her aggressiveness. Luckily, her hallucinations tended to grab her attention away from me.
` Over in the TV area, I saw - wearing a tee-shirt and khaki shorts - Christina, who was Still At It. She said to the floor; "Maybe we would cannibalize them if there was nothing to eat?!" and then; "I was just kidding! Can't you take a joke?" Then, halfheartedly; "Oh, ha, ha."
` Another woman of indeterminate age, dressed in spotted hospital pajamas seemed very interested in Christine. This one had a lot of puffy, brown hair, prominent, rounded facial features, and a thoroughly glazed look - a look I'd found I also had.
` She stretched out her arms and put her hands on Christine's forehead, though one of the other patients told her to leave Christine alone. She lowered her hands and dreamily reminded her; "I'm only doing God's work."
` How could I get along with any of these other people?

` The time came when Vicki was motioning to one of her invisible people, perhaps a daughter, I was thinking. "Now, turn the yellow one around," she said. "There's my gorgeous girl."
` Inevitably, the woman with the bushy brown hair came up and tried to 'heal' Vicki. So, Vicki violently shoved her away and she came and sat down next to me as I innocuously shook and rocked back and forth uncontrollably from my medication.
` I was also wrapped in a blanket from my chills, but I attempted to smile at her anyway. I introduced myself and apologized for rocking back and forth, shivering. I explained that since I'd never done that before, it must me the Abilify - a drug I later learned was causing all sorts of strange behavior in me precisely because I didn't need it.
` She told me her name was Jennifer, and we got to talking. She seemed amazingly normal. Except, of course, she believed that demons were inhabiting the heads of the most afflicted of us.
` Really, we talked about all kinds of perfectly normal things, though at one point, she twisted around and clutched her back, saying; "You know. My back really hurts in this one spot, I think it's because Vicki hit me. Did you see that?"
` "Yeah, I did." I said, "She looked really pissed. Too back you can't do that oo-ooo-ooo.... that... healing stuff on yourself."
` She smiled genuinely and said, "I wish I could, but it doesn't work that way."
` "Doesn't that figure?" I said, grinning.
` It was truly amazing how rational and alert someone like her could seem, I thought, and yet be totally unaware that she was mentally ill. Meanwhile, as we were talking, I scratched the top of my nose and Vicki criticized me for not using a tissue. Luckily, I didn't have to respond because one of her hallucinations had distracted her.
` Surely, Vicki was definitely not someone I'd want to talk to. I'm not sure if Christina was, either, not that she was aggressive. In fact, the only agressive thing I'd heard of was when Jennifer said that once, she was saying to Christina; "I bet you're not even aware of me, are you?" and Christina actually snapped out of her miasma of gods and scissors to call her a bitch.
` How to break the barrier of her own little world? Truthfully, I was so self-absorbed with my own pain and problems that I didn't bother to make an effort, though I kept thinking that this wrongful trip to a crazy house was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe (what else?) crazies.
` Fascinating, yes. But an unpleasant situation, nonetheless.

` Besides having to shower in a flooded bathroom with nothing but liquid soap and icewater, sleeping was also amazingly uncomfortable. My head had to be pointed straight up because my entire jaw musculature hurt like crazy, my erratic hormones caused my breasts to feel like two bulging bruises which hurt if I moved or tried to lay on my side, and yet my poor glutei were so bruised from all the injections that lying flat on my back was not a smart idea.
` Luckily, the drool pouring from my mouth was turning maroon, though the blood from my also-very-painful period caused me to have to get up every fifteen minutes and clean up.
` At one point, I was crying, so I got up in the middle of the night and swung the window in, asking for someone to talk to. The lady who was on the other side said that I didn't have that privelage. I asked who she was. She said she was my case manager.
` After much bargaining, she said she might talk to me if I was good, but first, I had to be sedated if I was to come behind the glass wall. After even more bargaining until after I stopped crying, I was still forced to agree.
` With my posterior newly stinging, she let me wait in a room behind her desk. I sat on a bed with restraints on it, afraid to leave to go into the nearby bathroom despite the blood that ran down my legs.
` Finally, she did come back and I said; "Oh, good you're here. I didn't know when you'd be back here. Listen, I need to clean the blood out of my pants really quickly, my underwear's soaked, it'll be like thirty seconds, it's just... I should have done it earlier, but, I didn't know when you'd come... I really do need to talk about this, and I thank you, you're the first person who's ever offered to talk to me since it happened."
` She sighed, rolled her eyes and said; "I don't have time for this," and walked away.
` I waited for her to come back, but when I came up to her behind her desk, she was still busy with whatever she was doing. She said she wouldn't talk to me because she had too much work to do.

