Cockroach Catcher-Seven Minute Cure---Sadness

............Could we have done any better?  Was the truth too much for Mrs Coleman to bear?  Would she still be alive if we had not discovered the sex abuse?  We would never know. We might have rescued Laura from sex abuse but now she had lost her mother......./

All is not well in this beautiful part of the OLD WORLD that is Austria.

Salzburg, Austria ©2008 Am Ang Zhang

Josef Fritzl, an engineer in his seventies was found to have kept his 42-year-old daughter locked in his cellar since she was 19. The woman, who bore her father seven children during her captivity, was discovered only after one of the children she had with her father fell into a coma in hospital.

Austria does not have the monopoly of family abuse.

I can only quote from Chapter 27: Sadness in Cockroach Catcher-Seven Minute Cure

And your experience makes you sad
I had rather have a fool to make me merry
than experience to make me sad…..
(from: As You Like It - Act II, Scene 7)

With so many quotable quotes from As You Like It you may wonder why I would chose to pick this one.

      Perhaps it is a warning to young doctors to enjoy the blessings of inexperience. Luckily for me sadness brought about by experience from my clinical work is mercifully little but I would be either dishonest or heartless to say that there has been none.

      As You Like It happens to be one of the few popular plays of Shakespeare that are often performed in schools, maybe apart from Dreams, and for most it is basically a comedy with a happy ending.

      My wife and I went to a recent production at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) by none other than Peter Hall with his daughter playing Rosalind – their New York debut.  Few would imagine Sir Peter picking Brooklyn for his debut but in the end it was a great experience. The New York Times said that it was more reviving than spending a week in the Caribbean. Having been an accidental resident in the Caribbean for two years I would dispute the comparison but totally agreed with the sentiments expressed.

      At the BAM, it was like walking into a renovation site and in many ways I hope they leave it that way as it was rather charming. It was a most fitting setting for Shakespeare. I accept that they have to make sure it is safe.

      It was at the start of my psychiatric training in England when I asked one of my gurus about reading matter.  Apart from Shakespeare, he recommended Ibsen.  I have since read Ibsen's plays but still come back to Shakespeare, who seemed to be able to pick up so many strands of human experience.

      My ideal Shakespeare is indeed one that can be performed on a bed sheet with a few broomsticks for prop and without wanting to sound derogatory, I would say that this was exactly the approach adopted by this production.

      Much was left to the imagination and it worked.

Mrs Coleman

      Now and again in our work we get an indescribably sad case.  Sometimes what started out as a rather straightforward case might begin to roll downhill so fast that we would be forever taking deep breaths thinking: can it get any worse?  We would question if what we were doing was making any difference at all to what seemed like a predetermined course where no intervention would be able to make any impact on the final outcome.

      One thing is for sure, real life is not like a play – you have only one chance to perform it and often not everything is clear.

      Mrs Coleman came to see me about her daughter within months of my appointment as a consultant.  With my new job came advantages and disadvantages. I used to be able to ask my seniors about cases, especially the difficult ones. Suddenly I was supposed to know it all. I used to have a big team working on a case, to the point that when the patient came to me there was hardly anything left for me to discover. Single-handed consultants are “on their own”. They are lucky to have a social worker and perhaps a psychologist. I had both but the psychologist was not really part of our team – she happened to be sharing the same building. She belonged to the old school, which meant she knew her field and she did not try to be a social worker.  For a while it became fashionable to blame everything on background and upbringing. Any disturbed child not performing well at school had nothing to do with teaching methods or intelligence but everything to do with social background. What were the implications for the social background of bright high achieving children?

      There was some excitement in the clinic when it was known that a shepherd’s family had been referred.

      Shepherds?  "As You Like It" sprang into my mind.

      We have lambs so we must have shepherds – so I thought.  It is true that we seldom had referrals from the farming community. I can only remember one other case and that was when I was a trainee. Shepherds also conjure up scenes of nativity and there is a sort of biblical romantic feel to it.

      What we did have was something quite different. As it was unfortunately the lambing season, the shepherd Mr Coleman, though making a valiant appearance, was as good as asleep during most of the session. Mrs Coleman talked through the session with her rather charming old Sussex accent.

