Even In the Womb, A Worrier

Side entrance of a quaint century home centrally located in Old Oakville, a pleasant stroll to restaurants sampled over the years, coffee shops dropped in on for brainstorms, social interactions and a welcome rush of sugar and a jolt of caffeine and walking trails that hug the picturesque shoreline of Lake Ontario. Trails we’ve biked, briskly hiked on our own, and ambled along with curious kids and nosey hound(s) in tow. A sign on the door reads:

Dr. Sean O’Connor, Psychiatrist

ONLY BY APPOINTMENT

Personal history, an entrenched affliction, and a referral from my family doctor have conspired to bring me to this doorway. The entrenched affliction – the very thing I’m here to lay bare – and genetics, a one/two punch, have me considering turning and bolting. Late in life my father, despite creaky knees and an undependable ankle, became a notorious bolter. Doctor’s appointments, medical tests, coveted specialist consultations, you name it. One minute he’s there, the next minute, poof. Gone. Like Houdini. Better than Houdini. In my head I imagine him singing as he bolts, the old Cole Porter classic, “Don’t Fence Me In.”

Thing is, I’ve never been to a psychiatrist despite a lifetime of mental-health issues. Ebbing, flowing, and covering the spectrum. Run-of-the-mill anxiety, occasionally amped-up into angst. Forays into phobias ranging from the peculiar – tonsurephobia, (unease experienced over haircuts, I kid you not) -- to the more commonplace: agoraphobia, claustrophobia (like father, like son: do not fence me in). Disorders the likes of social anxiety, seasonal affective, and hypochondria – mine is a lifelong search for lumps. And even a sortie or two behind enemy lines, into the jungles of melancholy and the infinite sadness. Your basic smorgasbord of disquietude. And yet, up to this point, not a single psychiatrist. Assorted general practitioners… A mononymous psychic named Ruth – “Just Ruth” … A well-meaning but ineffectual ponytailed social worker who advised between off-putting slurps of herbal tea:

“Listen to music, man. Think of cute kittens. Take a bubble bath and think of cute kittens.”

“Wait, Dude. Maybe I could listen to music and take a bubble bath and think of cute kittens!”

But not a single shrink…

As a middle-schooler, a visit to the family doctor for what was then loosely labelled “a nervous stomach’ netted an unsolicited prescription for Librax, capsules containing the highly addictive benzodiazepine and a mix of other drugs believed at the time to calm the collywobbles -- what would become commonly known as IBS; it’s a drug that nowadays would not even be considered for anyone under the age of eighteen.

But this was during the heyday of prescription-pushing, of general practitioners being reliant upon – some playing fast and loose with -- all available pharma. I lasted only a few foggy weeks on Librax before my mother, having found me asleep in odd places at odd hours of the day, flushed the pills. Which may or may not explain the schools of incredibly chill carp in the nearby Thames River. I can still hear mom muttering to herself, something about ‘old fuddy-duddy.’ I assume she was talking about our pharma-friendly doctor since I was neither old, nor a fuddy-duddy. Not yet anyway.

One starless night in my impressionable teens, on a dare, I visited a psychic named Ruth in her candlelit tent, redolent of garlic and overcooked war vegetables, on the dusty midway of a county fair. She curtly told my girlfriend (the darer) to sit ‘quiet as a mouse’ on a stool in the corner; teenaged girls, she intimated, could be gigglers and she wanted no such nonsense interrupting the solemnity (indeed, sanctity) of our session. Granted, solemnity (indeed, sanctity) was otherwise undermined by the sound of midway barkers pitching their wares and kids retching up candy floss as they unsteadily exited the nearby tilt-a-whirl. Nimbly pocketing my five-dollar bill, Ruth took my hands in hers, shut her eyes and put her sixth sense to work. Those eyes would remain closed long after I started feeling awkward and clammy. It was as I was contemplating freeing a hand and reaching out to Ruth to steal a feel for a pulse, that she finally willed open those eyes, shook her head, and whispered one word. As though that word covered everything. As though it was my essence.

“Anxious,” she said. Since birth, I replied. “No,” she corrected, “since before birth.” A shiver ran up my spine. Candles eerily flickered.

“Past lives?”

She poked me in the chest: “No past lives, Mr. High School Saucy Pants. Not for a lousy fiver. You want past lives, pony up…” Then she clarified what she meant by before birth.

“Even in the womb,” she said, “even in the womb, you were a worrier.”

