I was haggard when I went to see my doctor in Victoria about a lingering sinus infection. I was also exhausted from work. As I slouched in his cluttered office, he said I looked rundown and asked what I had been doing. I told him about my cleaning business, how it was growing exponentially, with four employees to organize and get on the on the road every morning and a child to mind. Then I launched into my regular sixty cold calls in the morning over numerous cups of coffee and cigarettes. On a successful day I got a few maybes and an interview - with another house service that would mushroom into five.
I was going to be a millionaire, manage an empire, cash enormous cheques and what with the offshoot from cleaning - gardening, windows, repairs and so on until I expanded into buildings and offices, the possibilities were unlimited. But it wasn't the stress of my entrepreneurship that was wearing me down, nor was being a single parent, but more the relentless idiocy of my roommate's new boyfriend who had moved in and taken over our lives, and the continued stalking, telephone calls, letter-writing campaign and threats from my ex, who just couldn't seem to let go and move on with his life. However, I left all that part out. My doctor shook his head, wrote down a name on a notepad, ripped it off and handed it to me. 'Don't work so hard.'
A few weeks later, I drove to Dr. McLeod's office in Oak Bay, a block up from the marina. I'd never seen a psychiatrist before, what with being so well-adjusted, and I thought it would be a hoot to check it out see what illness he thought I had. He was a tall, wiry glass of water, bald, about 50, with horn-rimmed glasses. He peeked over them into the waiting room and asked me to come in. After introductions, he asked me to take a seat on a couch opposite his recliner.
'Call me Peter,' he said. The office was spacious, comfortable, a living room in a home and I sat down on a leather couch while he sat just off to my right. Two upright lamps before a large bay window quietly lit the room. After questions about my routine, my life and any recent experiences that may have caused concern, he looked over his checklist and asked if I'd ever been medicated or hospitalized due to mental illness. No.
'Do you ever hear voices?' 'No.'
'Do you ever feel suicidal?' And so on with a list of questions half of which I didn't answer truthfully.
Sitting on the couch opposite him, I grew uncomfortable with the realization that dude had never once looked into my eyes, but instead stared down at my breasts. Only briefly he'd look at my eyes when he glanced up from his questions, then his eyes would roll over my chest once again. Does he not know that he's doing that? I couldn't figure out what he was up to, whether it was on purpose or not. I was glad when the hour was up. However, as I stood, he was writing out a prescription, a prescription for haloperidol that would help me out and calm my nerves, he said. Now in my lifetime I have dropped acid, taken mescaline, smoked cocaine, weed and hash, eaten mushrooms and inadvertently done PCP. But I'd never heard of haloperidol, and for the first time in my life I asked what effect the drug would have on me and because I asked an intelligent question that I never would normally have asked, I believe it was divine intervention.
Dr. McLeod stood beside me at the door. 'You may have a little muscle spasm.'
I thought about muscle spasms for all of three seconds and replied. 'No thanks.'
'I'll schedule you for next Thursday,' he said and closed his door.
Mulling over my appointment, I wondered whether I should go back. His staring at my chest was just downright disturbing. But curiosity got the best of me because I've always been fascinated by lunatics and lunatics always seem to find me. I'll give it one more go and see what happens.
Sitting on the couch the following week and answering another list of tedious questions, he again was staring at my chest when suddenly forty-fives minutes into the session I blurted out 'I'm fine. I don't need to come here again.'
But before I could stand up and run, he rushed to sit on the couch, his shoulder touching mine, his eyes intently boring into mine. 'I'm glad that you think you're okay,' he said.
Think I'm okay? I never returned and subsequently discovered that haloperidol is one of the most insidious anti-psychotic drug with life-changing effects. People who have been on this drug long term commonly experience a mask-like face, muscle spasms in the neck and back, inability to move their eyes, difficulty with swallowing, along with a host of other problems. And they are irreversible. Thank you God.