` The next day, I think, someone else behind the desk showed me how to use the red phone in a which sat in a little scarcement in the hallway. It had no numbers in its dial - you had to ask for someone to call the number for you. So, I asked them to call Phil's number.
` He picked up the phone, glad to hear from me, and started telling me how the mental hospital I was in was about the greatest in the state, and that it should be no time until I got to the upper level.
` I was like; "What do you mean?"
` He said; "There's an upper floor, too."
` That was new to me. "Really?" I said.
` "Well yeah, when you come in. Don't you remember going through all those locked doors, before you got all the way down where you were?"
` "Phil," I said, "I came in through the double doors by my room. In the middle of the night. I don't even know what the place looks like from the outside."
` He proceeded to tell me how things weren't so bad upstairs, and that I'd be able to get out if they could see I wasn't a threat to anyone. "You're in the section reserved for dangerous people," he told me.
` Well, that was comforting. But then, I realized, the only direction I could go was up! And so, I spent the next I-don't-know-how-many days working to get myself the privelage of not being considered dangerous.


` Next time, we'll see just what I wound up working for, in Part Four of The Mad Doctor!

The Mad Doctor - a true story not for the weak of stomach. (Part 2 of 4)

` So, where did I leave off last time? Ah, yes. Phil had somehow gotten me out of the sugeon's office, though instead of dragging me right over to the ER, he sped away to where he lived in Lafayette, in a record time of ten minutes.

` I was still bleeding profusely down my chest and neck, unable to open my jaws no matter how much I tried to relax them. I was in a great deal of pain, but Phil needed to go to work. Luckily, Rhonda, his mother, was home to offer moral support.
` Still not able to completely support myself on my own, they helped me clean myself up and sat me down on the couch with paper towels and a wastebasket to hang my head over. I still couldn't spit or swallow, due to the piercing sensation in my uvula, but I was still able to move my lips and tongue enough to slurringly tell them all that had occurred.
` After much blubbering on through the bright red drool pouring from my mouth, my mom came over and seemed rather miffed that I hadn't been dumped off at home by myself. She helped me to the car and drove us to the pharmacy to pick up the codeine I'd been prescribed for the pain.
` Meanwhile, Phil's mom called Benninger and tried to tell him off. All he kept saying was; "Oh, she's not in any pain. She's just a drama queen."
` "How do you know?" Rhonda demanded. "How can you tell she's not in pain? She was over here, bleeding all over the place, crying, and she looked like she was in agony. It was pretty clear to me she was suffering!"
` "I can assure you, I she wasn't in any pain when she left my office."
` "You can't know that!" Rhonda said, exasperatedly. "What, are you saying you're psychic? You can't know what's going on in someone's head!"
` It went on and on, Benninger denying everything Rhonda could throw at him, until it was clear how fruitless of an endeavor it was.

` Now, it is true that I sometimes like being the center of attention - not that Benninger would even know that about me, as I was quite frightened of him - but in times of torture, there is no room for such foolishness much less any possibility of exaggerating one's reactions to it.
` My mother, on the other hand, has almost always acted as if this were the case. Fractured foot? "Oh, quit crying like a baby! You just hit your foot! Get up!" Unable to get out of bed due to deathly illness? She only complained about the smell coming from my room after three days - and once, she was brought to tears and said I put her under a lot of 'duress' because I 'just wouldn't' get up!
` Oh yeah, blame me for everything that happens to me! God forbid I ever get a scrap of sympathy! Well, this was no different. She gave me a codeine pill - which took a long enough for me to get up the nerve to swallow - and left me in the living room by myself.
` Keeled over on the couch with my legs together, I slowly became more and more anxious about the situation. After bawling about the whole thing for three quarters of an hour, I slowly realized that the codeine just wasn't going to help - the pain in my mouth, ears, nose and neck still seemed to be stabbing just as much as it had been.
` And then, part of me was suddenly back in Benninger's office, being cut up by the damned butcher, and the pain was once again nearly lethal. I became so panicked from this flashback that I started convulsing uncontrollably, arms and legs smacking into furniture, though I wasn't at all aware of that part until my mom told me I'd broken the phone receiver later on.
` However, I did notice that my mother briefly flitted by the doorway while this was happening, rolling her eyes, and sauntered downstairs. I saw her boyfriend follow, glancing at me with a kind of too-scared-to-do-anything expression on his face.