Even though I did not believe in psychics, their hokey visions, and often incredulous claims of clairvoyance, I believed that in this instance she had probably hit the nail on the head. I probably was a womb-worrywart. A fetal fussbudget. And at that moment I felt compelled to ask, because I knew I needed help and the sign outside the tent had read: “Ruth sees the past and the future.”

Credulous? Nah, but..

“What can I do about it, moving forward?”

“Stop it,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Just stop your nonsense. Stop worrying.” Simple as that.

It was a succinct refrain that my wife – the adult incarnation of the quiet darer cowering in the corner of Ruth’s tent all those years ago -- would frequently appropriate and eventually call her own, playing it like a trump card whenever she sensed me derailing.

“Oh, just stop your nonsense…”

Stop it. Simple as that.

There’s No Sobbing in Psychiatry

Ruth and Kell’s voices in my head, I manage to usher my dearly departed father out of my head and stop my nonsense. I put one foot in front of the other and warily enter the office-in-home. Door movement triggers a bell. Bell sounds and triggers an epiphany: Ah, I am For Whom the Bell Tolls… All apologies: that’s just how my brain works.

From his chair behind a dark-stained antique desk, the doctor rises in greeting and stands in front of a busy bookshelf and a wall festooned with framed diplomas, degrees, and other impressive educational upgrades from the universities of Here, There and Everywhere. Short in stature with wispy white hair, bookish features, and an at-ease demeanor that must surely be in direct contrast to that of the anxious souls who enter his office seeking the silver bullet for their issues; some about one provocation away from a full-blown meltdown. He adjusts owlish glasses, steps forward, smiles pleasantly and shakes my hand. I won’t say limply, but it is limp compared to that employed by my family physician, Dr. Michael McCarthy, whose referral brought me here. Dr. Mike’s vicelike greetings are legendary. Some of the smaller, more vulnerable bones in my right-hand quiver whenever he leans in for a shake.

“Dr. Sean O’Connor.”

“Irish? I ask.

“Wee bit, yes, indeed.” He grins. “Wiseacre?”

“Oh, yeah. Bigly… Especially when I’m anxious…”

And I am. Especially anxious.

He pulls up chairs and we sit, practically knee to knee. No desk, no space, no barriers between us. It’s how Lennon and McCartney connected and wrote all those timeless tunes. It’s how Dr. Sean O’Connor does business. We loosen up over small talk, mostly about our mutual friend, Dr. Mike, my GP, and one of Dr. O’Connor’s oldest and dearest friends. I ask how they met.

“In church,” he says, “way back when. We were choirmates before we became mate-mates. Michael has always taken enormous pride in out-singing me. Out-singing everyone, really. Not necessarily in key, mind you, but louder… We exercise together, which is to say we stroll along the lake once or twice a week to clear our heads and solve the world’s problems. Wives in tow, we attend theatre events, dine out, play cards: Euchre, bridge, some spirited cribbage. Michael,” he laughs, “does not like to lose… But I tell you, he’s truly salt of the Earth. Lives with conviction and revels in the details.”

I chime in with my favorite Dr. Mike story.

“He calls me three, four times a year. Always on a Sunday. Always around dinner time. And always, unknowingly, when we have a houseful of people: family, friends, waiting on cocktail orders and expecting appetizers momentarily…”

“Ah Michael. No sense of timing. Really, no real sense of time. I’m always joking that he’ll be late for his own funeral.”

“Funny thing is, when I answer the phone, he opens with: ‘Do you know who this is?’ Every single time. Like he’s never heard of Call Display. Like I wouldn’t immediately recognize that ballsy baritone. But before I can answer he exclaims: ‘It’s Dr. McCarthy! Do you have a minute?’ Ah, not really, and our calls are never a minute. But… I always say, sure. Because I’m happy to hear his voice and it’s always a pleasure talking to him.”

“Surely these aren’t professional calls on a Sunday?”

“No, personal. Typically triggered by my column. He’ll say he was just perusing the newspaper and wanted to chat about what I’d written in my weekly outpouring of alleged humor, satire, and such. A faithful reader, something every writer craves. Some columns he liked, some he loved – usually the family stuff, the old softie -- and some chafed him to the bone. So, we’d talk and talk and talk. About the column and everything else under the sun until my wife arrived on the scene waving a tea towel in my face…”

“Ah, the universal marital cue for partner needing help in the kitchen…”

“Exactly.”

