White shoes, velcro closures Winter 1995 I walked onto the psych unit of a small community hospital Thursday in Michigan City, Indiana. Peeling paint, dirty carpet, broken down furniture. I walked in wearing white shoes with velcro closures. I had my first episode of manic-depression at age 18. I had seen eight psychiatrists and about twenty mental health workers, and I had taken about thirty meds. But I was never correctly diagnosed or treated. Behind me lay broken marriages, failed careers, the death of hope and waning faith. I knew something was terribly wrong, but could not name it. My real treatment for manic-depression -- 27 years after its onset -- began in a small hospital in a small Indiana city on that recent Thursday. I began a long slide in June and was hospitalized for nine days in September, but it did little good. While I deteriorated, my wife Linda and I searched for a psychopharmacologist. We did not want me to return to the same hospital and the same psychiatrist who had been of so little help for five years. We found the psychopharmacologist and got a call Thursday morning that a bed was available in the afternoon. My parents rushed from nearby Chicago, my six-year-old son Rocky went to school, and then Linda went to work. I was ultra-rapid-cycling, having mixed states and auditory and visual disturbances. But I asked my mother to take me to K Mart to buy me a few things. During a suicide watch, under which I might have been, they take your shoelaces and belt, for fear, I suppose, that you might find an unobserved moment and a sturdy place from which to hang yourself. I did not want to face the indignities of flopping shoes and pants held up by one hand. K Mart had rows of gleaming white men's athletic shoes -- only $9.99 -- each and every pair with laces. We asked the saleswoman were there any with velcro closures. She dug around and found three pair. One fit. Then we found pants with elastic waist bands, sweatshirts, deodorant -- all those things you need for a trip away from home. We returned home, I shoved everything into a summit pack and I lay trembling under several comforters. Rocky came home, we drove to Linda's work, and then to hospital. Linda and I walked in. I was wearing white shoes with velcro closures. We went through a quick admission. We kissed, held each other and cried. And then came the moment when spouse and friend, lover and beloved must separate and stand on the two sides of a chasm deeper and wider than the Grand Canyon. There are some things that can neither be spoken nor written. I was on a serious unit. No one had shoelaces or belts. People walked around in sock-things provided by the hospital while holding up their pants. But not me. There were group and individual therapy, arts and crafts, indifferent food, three daily cigarette breaks by which we smokers measured the passing days, psychotic outbursts and the tedious routine. I had a radical readjustment in meds. My psychopharmacologist asked me the following Monday if I wanted to go home. I packed, got instructions on meds, filled out more forms and yet more forms, and waited. Linda and I shared supper and a session with the unit social worker. Then we came home. I was wearing wearing white shoes, velcro closures. Copyright 1996, Bud Polk Free Home Pages at GeoCities