` When I finally began to gain my faculties back, I picked up my video camera and began to clumsily recite what had happened to me while strands of bloody drool steadily ran into the wastebasket. If she wouldn't listen, then at least I'd have some kind of proof of what went on here and all would be well for me.
` After that, I shakingly stumbled to the top of the steps and clung to the banister. I'd decided that I'd been neglected for the last time and I would be damned if I didn't get any type of painkiller or some kind of help from this mess.
` "Mom!" I yelled, after figuring out that descending the staircase on my own would probably be suicide. "Get up here, now!" Honestly, I'd never used that tone of voice with my mother, much less demanded anything from her, but I think I had an excuse.
` Eventually, she approached the bottom of the stairs and asked what was the problem.
` "I need to go to the emergency room! Now! I cannot stand this pain any longer!"
` "Well, just wait for the codeine to kick in," she said.
` "It's not kicking in, and I suggest you make some effort to fucking help me! I need painkillers! NOW!"
` She actually came up the stairs to try arguing with me, but I wasn't going to take it. After all the times I'd been completely ignored when it was quite possible and very appropriate to get me medical help, or at least pay me some attention, I refused to even argue.
` I hit her.
` Not hard, or so I thought, but I slammed her on the shoulder and kept yelling, halfway crazy from the pain, which seemed to be shooting through my nose, ears and jaw. She stared up at me in shock, and said; "Ow! That hurts!"
` And I said something like; "Excuse me! Miss Bruised-Arm! I've just been tortured and I'm bleeding all over myself! How the hell do you think I feel?" ...Yes, like that, but with more spraying of blood.
` Suddenly her demeanor transformed into one of someone who had just been frightened into doing something, and she said; "Alright, alright. Let's get you to the car."
` "THANK YOU!" I bellowed, and gratefully took her arm down the steps.

` Feeling somewhat humiliated, I had managed to stumble into the ER by myself and tell the check-in nurse what my problem was. By this time, my face felt as if it had been badly sunburned and I felt quite dehydrated.
` Then, someone got me a wheelchair and one of those little beige, kidney-shaped pans to catch the blood. One nurse took my temperature and saw that it was 98.6, which she said was normal.
` Normal for most people, yes, but my body temperature is usually around 96.5 so I corrected her, adding; "For me, that's a fever."
` She said; "Well, it's normal here."
` Evidently, she didn't understand the logic of people's personal body temperatures dictating whether or not they had fevers rather than the location they were in.
` She wheeled me into one of those little curtained-off areas and made me put on one of those little paper gowns. I still chose to keep my underwear on, even though it was still slightly damp. I sat there on the bed for quite a while, grumbling into my kidney-shaped dish, unable to put it down because the red string of drool didn't seem to want to break.
` By the time the dish was full of completely opaque, red blood-slobber, someone came in to draw blood in order to test for anemia. I asked when I could have a painkiller, and learned that one has to wait about four hours after taking codeine before you put another painkiller into your system.
` Or you die.
` Joy. So, about an hour of trying not to have more flashbacks - and failing - someone came and made me stand up in order to inject my hip with both a blood-clotting agent and then a sedative.
` After that, it all went hazy, save for memories of the surgeon cutting me up, and my constant screams of; "It hurts! It hurts!"

