For about the first 2 weeks I ordered pizza every other day. I slept alot and stared at the ceiling. As I wrote before I was involved in drug trials @ Massachusetts General Hospital and that way I was at least being monitored by a physician. That went on for about 18 months. Towards the end I was becoming psychotic and they passed me on to a physician in the hospital and took me off trials.
Some of the trials were simply taking medication. The one that stands out was a drug they were going to give me so I had to have an Magnetic Resonance Angiogram (MRA), which, if I remeber right is about 3x stronger than a MRI. I was taken from the psychiatric trials off to McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA. The idea was to inject a contrast material that piggy-back with the phosphorus in my body and see what the flow was in the frontal lobe. The chemical they were looking for attaches/travels with phosphorus and they wanted a before and after shot. I went to McLean, they prepped me and they put me on a table, I was strapped @ shoulders and hips and my head was secured in place with what were bookends with soft material so I could not move my head at all as well as lift it because it was strapped down across my forehead as well. They gave me earphones with classical music and told me I would be in the MRA for about 45 minutes. I was eventually pulled into the magnetic rings all the way to my waist, so my head was 2.5-3 feet inside it. It was dark, scary and I passed out fortunately due to anxiety, I was so frozen with fear I did not even try to break free, my mind just shut me off and as I was being pulled out did I wake up. They were somewhat concerned because I had no response or movement during the whole hour I eventually ended up being in there. Long story short, after 30 days on the medication I went through the same situation and passed out that time as well.
I was scared to go anywhere, but up to a point I could force myself to go into Boston on the "T", the Boston subway. I had to get something down around Massachusetts Ave and Commonwealth Ave and it was going pretty good, I was very regimented and was at the stage of looking at the ground, shaking and walking like one of those Christmas nutcrackers come to life. I was making my way down the middle of Commonwealth Ave (they have a green strip with a sidewalk down the middle and a lane on each side) and I remember coming to a street to cross, and looking @ oncoming traffic and I could see cars and trucks, but are they actually passing me or had they already passed, that how my brain started to work. Should I cross or should I wait for the real/delayed perception of a car or truck to pass me. I stood there and after about 3 groups of people crossed, the 2nd and 3rd group looking over their shoulders oddly at this guy looking up the street. I got my courage and crossed with someone between me and the traffic that might or might not be there. A walk from one end of Commonwealth Ave to the other usually took me 30 minutes, I was a former runner and fast efficient walker. I ended up walking to a bench and sitting there with my hands under my thighs (I shook so violently if I was not walking, I shook really bad if I just stood). I would sit on 2-3 benches on each block making my way down to Boston Common where I could catch the Blue Line home to East Boston. It took me over 2 hours to make that trip and another 30 minutes to cross Boston Garden/Boston Common. It was the start of a really scary time in my life.
I would eventually get to the point where I though people could read my mind and I would sing to myself so my thinking of the song would block what information "they" were trying to see. Yeah, I know, sounds really, really fucked up. This was my life for a block of time until some new things that I never expected happened, but that is a year or so down the road. I'll get to it in this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment