In 2010, I had been a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist for 22 years in Bristol, the 8th largest city in England. I had been the chairman of the medical committee in the hospital, the largest hospital ’trust’ in the Southwest (one of the loveliest areas in England). My wife and I had recently celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. We had two children doing well at school and captaining their sports teams. I had worked extremely hard to get to this prestigious position, 120 hours per week at work in my junior hospital doctor days.
Then my world started to collapse. Many bad life events over three years culminating in understandable distress and an appointment with a psychiatrist.
In 2008, I had been on holiday in New York when I received a call from a local GP asking me if I could see a woman with intermittent bleeding months after a second elective caesarean section. She had a condition called an isthmocoele, a gap between the two scars from the caesareans. She eventually asked for a hysterectomy as the only definitive solution to stop the bleeding. This was unusual for a young woman of 26 but she demanded it. We went ahead, and all went well.
Years later she had some bowel complaints and was referred to the colorectal surgeons. She saw a Dr Dixon. He told her she had a degree of rectal prolapse, which was very unlikely in a young woman with no previous vaginal deliveries. He recommended a new operation called a LVMR, using polypropylene mesh inserted laparoscopically. He carried this out, but ran into operative difficulties with surgically induced bleeding. She had to return to the operating theatre and ended up with a bowel resection and a colostomy. She sought to sue him.
He tried to blame his problems on my simple hysterectomy years earlier. All complete fabrication and nonsense. He manufactured a medicolegal case against me, using well-known biased experts for the prosecution.
This all happened suddenly, and if his claims were proven, I faced a threat to my practice and previously unblemished reputation. I had never been sued before. I knew I had done nothing wrong and advised the hospital to get expert reports from two top colorectal surgeons and gynaecologists. When investigated, Dr Dixon was found to be responsible for all of the young woman’s surgical disasters, and was subsequently dismissed by both the NHS trust and the private hospitals. He was eventually found responsible for 460 cases of surgical negligence and was finally struck off the medical register. He also had falsified medical follow-up records in an attempt to embellish the results of his procedures.
All this caused me enormous distress, and I had to take extended leave to help prove the case against him. I had previously considered medicine to be a noble, empathetic profession without such deceitful individuals. This whole process had a profound effect on me. I had never been in such a situation before and it shocked me to the core.
I was really low during this time and eventually decided after some months to take early retirement, as my faith in medicine was shaken and waning. I wondered if I could possibly have a psychiatric breakdown and saw the head of the psychiatric trust for a consultation. He assured me I was just low because of all that was happening to me, and did not have any psychiatric disorder. That year my wife lost her father, and her mother had to be admitted to a dementia home as he had been her carer. My wife had a medical scare too, and stopped her hormone replacement therapy abruptly so she was not feeling great either, entering into an abrupt menopause. Everything was getting so bad over such a short time.
Even though I had been reassured about my psychiatric normality, a ‘friend’ suggested I see another psychiatrist who, although retired, had looked after ‘troubled doctors’ before. A little reluctantly, I did see this second psychiatrist. It was an awful mistake. He came to my house and after just half an hour pronounced that I had ‘agitated depression’. He recommended that I start paroxetine straight away. No discussion of other solutions. The only answer was drugs.
From then on, I was snared into a world of psychiatry that I had no knowledge of. I was then given mirtazapine, and over the course of a few weeks, other antidepressants and then antipsychotics too. My family were told, mainly by occupational therapists, that I had various forms of psychiatric problems and was very unwell. Although my son was an orthopaedic surgeon, like me he had no experience of psychiatry so he could not challenge the psychiatric management.
I was now drugged and beside myself with confusion and anger about the way I was being treated. It was all alien to me, and most discourteous. The psychiatrists seemed to enjoy the role reversal with a previously highly successful surgeon as a patient. Psychiatrists hate successful conventional doctors, especially surgeons who make so much indisputable difference. They were particularly aggressive with me because of my position. The increase and changes of drugs were awful. I was soon seen at home for a MHA assessment and I was fine, so was not committed. However, they said instead that I had to see the ECT psychiatrist, to discuss ECT treatment. I did not know anything about it.
When I saw Hewitt, who was in charge of the ECT service, he encouraged me to have it. This was early on in my ‘treatment’. Hearing more about it, I was sure it had no scientific value, so I refused it.
My wife was very upset on many grounds, and was convinced by the psychiatric picture being painted. She was annoyed with me for not believing all they were saying, but I knew that my distress and sadness were due to all that was happening in my life, and were not a disease. My wife, however, was frantic and threatening to leave me, and my son was saddened that his dad was not able to help him in their shared profession. He was in the process of applying for consultant posts. It was all a terrible dream. All due to unnecessary drugs.
Community care was continued, with forced medication. One day my wife became very angry and we fell out badly. She threatened to leave me again. I had always been her anchor and the head of the family. Eventually it was decided that I needed inpatient care and I was admitted. No formal MHA assessment was made prior to admission which made it illegal. In hospital, I was on a mixed ward and started on a number of new drugs including lithium. No diagnoses were made but all sorts of drugs were added. I was discharged after a few weeks, on a collection of drugs.
Because I was not improving on the medication, I was seen privately by a psychopharmacologist from Bristol University who decided I needed to try old-fashioned antidepressants and prescribed a MAOI and a tricyclic, together with a strong benzodiazepine, clonazepam. The latter made me sleep for eight hours during the day after one dose, so I stopped it. No alterations to my diet were made which I knew were necessary in view of the MAOI.
After attending my son’s wedding in a daze, I was feeling awful on the new collection of drugs and I was snatched from my home to be admitted to a psychiatric ward in my own hospital trust. Once again, no formal MHA assessment was made. I was just ‘put away’.
This ward was close to the obstetric wards where I had worked for 22 years. My medication was changed again to olanzapine at a maximum dose of 20 mg, and a high dose of escitalopram. The consultant spent no time discussing my problems, just talking about the DSM categories. Soon after my admission I had serious flank pain which I knew was renal colic, having had an endoscopic stone removal years before. The ward staff didn’t believe me and offered additional diazepam as treatment. I asked for some diclofenac (voltarol) suppositories and gloves to self-medicate. Sadly, I developed a fever and then my temperature fell to 35 degrees celsius with threatened sepsis. The mental health nurse who took my temperature asked for advice, and I was offered paracetamol (acetaminophen).
In the end, I had to call the urology registrar on call for proper help. I was seen, given antibiotics and an MRI. A large stone was diagnosed, and I had to have an urgent endoscopic lithotripsy. Without my actions I could have had full-blown sepsis. No wonder the death rate in psychiatric hospitals is alarmingly high.
The psychiatrist then said I should have twice-weekly ECT. He did not discuss the benefits and drawbacks of ECT. A single sheet of information about ECT was left on my bed in the evening. No discussion at all. The sheet said it was a successful treatment but did not specify what for. The only side effects listed were a possible mild headache. That’s all.
I refused the ECT. I was informed that a second psychiatrist would come to see me as a second opinion. A SOAD, as it turned out: Second Opinion Approved Doctor. He agreed with my considered opinion of ECT and my reasons for refusing it. Despite this, however, I was told later that I was going to have it anyway.
In the UK, ECT is the only coercive procedure that can be forced upon an individual without fully informed consent.
I was subsequently driven in a blacked-out car to the ECT unit on the other side of the city at 9 am. On the first day of treatment, I was starved from 5 pm the day before. On arrival I waited my turn to take a very brief test of instant recall before the shock. Memory tests to assess the effect of ECT must be performed after the seizure, not before and should test memory of past events, not instant recall. After the first ‘treatment’ I awoke confused, as all epileptics do after a fit. There is little difference except that the initiating electric shock was at a much higher voltage.
Further sessions of ECT followed, with worsening memory, for fifteen weeks. The side effects got worse. After the 30th I was losing my memory for all past events. I had complained regularly at the clinic but they planned to continue. To finally stop this, I made sure that I ate on the ECT mornings so that I was not allowed to have an anaesthetic. They stopped the ECT.
I attended a tribunal. The chairman seemed amused, saying that he had never seen a surgeon at an NHS tribunal before.
I won the tribunal and was released.
I spent time at home but was not able to do much with all the memory loss. I was visited at home by the crisis team who watched me take a new antipsychotic and another pill each day. I don’t know what they were and was not informed.
During the pandemic and lockdown my wife delivered food and drink every few days. I was alone. My daughter got married whilst I was having ECT and I missed her wedding, my speech and everything she and I had dreamed of. She has supported me with phone calls, but was told that I was to blame for not having more ‘treatments’. She is a paediatric physiotherapist now. My deterioration caused her great sadness. I have four grandchildren now but don’t know them, really.
We had been a very loving, close and successful family. Summer holidays at my wife’s parents’ place in Mallorca where they lived, and skiing every winter across the Alps. The children and my wife became black run skiers. Great times. All magical. I had worked very long and hard to afford it all. NHS and private clinics. My wife gave up nursing to be a homemaking, all-attentive mother. A 1950’s type wife and mother. She was great for them, but lost out on a career and a life of her own. A mistake, in retrospect. I had to work evenings privately to make up for the lost second income.
