Awful story. Depending on the prognosis (i.e., unless s/he could have argued the case was hopeless and inoperable anyway,) I suspect the surgeon could have been indicted, or at least sued. Would s/he refuse to operate on a chronic smoker with lung cancer? An obese person with a foot infection due to adult diabetes? A motorcycle rider? People destroy themselves in all kinds of ways, and physicians still have a responsibility to help them. I used to encounter this in a very small way as an oculoplastic surgeon. Someone would come in with a botched cosmetic eyelid procedure. Since I worked at an HMO that did not cover esthetic surgery, some tried to argue that they ‘brought it on themselves,’ and that repairing their eye should have been looked at as a continuation of the cosmetic work. But much of surgery is about fixing our bodies after we abuse them or make dumb choices. Medicine is supposed to be about compassion, which means recognizing every patient’s humanity, and accepting his or her flaws. Suicide attempts aren’t even stupid habits, like smoking, but desperate efforts to escape Hell. At the time of the attempt, the victim believes relief will never come short of death. It’s not an easy out. For that surgeon to refuse to help was criminal; if not in the eyes of the law, then in the eyes of God.

It’s too bad people who have never experienced profound, suicidal depression can’t be given a brief taste of it, so they’d understand. I suppose my goal in writing is sometimes to try to convey the torment. Of course, most of my readers (at least on this blog) are all-too-familiar with psychic pain already. But I have dreams of someday reaching a larger audience. Don’t we all?

Thanks for commenting.

–Will

My life now revolves around my writing, and my writing is all about mental illness. But even before I seldom hid my problems. That’s just the way I am. My wife hates how public I am with my issues. Maybe it comes from feeling like I once was a hot-shot surgeon, and used to be an OK sculptor (before my neck issues ended both activities;) if I could accomplish those things, then there must be something OK about me even if I suffer this condition. Plus, I truly don’t see mental illness as purely negative. It really does fuel many creative and valuable endeavors (see my comment to Susan.) So I’m not ashamed of it, even if others think I should be. One goal of mine is to push the face of mental illness into the face of those who believe they are immune to it. Make them see the humanity of it, and how the feeling of being mentally ill is often just a heightening of the normal sorrow and agitation of people in that hum-drum, boring, middle of the bell curve.

–Will

There is an exception to every rule. I loathe being in high places, but through my entire life whenever I used to get suicidal, I thought of the bridge. Many times I forced myself to look over the edge, trying to work up the courage to jump. It had to do with the time (I was about four) my mother showed me a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, and spoke wistfully about San Francisco. It left me with an odd feeling of connection between the bridge and broken dreams. We lived in Minnesota at the time.

Whenever someone commits a mass murder, they are automatically labelled mentally ill. I believe all unprovoked violence is a form of mental illness (including invasion of one country by another,) actually, but somehow the fact that the murderers are the ones who put the public face on mental illness really rubs me the wrong way. Where is Mozart? Winston Churchill? Abe Lincoln? Earnest Hemingway? Or even the modern celebrities who’ve ‘come out?’ We are left with a picture of mental illness as this purely negative, horrible, homicidal aberration. In fact, some of the most creative, driven, valuable people are tormented by it. Not to mention how much art flows directly from psychic pain. If we lived in any kind of sensible culture, the newsrooms would balance presenting mental illness in a sociopathic context, with some effort to show its effects when it occurs in a creative individual with an eye or ear for beauty.

–Will

I was in a newsroom, when two stories broke. One was the Phil Hartman murder/suicide. I was new, and the comments, first shock, went to bad jokes about his wife being bipolar. I had bit my tongue so hard it bled in my mouth, but I kept quiet, petrified someone would look or bump into my purse and the lithium would spill out. The other story, again, about someone who may not have been mentally ill but did have a personality disorder- was the Andrew Cunnan spree killing when he shot Versache. Oh my, the jokes, puns. A younger employee might have ran down to HR to complain. Me, I just bit my tongue, petrified I would be outed. Jokes again from one or two when we reported Columbine- but I think that was more from shock than anything else. (Killers must have had a bad day and skipped their meds, jokes), and some real bad ones from the DC sniper as well. I was so glad I don’t work in a news room last night. The jokes would have been heart breaking.

Maybe it comes with the idea of covering news, you see things you don’t neccessarily want to see. Who knows.

What fascinates me about the Golden Gate Bridge is according to Schneidman and Fabrow, – (sorry spelling), that people who are afraid of heights don’t jump, never jump, but others get fixated on the bridge and have to jump. No other place will do. The Bay Bridge doesn’t get suicides.

Jumping is a way I could never go. I am so afraid of heights. I wouldn’t even drive over one of those bridges. I’ve joked to my family, if they ever find out I have jumped, call the cops, I have been murdered.

I think for the most part people fear the unknown and for some reason in this day and age mental illness still seems to be largely unknown even with all the knowledge out there. Or maybe people resist knowing because the fear acts like a block. Whatever the reason I hope one day to have the courage to put a face to my mental illness.

Never hesitate to leave a novel. You have found my tome on your own blog by now, no doubt. I felt I had to write the story, because I think it is something that can provide perspective to those who, like me, contemplate suicide. The more we see and understand about our condition and our choices, the better informed we become. My story is just my story, but I hope it will help others.

I read Jamison’s work about eight years ago, shortly after discharge from a psychiatric unit. I have not thought much about it since. There is also a famous psychiatrist who has schizophrenia. Obviously, there are mental health organizations that are open to accepting clinicians with major psychiatric diagnoses. No doubt my applications to training programs must have had other flaws, but I do think I’d have stood a better chance if I’d downplayed my symptoms more.

My plan is, in fact, to write the countless charged stories from my past. I left one on your blog (feel free to delete it, by the way–I’ll understand.) We are not alone, and the more of us who speak up, the less alone we’ll feel.

I’m so glad you started looking at my blog; it led me to your fine work. I am adding you to my bloglist, though my small audience may not translate into many new readers. But I love what you wrote today.

Best Wishes.

–Will