Nothing Was the Same Read Online Free PDF Page B

Halsted was a cocaine and morphine addict,” he said. “When he was impaired, his colleagues took it as their responsibility to protect Professor Halsted’s patients. But they also looked after Professor Halsted as best they could, so that he could continue to do his research, write, and train young surgeons.” He paused long enough for me to take this in. “If Hopkins can’t do that for you,” he said, “Hopkins has no business being in business.”
    He could not have been more understanding. He made it clear that I had his unequivocal support and that I should let him know if anyone on the faculty or the house staff made it difficult for me. He arranged for me to have lunch with the president of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, who likewise gave me his complete backing. He reiterated my chairman’s statement that Hopkins should be at the forefront of lessening the stigma against those with psychiatric illnesses; he hoped my being open about my own illness would make it easier for doctors and other clinicians to seek out, receive, and give good medical care. Both he and my chairman were unambivalent in their message that they would back up my decision in whatever way they could.
    They gave me the blessing of a great teaching hospital. I am not so naive as to think this is usual in medical schools and hospitals. I know that it is not. But it is exemplary. And it is from the exemplary, not from that which is done badly, that one learns and moves forward.
    Inevitably, it was Richard whose advice and support were most important to me. He encouraged me to write my book, nudged me on when I balked, and took me into his arms when things were hard. He wasn’t one to give up when life was difficult, and he did not give up on me.
    I decided to disclose my mental illness in an article that was published in the spring of 1995 in the Washington Post; my memoir An Unquiet Mind came out that fall. Not long after the Washington Post story was published, Richard and I attended the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. Most of our colleagues, although shocked to learn that I had bipolar illness, were supportive of my decision to talk and write about it, and generous in their remarks. More than a few, however, seemed acutely uncomfortable. They averted their eyes, drew away, said nothing. I have never harbored the illusion that psychiatrists are uniquely compassionate or able to find the right words in awkward circumstances, yet I was struck by the silence. It was bone-chilling. There was a sense from some that I should be embarrassed by my revelations and, when I was not, that they were embarrassed for me.
    That winter, after my book had been published, I went to a medical conference in Stockholm. One of my Danish colleagues said, “No Danish doctor would write what you wrote.” It was not meant as a compliment. Walking back to my hotel, I saw cut tulips in a store window, scarlet and beautiful against the northern darkness, and felt again the loneliness I had known years ago as a young woman at scientific conferences. Meetings tended then to be very male in nature and were hallmarked by territorial rattlings and simian battles of dominance. To preserve myself against this, I often bought flowers for my hotel room: a splash of color, a trace of beauty, a private femininity.
    Now, many years later in Stockholm, that sense of vulnerability, of exposed separateness, was back. I went to a flower shop and bought an armful of red tulips for my room and put them on my bedside table, an antidote to one male colleague’s remark. Most of the Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian doctors at the conference had gone out of their way to be kind to me; they had been warm in their support. But one chance remark, not ill intended, threw me back in time, yanked me down.
    For every coldness or drawing back by my colleagues, however, there have been far more acts of kindness and drawing in. At meetings in Dublin, my Irish colleagues were