I was not coping well at home with virtually no memory. After a time, I was so drugged up and confused that I was sectioned again and admitted to a small hospital in a small seaside town called Weston-super-Mare. It was like a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and I was Jack Nicholson. I spoke to and helped my fellow inmates and encouraged the staff to introduce scrambled egg for breakfast as an alternative to the ubiquitous cereal and toast.
The consultant was an Indian locum (a temporary healthcare professional) who didn’t really understand English. He relied on his junior trainee. I explained to her that I was not psychiatrically ill but just drugged to the hilt. She began to believe me and I stopped taking psychiatric drugs. The consultant tried to reintroduce them but I refused them successfully. The consultant wanted to investigate me with a CT and genetic blood tests, all of which I had already had years before. Using my better knowledge of medicine I was able to disprove his explanations for the need for further investigations. I realised he was not very well informed and his junior was the more sensible doctor. After three weeks, they had to interview me again with a view to moving me onto a treatment section of the Mental Health Act, so they could enforce medication again.
I had previously had a small heart attack during my enforced treatment at home and was admitted to the cardiac assessment unit. The investigations seemed to me to confirm a MCI with raised troponin levels. I should have had an urgent angiogram as there were changes on my ECG as well. It was then revealed in the hospital computer notes that I had a ‘psychiatric history’ and had been on numerous medications. Because of this, my whole case and presentation were questioned and I was just given analgesics and observed overnight, waiting for a consultant review in the morning.
The chest pain increased and more morphine was needed to alleviate it. At the morning ward round, my serum troponin was elevated further and ECG abnormalities were obvious. The cardiac consultant who reviewed me at 8 am was annoyed and angry that I had been overlooked because of a psychiatric history. He agreed with my assessment that I indeed had suffered a heart attack and gave me more analgesics, ordering an angiogram ASAP. I had the angiogram and a stent at 2 pm the next day, missing the agreed ‘presentation to stent target’ by many hours. I had a cardiac MRI later that week and was put on the usual cardiac prophylaxis drugs.
Cardiac events are more common in patients treated with antipsychotics. Especially olanzapine.
Back to Weston-super-Mare. I was called to face an MHA assessment to decide if I was to move to a level 2 section with enforced medication, etc. This assessment was a shambles but concluded that I should move to a level 2 section. I knew my rights and called for a proper tribunal. For this the consultant had to provide a report and treatment plan. In addition, reports from a community mental health nurse and an inpatient psychiatric nurse were required. I was to read these pre-tribunal. Neither nurse had met me before!
On the day of the tribunal it was postponed as the medical report was inadequately prepared. At a subequent tribunal I was informed that the consultant was ‘away’ and a substitute was requested, who I had never met before. At the tribunal I was able to argue successfully against my collection of diagnoses and the plan for treatment, and the tribunal was dismissed. I was allowed to leave the hospital. I later found out that the Indian locum had been investigated by the General Medical Council and had ‘left the hospital’.
I spent another year at home again with community visits to provide medication. Sadly, at home on drugs I deteriorated again and was admitted back to the Callington Road Main ‘Mental Health’ hospital. Here I was treated worse than ever. I was under the ECT consultant again. When at home I had previously stated that I never wanted ECT ever again. An Advance Statement to this effect banned him from giving me ECT again unless I lost ‘capacity’ and needed it.
Fortunately, he did not enforce ECT again. Instead, he made my time as awful as possible with cold showers and having me hoisted in and out of bed with straps, which has had residual effects on my musculoskeletal system. I eventually had to use a wheelchair. He then transferred me to a men-only ward filled with very disturbed men. Likely criminals avoiding prison by claiming a mental health defence. Here I was given weekly depot antipsychotic injections at twice the normal dose. These made me feel worse than ever. I was returned to the Hewitt-led Aspen ward, next door to the ECT unit.
Hewitt needed to get me off his hands. He then decided to state that I did not have a psychiatric disorder after all, but was suffering from a less common form of dementia instead (Fronto Temporal Dementia). He therefore told my family to move me into a residential home out of NHS care. Thus no clinical or financial responsibility for him or the mental health trust. I was moved by my family to a home nearer to the family homes. He also put a Deprivation of Liberty (DOL) order on me so that I was effectively still ‘imprisoned’.
I have now had a cognitive function test and passed with a 90% score. I have asked a social worker to apply for a lifting of my DOL restriction. No progress there yet.
Now off all medications for 18 months I have regained my cognitive capacity again, except for the severe memory loss due to the multiple ECTs. I also still have the mobility problems due to a lack of exercise, muscle wasting and the hoisting effects from Callington Road Hospital physical abuse. I am still trying to get my family to listen to all the truth about psychiatry here in Bristol.
