Everything is Going to Be Fine
by a patient
I remember the whispering sounds in the surgical suite. I remember looking down and saying, “Everything is going to be fine.” I knew if I could just get back out onto the racecourse, everything would be fine. Everything wasn’t going to be fine. I woke up with a traumatic brain injury that made my bipolar disorder widely volatile. Everything wasn’t going to be fine. A year later, I sought admission to a hospital with profound depression and catatonia. That was a fateful admission, as I met a psychiatrist who knew how to reach me when others couldn’t. He had kind words. My psychiatrist told me that we would use all of modern medicine. Mostly I remember him telling me that I was pure, perfect and whole. I didn’t know what those words meant, but I felt them deep in my soul. It reminded me that my soul was a vast part of a whole. It reminded me that I wasn’t alone. That loving reverence for me as a whole person made all the difference. I wasn’t afraid. Unfortunately, I wasn’t responding either. My doctor told me that I was protecting my heart from what was happening to me. Five weeks later I agreed to a course of ECT treatments that luckily worked for me when all else failed. I could move on with my life. 