A seriously cool veteran was cruising Old Town today on his Harley with about fifty American flags affixed in mysterious ways to his bike and person. I cannot figure how, but those flags were not going anywhere he was not.
I had forgotten today is Veterans Day, even though my kids were all home, off from school, properly running amok. This man, in his leather skins and industrial number of stars and stripes, reminded me. As we approached each other from opposite sides of the street, I saw him nod to another biker passing him by. His nod was enough to say, “Hello. You are not alone. I am not alone. We connect by this brotherhood.” I watched him in my rearview mirror and immediately dialed my dad, of course. “Happy Verterans Day.”
Sometimes we do not wear our history as confidently as this cool vet. How messy that would be, right? Imagine a world where people used their hard-earned losses as a tool to empathize with themselves and others. Where people’s pain was used as a force to connect with their Me and with others. How tiring to receive nods, to accept judgments and applause, as it may be. Right? Company can be a burden.
This is my guess as to why not many of us speak up about what electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has done for us. We hear about the miracles of medication therapies from first person reports, heck, even second, third or tenth hand. We do not hear much about the miracles of ECT. Instead, we hear the sound of quiet or else hopeless barbarism.
I was talking with a patient, Carla, about ECT as an option for treatment, and we laughed that we are anesthetized for a colonoscopy for much longer amounts of time than we would if we had ECT. They seemed like such funny things to juxtapose. The convulsion lasts around thirty seconds and you are done. There are no broken bones. No tongues bitten through. There are no chickens sacrificed on anyone’s chest. Carla had never heard about the physician-patient who had undergone thirty-six ECT treatments as a patient, whose morbid melancholia resolved and who later returned to practicing medicine in full capacity. Why would the physician tell people about his history? What kind of nods do you think he would get? What patients would be willing to go to him for medical care? Carla had not heard about the gamers, computer programmers, the nurses or anyone from the functioning productive public who had the courage to fight for themselves by choosing ECT.
My patients with whom I discuss ECT have concerns. You have concerns. Much of the world is concerned. There are reasons. ECT has improved farther than Jack Nicholson’s report on One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, though many of us were alive when his movie was first viewed. The distance we have come in refining the practice of ECT is out of proportion to the distance in time from when ECT was not much more than sticking your finger in a socket and getting voltage in a continuous sine wave for therapy. Is it shameful being connected to that history? Is it too soon to say, “These are the ancestors I claim?” You know what to do with shame.
There are few medical specialties that gather as many opinions as psychiatry. Yes. Well there are even fewer medical treatments that are found in the company of so much frothing opinions than ECT. No wonder we are quiet. No wonder we are concerned.
So, although we veterans of ECT perhaps have not spoken up in our community, although we may not tear up at ceremonies for what our courageous self-care has done for our country or understand how we fit in, although we may not hang flags or tattoo it into our skin, we are courageous important citizens in company. We are heroes. Maybe not as cool in leather, but we are where we are because of those who have come before us and for what we have carried on. We have suffered and died and lived and we are connected. We have community and we are not alone.
Happy Veterans Day.
Self-Care Tip – Celebrate your courage.