      Mrs Coleman at the time had two children but it was the older daughter Laura of nine with whom she was having trouble.   Tom, some eighteen months younger, was a happy-go-lucky sort of boy. Laura had a whole range of behavioural problems. She had recently taken to soiling in her pants.

      It was often our practice for the social worker to do a preliminary home visit, and my social worker told me that she was most impressed with their home when she visited. They lived in a tied cottage on the farm. The children’s grandfather was a shepherd and he had two sons, the older one working on the dairy side. There was also a daughter, the children’s aunt, and her husband was the local milkman. The aunt had children similar in age to Laura and Tom. She worked part time in the local greengrocer’s and between her and Laura’s mother they split the fetching from school and childcare. The aunt unfortunately was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and was having different kinds of treatment at the local hospital. Luckily her husband was a milkman and could take over the afternoon part of the childcare arrangement whenever necessary. Mrs Coleman took the children to school on the days when the aunt had to go to hospital.

      The aunt was a strong lady, Mrs Coleman told me, and she was sure she would outlive her.

      It was an old cottage they lived in and my social worker told me that Mrs Coleman kept the place clean and tidy. It was therefore most upsetting to her when her nine year old daughter started soiling herself.

      It was mostly in the afternoon but not everyday.

      As my social worker had just started her training at the Tavistock Clinic on child therapy it was a good chance for her to take the girl on for some individual therapy sessions. Like my old consultant did when I was in training, it was now my turn to see mother.

      This seemed to be a simple enough family and I did wonder at the beginning if there was much to unfold.

      I was proved wrong.

      Within two to three weeks of Laura starting therapy, Tom the younger brother refused to go to school. It was natural for everybody to think that there was some jealousy involved. So I arranged for mother to bring him to see me. It was rather obvious from the start that he was not very bright and that his not going to school had little or nothing to do with Laura but more to do with the fact that he could not keep up with the work and was being teased at school very badly. He tried to hit back at one particular boy and was told off by one of the teachers on duty at play-time. He did not want to go back. I arranged for the psychologist to assess him.

      Yes, he was functioning at a much younger age and yes, he needed to go to a special school. In those days it was called an ESN school – school for the Educationally Subnormal.  The SSN school was for the Severely Subnormal.  In the 90s, it was deemed more polite to call the subnormal children “special”.

      Both schools were local and extremely well run. Tom was transferred and seemed to have settled down well there.

      Not bad. I congratulated myself.

      Laura was getting on well with her new therapist. She was attending without any problem and was doing nice drawings, according to my social worker.

      Mrs Coleman was grateful that I sorted out her son.  Tom, who had always been a Daddy’s boy, had upset father very much with his escapade but as he had now settled in his new school father was rather pleased. He in fact went to the same school so he made it a point to turn up to thank me once everything settled.

      Mmmm, perhaps we are not escaping the genetics theory.

      As a precaution, we also tested Laura but she turned out to be rather bright.

      Genetics, you are wrong.

      Not so, Mrs Colman must have thought. She was rather perturbed when I told her. She started crying and pleaded with me to keep the secret she was about to tell me.

      Her husband was not Laura’s father.

      Mrs Coleman had worked at the local butcher’s since she left school and he was always all over her. Before long he was having intercourse with her at the back of the shop. He always gave her extra for that part of the service and she was happy with the extra bit of money. The butcher’s wife had a stroke a few years back and had been bed ridden.

      “It was not the money,” Mrs Coleman assured me. She did not want me to think of her as a slut.

      None of the mothers I saw wanted me to think badly of them and it often took a while before they would reveal their secrets.

      Mrs Coleman had also been seeing the shepherd but never gave him much thought as she felt he was rather stupid. The butcher was much brighter.

      Then one day some accident happened and she found herself pregnant. But the butcher was not going to divorce his wife. She was the one with the money.

      She decided that the next best thing was to let the shepherd sleep with her as long as he married her. He was so pleased with himself and they had a big white wedding in the local church. 

      So Laura was the butcher’s daughter and not her husband’s. Now that I had proved Laura was clever, she was afraid I might ask awkward questions although she doubted if her husband would ever really work it out for himself.