` In between panicked frenzies, I also recall that I just happened to see my general practitioner walking by. "Doctor Madrilejos!" I shouted, and stumbled across the room (he had to catch me) to tell him every grisly detail before he walked off to attend to whatever business he'd had.
` Well, I needed to talk to somebody.
` I was still in there by nightfall, and vaguely, in a fog that seemed to be made of pain, I remember asking why the Demerol I'd been injected with long ago still hadn't had any effect on me. Someone or another said that it wasn't working because my adrenaline was so high. That's why they had called an ambulance to take me somewhere that could do a better job - like a pain clinic, I was thinking.
` Though the ordeal had started that morning, it was almost midnight before the ambulance arrived. I signed a consent form to be taken off to this other hospital, put on my thoroughly bloodstained clothing, and got on the stretcher.
` The whole two hours I spent in the ambulance - from what I can barely remember - I was spewing through my gritted teeth both bloody saliva and gruesome details of my ordeal, but the EMT guy seemed very disinterested with the whole thing. He didn't even give me any painkillers.
` At last, I arrived through some glass doors and was unceremoniously dumped onto a plasticy-feeling bed in a dark room to the left and just left there. The whole night. I kept crying and demanding painkillers, but the things they injected my buttocks with only focused the pain.
` "This will make you feel better," they'd say - whoever 'they' were - though it only seemed to make it more intense because it shut everything else out. I couldn't think - I could only feel my head aching and stinging, which is just what I had demanded to be done away with.
` What was happening? My mind wasn't much able to put two and two together, and I stayed up the whole night attempting very unsuccessfully at trying to figure out what was going on.

` And then I saw it - in the light of morning. The sky was becoming bright enough to make out the windows in front of me. And the windows made my pounding heart skip a beat.
` Why?
` Because of the iron grate in front of them. Not only that, but there were Plexiglas sheets to prevent one from trying to get at the bars. The whole room was not at all friendly to people who needed medical help: It was small and barren with three metal cots, which apparently had thin, foam pads coated with plastic instead of mattresses. My sheet slid around under me as I struggled not to convulse.
` Eventually, I saw that there was another person lying on the bed across the wall from mine. I wondered why they hadn't complained about my night-long sobbing and screeching. Finally, I decided to try to talk to whoever it was.
` She was a somewhat stout woman, with a somewhat troubled and shining ebony face, wearing some kind of blue thing over her hair. I asked her what she was in here for. Her reply: "They killed my babies and they killed my husband. They ain't getting us if I can help it."
` The pounding sound from my chest suddenly seemed to turn up the volume.


` And that is part two of my horrifying and epic true tale. Tune in next time for part three of The Mad Doctor!

The Mad Doctor - a true story not for the weak of stomach. (Part 1 of 4)

` It's pretty graphic, but I spontaneously felt like spilling my guts about a personality-shattering event that happened in 2003. It's rather long, so I'm probably going to write about it in several serial parts. Also, as writing this first part has caused me to block out a lot of the feeling in my body, I'm not going to bother editing it.
` Without further chickens or duckies:

` One of my wisdom teeth was bothering me once again and I figured I needed to see someone to have them pulled, despite the fact that I didn't have dental insurance. Frankly, I enjoy having teeth pulled, that's why I have so few of them. I actually don't mind dental surgery as long as I can watch - being 'knocked out' is a great phobia of mine, because of the thought of being forced to be at a stranger's mercy. I went to the office of Benninger and Evanco in the doctor's office buildings next to the Medina County Hospital.
` This joker, Benninger, basically neglected to talk to me about any of what he found, though he insisted that it needed to be done in two weeks. He asked me to sign a consent form, and I looked at it and asked him exactly what he was going to do.
` He said, simply; "Oh, I'm going to put you to sleep, pull out those teeth, and then you'll wake up and they'll be gone."
` Not only did he insist on calling utter loss of consciousness 'going to sleep', but that was all the information I could get out of him. I tried to tell him that I knew those drugs didn't work on me, and, since I don't even lose consciousness while asleep (a common enough symptom of PTSD), it was fruitless to try anyway. I figured those facts would serve as a good enough excuse for my total unwillingness to have this guy do whatever he wanted to me while I just lay there, unable to move.
` He only said; "Have you ever been to sleep before?"
` I didn't really answer, but he continued anyway:
` "Well, this'll be the first time!"
` I just about collapsed inside. Even so, I noted that I had anesthesia options on the consent form, so I just circled 'local anethetic', which was the weakest nerve-dulling option. After I'd signed it, he actually came up behind me, ripped it out of my hands and circled something else.
` I just about felt raped. I cried and cried, barely able to stand because my legs seemed to have been glued together. I blubbered on to some receptionist who scheduled my appointment for about an hour. I tried to tell her my situation over and over, but she kept saying; "No, it's okay. You just go to sleep and a second later, you wake back up."
` 'Go to sleep?' why was everyone here treating me like some child?
` I didn't realize it, but since I'd been scared silly, one of my defense mechanisms kicked in and I'd forgotten that the piece of paper he'd changed was a consent form. I instead called it 'the piece of paper' and thought of it as 'the game plan'. In my mind, it wasn't carved in stone what he could now legally-but-not-legally do to me.
` Eventually, I gained enough composure hobble down to the parking lot as if my legs had been tied together, stumbling every few steps and sobbing uncontrollably. It took about ten minutes before I could drive.
` Phil and his mother were expecting me for dinner at the Lafayette Greenhouse, and I was quite late. I barely managed to get through the door before I keeled over on the desk in the green room. I explained everything to them in a state of near-panic. Phil calmed me down and reminded me that a doctor could not do anything to me that I did not want. We agreed that he'd come with me to my appointment for moral support.