“Michael, Michael, Michael. As you’ve discerned, he can be a touch… eccentric… over-the-top...”

“Oh, yeah,” I interject with a smirk. “Do you know, he’s taken up celery? Told me his wife read somewhere that it lowers blood pressure and, Dr. Mike being Dr. Mike, has gone in…”

“Whole hog?”

“Yes. I’m not talking about nibbling a few neatly cut pieces now and then. I’m talking about pacing around the office with an entire stalk in his fist. Crunching away. Last time I saw him, over the course of a ten-minute appointment, he buzzsaw-ed two full stalks. Forget lowering blood pressure, the way he goes at things he’ll end up with hypotension. Or some sort of weird celery intolerance.”

I didn’t think this would ever occur. Not in my wildest dreams, not in this office. But my psychiatrist is cracking up. And I’m laughing along with him as we envision Dr. Mike, that affable, lovable, wise old drink of water, unwittingly strangling a stalk. Resembling -- as he looks over his glasses to scan my bloodwork -- Bugs Bunny about to demolish another carrot.

Ah, what’s up Doc? 

At some point Dr. O’Connor glances at his watch and suggests we ‘jump in.’ I can’t help but think that regardless of what Dr. Mike imparted in his referral, Dr. O has no clue what he’s getting into, the depths – not to mention the viscosity -- of the murk into which he’s suggesting we cannonball. There are three givens in the dog-chasing-its-tail world of anxiety-treatment. 1. The patient firmly believes that their anxiety – the triggers, the symptoms, the innumerable insidious ways it plays out – is unprecedented and unparalleled in the annals of psychiatry. 2. The patient seeks/needs to be reassured that, despite all aforementioned beliefs, their anxiety is in fact common. No big whoop. Perfectly normal. No need to wig out. Certainly, no need to pack-up the panic and skedaddle off to the ER every time the stressed ticker innocently skips a beat. 3. The patient can be expected, at least in the interim, to ignore all logic, all reassurances, all science, and continue clinging to the belief that their anxiety is special. Unprecedented and unparalleled in the annals of psychiatry.

All whimpering wannabes aside, my anxiety is real, and it’s spectacular. Truly a unique beast. Which makes me think that maybe I should warn him. Give the poor guy a fighting chance. Tell him in advance that my issues run as deep as the Ottawa River -- the widest, deepest river in North America, for those who don’t have recondite river facts at their fingertips -- and are as complex as the pointlessly convoluted scoring system in pickleball. Let him know that with me, he’ll have to be on top of his game; he’ll have to earn his exorbitant hourly.

Pity Dr. O’Connor. I imagine that within minutes he will collapse under the weight of the realization that, professionally speaking, he’s met his match. I envision him throwing his tiny Irish hands up in despair, raising proverbial white flags in surrender, and regretting all the time and money he wasted on becoming a psychiatrist. Possibly even wishing he’d never been born.

“You,” I can hear him saying in advance of him saying anything, “are preposterously, stupidly complex.” No shite, Sherlock! “So many layers, so many levels.” Damn straight! “And that anxiety of yours,” he’ll add, shaking his tiny Irish head in disbelief, “’tis otherworldly. No chance I will ever be able to get to the core of all that’s you. AJ,” I can hear him sobbing, dramatically, defeatedly, “you are one nut that I just cannot crack...”

There are obvious flaws in my imagining. 1. Dr. O would never engage in such professionally incorrect conduct -- there’s no sobbing in psychiatry. 2. Dr. O would never engage in such politically incorrect behavior -- calling a patient a nut certainly doesn’t fly in our current politically correct climate, even if said patient is clearly nuttier than grandma’s famous fruitcake.

I take a deep breath and acknowledge that I’m ready.

Buckle up, Dr. O’Connor. You’re in for a wild ride.

Imagine my surprise.

The ride is shockingly short and mortifyingly unremarkable. Nowhere near as wild as I imagined. After all of ten minutes – ten minutes, the cocky gobshite! -- he gently closes his notebook, leans back and places it on his desk, alongside the pen with which he’d been pretending to jot notes. I know a doodler when I see one. He smiles. Not quite the cat that ate the canary, but annoyingly close. I take the cue and fall silent, awaiting the verdict that he takes his sweet time delivering.

Seriously. What is he waiting for?

A peal of trumpets? A drum roll?

“Well?”

“You,” he finally says, “are intolerant of uncertainty.”

Mic drop.

Nutcracker.