      Once a parent realised that you had ways to get to the truth, they often started revealing things that you wished they never did.

      The butcher had some idea that Laura was his and had been slipping even more extra money for mother to buy her things. He never had any other children.

      I never broke my promise and to this day I do not think that her husband ever knew.

      What was to unfold was what caused most sadness.

      I attended some special seminar on sexual abuse and at the time some rather ugly looking anatomical dolls were produced for the sole purpose of diagnosing Sexual Abuse. They were anatomical in that a whole family set including parents and grandparents, children and adolescent all had what was described as anatomically correct parts - females with breasts, nipples, vagina and anus; and males with penis and anus; and all the orifices were so to speak fully functional. These dolls all had proper clothes on and yet all the clothes could come off.

      The idea was that normal children played with them as normal dolls but abused children would perform with the anatomical parts.

      I had a full set ordered, having spent sometime persuading the managers that others had labs and X-rays and so on, but these were the only tools we required for the specific job.

      Laura was the first to discover them and before my social worker’s eyes one of the male figure’s penis was in the girl’s mouth. She told my social worker that was what Uncle Tom liked.

      What followed were special “disclosure” interviews conducted under camera. Uncle Tom was the milkman. It happened to both girls. When the boys were in the kitchen playing computer games on the TV, slowly the girls were made to suck him. That was when Laura started soiling.

      Mrs Coleman went berserk. Arrangements had to be made for alternative child care which really meant she had to cut short her hours at the butcher’s. Uncle Tom moved to his mother’s as a temporary measure pending Social Service investigation and Police enquiry.

      Mrs Coleman could not sleep at night and called her GP. He asked her to pray with him as she had to be forgiving. She was so angry and when she was cleaning around the house she managed to get some caustic liquid all over herself and had to be admitted to hospital. She was also referred to the adult psychiatric department.

      She started attending an anger management group at the hospital.  It was thought to be the best way to help her deal with recent events.

      One day when I went in to work, my social worker was already there and in tears. Mrs Coleman had just taken a massive overdose of Paracetamol and her liver was thought to be too far gone to survive.  She died a rather painful death and we were all deeply saddened.

      Could we have done any better?  Was the truth too much for Mrs Coleman to bear?  Would she still be alive if we had not discovered the sex abuse?  We would never know. We might have rescued Laura from sex abuse but now she had lost her mother. Mrs Coleman was right about one thing though, her sister-in-law did outlive her.

      As Shakespeare said, “…….And your experience makes you sad…..”

     

       I wanted to hide the dolls.

 

Cockroach Catcher-Seven Minute Cure

The Cockroach Catcher II: Attempted Living

Check it out on Amazon

Oporto & Hippocratic Past: Do No Harm!

We were in Oporto in 2017 and in this beautiful place famous for its Port, I stumbled upon a museum that reminded me of our Hippocratic Past. 

It was the medical museum right in the middle of Oporto. 

All photos©2017 Am Ang Zhang 

The following is extracted from The Cockroach Catcher: Chapter 30  Religious Fanaticism

I

n our work we have some unusual referrals now and again and sometimes they require unusual handling.

         I had an urgent call to deal with a serious suicide attempt at a well known local boarding school.

         No, the child was not admitted to hospital as would be the usual practice, but was kept at the infirmary at the school instead. I arranged to make an immediate visit to see her there.  She was only twelve.

         This was one of the few Church Schools that catered for able children who could not afford expensive private schools. Part of the intake were bright children of church personnel from all over the country. It still had rather medieval costumes for uniform and you could spot the school children a mile away with their long dark blue gowns. Boys and girls had the same outer costumes, but different belts and buckles according to the pupil's year group.

         The school had the feel of a monastery and was quite overpowering as you entered. Individual boarding houses lined up neatly. It read: “We mean business. You are here to learn.”

         The infirmary was even more imposing. It was part of the main block. The main door as you could imagine was at least 15 ft tall and weighed a ton.  The old wrought iron handle had seen a few centuries of use and yet its hinges were well oiled so that when the matron greeted me, she had no problem opening it and it did not produce the squeak I expected.