` Somehow - it's all a blur now - we went to my appointment, but the nurse wouldn't let Phil past the waiting area. She cheerily asked if I'd eaten or drank anything since midnight the past night, which I had, though I don't think I said anything. She also asked me if I'd taken the Valium I'd been prescribed, which I told her I hadn't even picked up at the pharmacy.
` Straight away, she insisted that I sit down before anything else. I tentatively sat on the edge of the chair and asked whether or not I'd be able to talk to the doctor.
` "Oh, sure," she said.
` A minute later, he came in the room and said; "Hello, ready for surgery?"
` "No," I said, and proceeded to ask him about 'the piece of paper', while he did his best to pretend I wasn't there. He washed his hands, got his gloves on, and did whatever else surgeons did while I shakily fired questions and complaints at him.
` While I was distracted doing that - shivering with my heart pounding in my ears - singularly focused on getting his attention, I didn't much notice the room filling with several other people. I looked over at someone when she put a big plastic clip on my finger, which was attached to a heart monitor.
` Now I everyone else could hear my pulse, I thought, daring not to believe what was going on. Were they just going to go through with it? My hands were trembling so much by now that I could barely take the clip off. At that time, I also noticed someone rolling up my other sweater sleeve.
` I kept saying; "I didn't say you could give me general anesthesia! I never said! What's the heart monitor for?" Nobody was answering at all. I began crying hysterically and saying; "I demand you answer me!"
` I tried to get up, but it was as if a crippling weakness had gripped my body and the only motion I could still perform was shaking uncontrollably. Whoever was around me easily managed to grab me and slide me back into the chair. Strangely, I was thinking that, through all the horrors and abuse in my life, I had never been so scared that I shook.
` Dimly, I knew something was very wrong, but unable to focus, I could not comprehend the danger I was in. Feeling cold, sweaty and weak, I broke down and plead desparately through chattering teeth, trying to bargain with the doctor.
` He wouldn't speak a word.
` Noticing that my left arm suddenly felt as if it wee filled with battery acid, I looked over to see that a man had not only rolled up my sweater sleeve but was now squeezing an IV bag into my arm. Yet another wave of panic washed through me. I was thinking; 'I'm probably gonna lose a lot of blood, aren't I?' and 'How could I not notice that?'
` I didn't get a chance to throw up, however, due to the gigantic lump in my throat and the fact that I couldn't stop catching my breath. I tried to reach over to the needle, but my strength was virtually nil due to my severe, Parkinson's-like tremors.
` This one lady put some kind of hairnet on me and a nose-mask, which I figured was the anesthesia. She said; "This is just oxygen" - the only thing I remember anyone saying to me the entire time - though I was too busy holding my breath and melting into a jiggling puddle of goo to really think about what that might mean.
` I tried to get the nose-mask off, crying; 'Please, give me some lidocain or something if you're going to do it this way!'
` But something about my perception was changing. I started to feel violently nauseous while at the same time the shaking in my body slowly became less violent. The tunnel vision I had been developing suddenly contracted and the only thing I could see was the ceiling, which I realized was moving because the chair was moving backward.
` I couldn't help but breathe like crazy, though I was hoping my nose would be too clogged for the stuff in the mask to be breathed in. I wanted to scream, wanted to vomit, but then a single thought gripped me - I didn't want to have been born.
` My whole life - I'd give it up if only I didn't have to face this moment.

