The Ghost Garden by Susan Doherty

Author:Susan Doherty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2019-05-14T04:00:00+00:00

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Slowly Caroline’s anxiety lessened. As she reflects now, “Mental wards are the toilets of the world, but the kind and caring nurses and psychiatrists are somehow able to put the pieces back together when we arrive off the street, completely broken. Because of them, there are days when I feel quite normal.”

A psychiatrist new to her case advised the family that Caroline would be better served not on the locked ward at his institution but at the Royal Ottawa, a whole hospital dedicated to the treatment of mental health issues, and one of the most highly regarded psychiatric facilities in Canada. Though beds were scarce, he offered to make a referral. Caroline’s sisters had a euphoric moment of hope that help was on the way, even if it would take more time to implement. That same psychiatrist, looking at Caroline’s history with fresh eyes, used the word schizophrenia as a possible diagnosis. Rosalind and Sharon had long suspected this was what was happening to Caroline, but until that point no professional had used the term. Schizophrenia is the most highly stigmatized of mental illnesses: insensitive or ill-informed people automatically associate the condition with violence and aggression. Isabel especially resisted the label; it was her chronic nightmare to have a daughter unfairly cut off from life because she was “a schizophrenic.”

The doctor described what Caroline had as a slow-onset form of schizophrenia, which meant she had long stretches of stable behaviour pockmarked by delusion. He told them that Caroline still had access to proper reasoning and rational thought, and that the notion of psychosis as a permanent state is a public misconception.

As he pointed out, Caroline was quite rational when it came to acquiring cigarettes. She knew the minute they were dispensed from the nursing station. (Even now she knows exactly how many cigarettes are in the Ziploc bag that is never more than three feet from her person.) Nicotine hits the nicotine receptors and releases the chemical dopamine, which is necessary for survival; therefore nicotine is a survival mechanism. Caroline smoked to stay vital.

When Caroline again had a clear mind and was told by her clinician that she was suffering from schizophrenia, she asked to have her tubes tied. “It would be irresponsible to have another baby,” she said. In the end, she changed her mind, but her initial reaction signalled to her sisters that Caroline had returned to sanity. When Caroline speaks now about the idea of bringing another child into the world after that diagnosis, she says, “I remember walking on the hospital grounds and staring up at the perfection of an apple tree. I saw a blue cloudless sky. I realized there was nothing perfect in my life. I didn’t have enough to offer another human being.”

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