         The dark double height ceiling made darker by a few centuries of candle and oil smoke would make you think twice before falling ill.  I was led through a couple of archways before I reached the infirmary. There were glass cabinets with all kinds of ancient medical equipments. I was once fortunate enough to archive by photo the small museum at our psychiatric hospital and had since been interested in ancient medical tools. This place seemed to have more and one wondered what they used those tools for. Then I realised that this was a hospital before it became a school, and during the war it was a military hospital.

         At least I am in good company today, I thought, and I had better not let down my colleagues from the Hippocratic past.

         It was early March and spring had not quite arrived in southern England that year. There was not much light coming through the small oval windows. Matron seemed to have read my mind.

         “This was not in fact a proper hospital ward as the main hospital buildings are now the dormitory. This was the staff chapel, but as we all now use the main chapel, it seems such a good idea to turn this into an infirmary. Very good for migraines and headaches and that is normally what we deal with.” Matron said.

         I thought - mmmmm, neither condition can be confirmed by any medical investigation.

         Still it was quite a big room and with the neatly made beds and their white sheets, was speaking loudly – this is an infirmary; you are here to be ill and hopefully to recover.

         Ruth was sitting in one of the middle beds and with her nurse.

         “We have kept a nurse with her since last night, doctor.” Matron assured me.

         There we were, a rather petite looking girl in her hospital outfit sitting on the rather high bed trying to read.  She had a small face and as I approached, slipped off the bed and stood to attention. That said a lot about what kind of school this was. She was reading a French novel but I could not really tell which one it was. She looked cheerful, certainly too cheerful for someone who had tried to get to the other side less than twelve hours ago.

         It was a job to persuade matron to let me speak to Ruth on my own. When she realised that I meant what I said she sent the nurse to sit outside the door just in case and still hoped that I would let her keep it ajar an inch or so. She eventually agreed to have it closed but the nurse would just be outside.

         Ruth herself was not too bothered and I suspected that when you lived in a big dormitory, privacy was not a big concern.

         It was not my style to jump straight to what happened. This disappointed her a bit.

         “Don’t you want to know what happened?” she asked.

         But she agreed to do it my way and in fact it was a better idea, she later agreed.  She thought I was going to ask about the night before and then send her to a mental institution.

         Matron had informed the parents of my visit and mother, who was a social worker, was driving up from the coast and hoped to meet me within the hour.

         There is a very simple rule when we assess attempted suicide. We have to decide if this is the usual or the unusual.

         The usual – probably late teenage, made up to look twenty one, argument with boyfriend, got drunk and took eighteen Paracetamol or whatever was handy including the rest of the month’s pill. Most survived but now and again they were unlucky, were found too late and died a rather painful death. I was lucky – I never had to deal with those. I heard of one though, but she was dead when found. She left mum a note but mum was out with her boyfriend all night and the next day she came home to find a dead girl. Luckily these cases were rare and for that we had to thank our lucky stars. The virtual disappearance of barbiturates and tricyclic antidepressants meant that we had to deal with fewer accidental deaths, though Paracetamol remained the most potent killing agent.

         This girl was not like the usual. She tried to hang herself with the very belt with which she was meant to tie her cloak. Luckily for her the light to which she tied the belt did not hold her weight and she fell to her bed and tripped out the mains. Most of the other girls were asleep but her best friend saw her. She was too scared to say anything at first but now she could not stop crying and had been kept in her own dorm away from my patient’s influence.

         She was one of the star pupils of her year. Her father was the chaplain at a church near the coast. She was the only child. She was also a very good swimmer and represented the school in competitions. She was very talkative and despite what happened was quite at ease telling me about herself and her views of life.

         For three nights before going to sleep she heard a voice telling her to hang herself.  The previous night she actually saw a shadow telling her she must do it to keep her parents from harm. She thought it would not matter as her parents were more important.

         I did not think she was making it up. She did try to hang herself.

         What should I do?  Was this the start of a psychotic illness? Did she have a fast growing brain tumour?  If I made the wrong decision, she might end up dead one way or another.

         No, there was no other sign of either a depressive illness or psychosis. Why were the parents not here for something so serious? Why was mother still at work? Why was father not on his way here? Perhaps they did not take this seriously and maybe I should not either.

         This was an otherwise well put together girl, clever, good looking and had a good prospect of achieving well.