` The next few moments were rather blurred, as if I'd been hit by a freight train. It seems as if someone had said something to me like; "Nighty night", my eyes were closed for me, and something was put over my face.
` My muscles felt like burning jelly, and they didn't seem capable of functioning. I strained my brain, but I couldn't move - I couldn't even breathe, much less scream. All I wanted to do now was thrash around and say something, everything, but my lungs were even paralyzed!
` For some reason, it seemed as if my heart were pounding in slow motion, though I could barely hear the beeping of the machine over the throbbing in my head. Over my desperate thoughts of escape, I was barely aware of them opening my mouth even wider than I could stand to have it open and putting in a suction tube and whatnot.
` What snapped my attention back was the excruciating pain of Benninger ripping up my gums and digging into my jawbone with some kind of motorized instrument. It was like being stung by a hundred angry wasps that had mistaken my mouth as a nest - I felt as if I could not possibly survive this level of pain, and I'd been through quite a lot in my life. It was somewhat like being stuck with your head in a furnace, suffocating and burning, and yet not being able to die fast enough.
` 'Why, oh whyyyyy can't they kill me fast enough?' I thought. 'They're not killing me fast enough!'
` White-hot, yet freezing jolts of pain wracked my head while my body grew cooler, feeling like it was buried firmly under miles of cold, hard earth. Every time a tooth was extracted, it seemed as if spikes of pain were being driven straight into my head. Springs of blood were spurting down my throat it seemed, as I tasted bitterness, iron, and smoke of some type.
` And they didn't know! They didn't know! I was being tortured and the only people on earth who could do about it didn't even know or care! I would die, drowning in pain and blood, not even able to cough up whatever was trickling down my throat, and nobody would know how much I'd suffered. Sure, he was going to pay for this, have the pants sued off of him, but no one would know!

` By the end of the ordeal, I felt as if I had just run a marathon headlong through tree branches and was hanging onto life and sanity by the tiny threads he had woven into my lower gums. The sharp needles had really aggravated the holes he'd hacked into my raw, swollen flesh, but by that point I was spaced out, exhausted, and resigned to submission.
` Someone then wiped all the blood, snot, saliva and sweat off my face, packed my mouth with this starch-flavored stuff that dried my mouth to the extreme, and everyone just packed up and left the room.
` Tears were streaming out of my eyes before I realized that my body was gently twitching from sobs. I kept thinking; 'Why did they have to do that to me? I'm not a dog that flinches every time you touch its mouth! I could have just held my mouth open of my own free will, in a dignified way!
` 'But they didn't even trust me to do that! They didn't have to paralyze me and just control me like that! I'm not a machine, and nobody has the right to try to turn me off!'
` I felt so... violated.
` The first thing I did was move my legs, which felt like they were made of sacks of potatoes: I drew them together as much as I could, which was surprisingly difficult. Then, I worked on breathing.
` Becoming more aware of my surroundings, I realized that the lights had been turned out and the door was nearly shut. I also felt that my entire head, especially my jaws, was burning in pain. I wanted nothing more but to drown myself in icewater and get it all over with, but I could barely even move my neck.
` With much concentration, I was able to heave my chest out enough to have an entire lungful of air, but when I tried to scream it back out, it was quite weak. No matter what, I couldn't hold my vocal cords together and breathe out at the same time. After a while, I managed to scream somewhat, which finally began to make myself feeling better, after not being able to do it after such a long time.
` Nearly choking on the blood-soaked gauze or whatever was in my mouth, I discovered that I couldn't open my jaws. I could pull my lips back, but my sore and burning mouth was stuck closed. It felt as if the flaring pain shooting through my wounds was trying to solder them back together.
` Strangely, my eyes also ached, my ear canals felt as if they were badly infected, and the floors of my sinuses felt as if something was attempting to dig down through them. Noticing this acutely for the first time, I began coughing and screeching, pressing against my eyes and ears and nose.
` It wasn't long before a blonde and a brunette nurse rushed into the room, each looking equally annoyed. I tried to tell them; "I felt everything you fucking people did to me!"
` But they kept saying; "Shh! Don't be so loud! You'll make the other patients nervous!"
` "That's the idea, bitch!" I kept screaming, teeth beginning to chatter as my jaws bristled with tension. I also kept trying to spit thick, bloody drool on them, but using those particular muscles felt very strongly like someone was yanking on my uvula and cutting it off with a dull pocket knife. So did using the muscles for swallowing, I discovered a few seconds later.
` As I choked on my own bloody drool, they grabbed me by the arms and said; "Here, let's get you out of here."
` Quite willingly, I put one leg solidly on the floor and applied the neccesary forces to stand. And immediately crumpled to the ground. It was like, I was doing the right thing, I just didn't have the strength to support myself.
` Smacking my head against the tile, I tried to get up onto all fours, until each of the fours buckled beneath me and I fell to one side, reduced to a tooth-chattering heap in a puddle of blood. I also noticed that, while staring at the ankles of these women, some lovely hot urine was running down my thigh and I sensed that I was probably on my way to becoming mired in another puddle.
` It was just pathetic. So I set a new resolve - somehow get to the waiting room and tell everyone there what had happened - and spent the next few minutes observing how strange it was to have excruciating uvula-pain when spitting or swallowing and yet none with screaming and cursing as loud as my muscles would allow.
` The two women grabbed my arms and tried to pull me up. I tried to get my feet beneath me, but they uselessly dragged a few inches and stopped.
` "I can't walk!" I said, loud enough for people in other rooms to hear.
` They heaved me upwards even further, but I still couldn't get my legs to move right. Right then, all I wanted was to eat some magical spinach and knock them through the ceiling or something crazy like that. Though the tops of my thighs were flat on the floor, I was actually using all of my strength to struggle away from them to alert everyone else of what was going on. Those nurses might as well have been boulders as they set my wet crotch onto a rather cold vinyl-padded cot. It was orange, I remember, because I quickly got a very close view of it when I toppled over.

