Days Like This

Christina Gorrie

I was nineteen years old in the second year of my training to become a nurse. I was working a spell of night duty in a female surgical ward in Perth Royal Infirmary. All patients were settled down for the night and as far as I can remember there was little patient care required that night. My orders were to release a ladies catheter every two hours but I kept myself busy as I sat by the coal fire in the middle of the ward making gauze swabs and cotton wool balls which I placed in the appropriate jars. I took the jars to the treatment room in readiness for use the following day. I then proceeded to clean the work tops and autoclave which was used to sterilise instruments used in the ward. While doing this I did have a feeling I had done this job earlier in the night but wasn't sure so I just carried on cleaning until everything sparkled.

I wrote a report on each patient and took it to my senior person, nurse Brown, in the adjoining ward. Morning came and as day staff arrived Nurse Brown and I went into the duty room to read our reports to the sister and staff nurse in charge of the ward. When I took the book to read my report Nurse Brown told me she had already read it. I was there but do not recall her reading any report. As we went down the stairs at the end of our shift Nurse Brown said I was to go and see matron. She duly sat me outside matron's office and told me to wait there. Next thing I know is getting put to bed in a private room in the hospital. At some point my mother came and took me home in the bus, so I must have looked ok to travel in this way (no-one in our family owned a car in the early sixties) although it was obvious my brain was not working as it should.

At home I was like a two year old not allowing my mother out of my sight. I followed her from the living room to the kitchen and watching her make the mid day meal. I would not eat or even take a cup of tea. It was there I saw a bright cross suspended in the air between where I sat and my Mother. This shining cross stayed before me as I moved around the house. it was a private thing and I didn't tell my Mother what I saw. It only made the confusion in my tormented mind greater. When my brother came home from work he persuaded me to go upstairs into bed. He sat on the bottom of my bed beside me for some time and spoke to me quietly. I trusted him. After a while he went downstairs and I heard him out the front door. I got up, went downstairs and stood by the living room window waiting for him to return.

My Mother knew I was ill but I don't think she knew what to do with me. I later began to understand that she was ashamed of me being mentally ill and she felt she had to keep me hidden in case the neighbours found out. Mental illness was unheard of in the history of our family and carried a huge amount of stigma in the nineteen sixties.

Soon my brother returned with our family GP Doctor Walked. When I saw Dr Walked coming up the path to our front door I thought he was God and when he came into the house I embraced him and begged him to take me out of this hell and into heaven. He told my Mother to pack a bag for me while I with my Father made our way to the doctor's car. My Father got into the back of the car and I sat in the front beside God. We were going to heaven. It was a beautiful day and I pointed out the luscious green trees, grass and hedge rows to my Dad on this wonderful trip. In fact Doctor Walker was taking me to a mental hospital several miles from our home town.

Again I was put to bed but thinking I was in Heaven I was now more relaxed and able to sleep. I had a nervous breakdown. Next day my treatment would begin.