         Would this be someone you put on an antidepressant or antipsychotic?  Would I need to send her to a mental institution?

         One of the most important things we learned in medicine is: when in doubt, do nothing.

         To be more precise, do not do anything that is not reversible. What was the rush?

         I had for years an arrangement to admit my patients, if necessary, to our paediatric ward which normally took in tonsils and dental patients. The hot cases were appendicitis, and then there were my patients who did not require psychiatric inpatient treatment; they had mostly been anorectic patients who, incidentally, had done well over the years. They were often there without other anorectics and that was perhaps one of the reasons they did well.

         A number of O/Ds (overdoses) used to go through the paediatricians, and I would be consulted before any of them could be discharged – a sort of safety valve approach. There were no seriously ill patients. The nurses were a fairly stable group.  It was an ideal place for mothers returning to a nursing career. Over the years, they had got to like my special group of patients, including infants with a sleep problem.

         That would be the ideal place for Ruth. It was a modern hospital. And we could observe her. Like they say, something is going to give.

         Mother turned up. She did look like a social worker. She explained that if this was a hysterical gesture she did not want the girl to think that she could do something like this and get her attention.

         But that was not how I saw it. No, this was no textbook case.

         It was very interesting talking to mother. Half the time I was talking to a colleague and the other half to a very frustrated modern woman married to a very strictly religious man.

         She and her husband were at college together. They were idealists. They were CND members. They marched against this war and that and eventually he studied theology and she, social work. Ruth was a perfect baby, bright and cheerful. She was their only child. She obeyed all rules and she was diligent.  She was every mother’s dream. She was cute, charming, clever and full of life, never demanding in any way and had always been the top achiever in everything she did, academic or sport. She had quite a following in school and what happened came as a shock, and a serious shock to a boarding school.

         A religious boarding school.

         Such behaviour could be infectious and more so when a natural leader did it.

         This is particularly true of psychiatric patients and more so adolescents in an institution. Some years ago a colleague’s two daughters sadly committed suicide one after another in a boarding school.

         I had to come up with a solution.

         A friend once said to me, “You often have to do certain things when a patient is referred to you, not because it is necessary for the patient, but because it is important for the referrer, the parents or the people around the patient.”

         I could not leave Ruth in the boarding school. I could not send her to a mental institution. So I had to admit her to the paediatric ward.

         Mother agreed. Matron was most relieved. Ruth of course would not object. I felt happier getting her out of that rather imposing place.

         An MRI did not reveal any lurking growth and you would be surprised how many parents would have been disappointed with that. Luckily not this mother.

         Ruth became extremely helpful on the ward assisting with the younger kids distressed by their ops and she would be patiently reading them stories. Schoolwork was sent in regularly and I did not think she suffered much from being absent.

         Visiting was rather restricted, not by the hospital but by the school for obvious fear of contamination, contamination of the minds of the innocent ones.

         She soon revealed the figure she saw was that of her father. She said she was afraid to tell me before.

         Now I understood the reasons I never once saw father. 

         She told me that over an extended period of time she would be shut in with him in an under-stairway cupboard when he would recount biblical passages of hell and damnation. The idea was to give her a real taste of hell. 

         “Why was it necessary?” I wondered to myself, “Why do this to a girl who by all standards is perfect?”

         I wish I knew and I wish I had made up the story. But real life could be very strange indeed.

         With her permission, I brought mother in and she started crying when Ruth said, “I told him.”

         Mother assured me later that she did not think there was any sex abuse but it did cross her mind that all the dramatic teaching of Revelation might have something to do with her daughter’s hearing voices and especially those of her father.

         At that time I had just come back from Peru, with images of Juanita[1] still fresh in my mind.  The tribal rituals of virgin sacrifice in the Andes, visions and religious fanaticism suddenly took on a new meaning.

         She respected her father and what he said had to be done, even if it was hallucination.  Sacrifice would be nothing and if she was to go to heaven anyway, she would have avoided the torture of hell.

         I continued to see her and her mother. We seldom talked about religious matters, but more about studies, literature, sport and current affairs. Father never came to any of the appointments.  I did not force him to come to see me. I believe it was sometimes more revealing to let things unfold. Often things that did not happen told a story too.