` I couldn't sit up. It was rather like being too dizzy to sit up, but I wasn't so much dizzy as weak or uncoordinated or something. They kept sitting me back up and I kept falling down, moaning and crying and trying to spit until the yanking sensation in my uvula stopped me.
` When Benninger came in, he demanded to know what was going on.
` Perfectly capable of feeling and moving my lips, I said through my permanently-gritted teeth; "It hurts! I felt that! I need painkillers!"
` "That's ridiculous!" he said. "I numbed you up."
` I just stared in disbelief before shouting; "I felt the whole damn thing, don't think you can fool me!"
` "I numbed you up!" he yelled at me.
` "Say what you want, Jackass!" I screamed through my chattering teeth. "It's clear that I can move my mouth JUST FINE! SEE? LOOK!" I could barely move my arms, but I managed to weakly point at my bloodsoaked jaws.
` "Just shut up!" Benninger shouted back at me. "I'm not buying this crying and falling down act!"
` I lost it. Suddenly, I started trying to get up and strangle the bastard, but it was like being tied up or something. I recall making my hands into claws in front of my face and staring, like; 'I wish he'd just come down here...'
` "You'd better stop acting like this, or I'm not going to let you see your boyfriend!"
` I then attempted to sound like a banshee and cried as loud as I could. Surely, I thought, Phil could hear me. I was hoping against all hope that he'd come and get me and we'd be out of there.
` Well, after several minutes of treating me like an overreactive child, Phil was allowed to see me, and his jaw dropped. I couldn't stand, I was peeing my pants, and my entire front side was drenched in blood.
` Somehow or another, Phil ordered the two nurses to drag me out front into his awaiting car, where I told him what had happened. Though we were now on a collision course with the ER's parking lot, Phil wouldn't stop there. Instead, he sped away in the other direction until I was safe at his house in record time.

` I thought at that at last, this would be the end of my long, exhausting and perilous journey: In fact, it only proved to be the first day of a two-week tour of the hell they call 'medical neglect'.


` So, if you're like one of those people who just love the types of horror stories published in Reader's Digest, don't miss the next installment of 'The Mad Doctor!' ;D