         There were two more sightings of the devil but she was not distressed.

         I never pronounced any judgment on the origin of her symptoms and school soon gave up asking me. There was an unspoken understanding with Ruth and mother and I preferred to leave it that way. I felt that my job was not to destroy but to help recovery.

         Was it ethical? Could I have missed what is called Satanic Abuse? We do know what happened to some of those who were so sure of their views of abuse. How much harm was caused? How many children were wrongfully taken away never to return to their parents?

         Of course doctors could be wrong and of course my views might change in time but for now things were working out. 

         Bad parents are generally easier to deal with. It is easier for children to know from early on that they are better off not taking any notice of them and they will, at least the resilient ones will, survive. Many children of psychotic parents become independent and tough from an early age. “Good parents”, on the other hand, are more difficult to handle and if they already have a position in society, what are the poor children supposed to do?

         Ruth had been sheltered in her upbringing. She was not streetwise and staying in a highly religious institution, she did not have the chance to mix with any rebellious children.

         As a first born, she followed rules and orders.

         I continued to see them.  Later, without any direct instruction by me, mother worked out that it would be better to move her from her current school to another church school. This one was less austere and the focus was more on education than on religion. She blossomed and now as she was not boarding, she began to go out and meet boys. Soon enough she was dating a boy. With mother’s help they kept this from father whom I still had not met. She achieved some exceptional GCSE results, moved on to a state sixth form college which her now boyfriend also attended. He wanted to be an engineer and she was aiming for languages.

         She went on the pill and father still had no idea she had this boyfriend.

         Her A Level results were straight A's and she got her place at a top university. She came to see me during the Christmas break.  She settled in very well and was enjoying her course.  I did not ask her about her hallucinations. Sometimes we need to know what not to say.

         Mother left father as soon as Ruth got to university and continued to work as a social worker. Father was transferred to the north.

        

         Perhaps I should have raised alarms about father.

         Perhaps.

         I was lucky she came to no harm.

         Sometimes one may not be so lucky.

---

[1] Juanita (also known as "The Ice Maiden") was discovered on the top of Mount Ampato near Arequipa, Peru, on September 8, 1995 by Johan Reinhard. She was 12 to 14 years old when she was sacrificed and is believed to have died about 500 years ago.

    Although she was frozen in the frigid temperatures on Mount Ampato, her body was discovered because a nearby volcano had caused Ampato's snowcap to melt. The undisturbed site of her burial included many items left as offerings to the gods. Two other children's bodies were discovered near her.

The Cockroach Catcher: Anorexia Nervosa: The NHS & Safety Net. May 30, 2016 ... In The Cockroach Catcher, in the opening chapter I recalled an Anorexia Nervosa patient that has been “dumped” by her Private Health Insurer.

The Cockroach Catcher: NHS: The Last Cook. Jun 14, 2016 ... ... of childhood psychological problems. Indeed it was a sad day when the unit closed. From The Cockroach Catcher: Chapter 48 The Last Cook ...

Dec 1, 2015 ... The following is extracted from The Cockroach Catcher: Chapter 29 The Power of Prayers. Some time in early February of 1978 I was called to ...

The Cockroach Catcher: Thumb Sucking & Nightmares: Winnicott ... Apr 25, 2014 ... ... then the Tate also rejected Picasso………” The Tate now of course has several Mondrian works. Now you can read the whole chapter here: ...

The Cockroach Catcher: Cello & Bach: Anorexia Nervosa Jun 29, 2011 ... In The Cockroach Catcher I got my Anorectic patient to play the cello that was banned by the “weight gain contract”: Jane got on well with me.

The Cockroach Catcher: Answer to Prayer: Teratoma Dec 1, 2015 ... The following is extracted from The Cockroach Catcher: Chapter 29 The Power of Prayers. Some time in early February of 1978 I was called to ...

The Cockroach Catcher: Bipolar Disorder: Lithium & Neuro ... Jul 20, 2016 ... The following is an extract from The Cockroach Catcher: “Get him to the hospital. Whatever it is he is not ours, not this time. But wait. Has he ...

 Amazon Kindle US; 

Amazon Kindle UK ;

Lulu.co