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<\/p>\nThe scariest kind of death, I\u2019ve always thought, is the drop-dead kind: the sudden stop of a perfectly healthy person\u2019s heart as they go about their daily business. This is what happened to Mary Ann Kenny\u2019s 60-year-old husband, John, who was out jogging in the \u201cdazzling spring sunshine\u201d of Killiney, a picturesque coastal suburb of Dublin, when he unexpectedly collapsed. <\/p>\n
Kenny discovered something was wrong only when she turned on her \u201cold-fashioned button Nokia\u201d after a lengthy work meeting and noticed she had six missed calls from unknown numbers. The worst part, in her own account, was the realisation that she would have to break the news to their two young sons. <\/p>\n
That tragedy took place ten years ago, in the spring of 2015. Kenny\u2019s psychiatric crisis came soon after, and is the focus of her memoir, The Episode. To write it, the university lecturer, now 60, painstakingly mined material from her extensive electronic patient record, which \u201cruns to eight volumes and 875 pages\u201d and contains the intimate details of the medical rabbit hole she fell down after John\u2019s death. Many of the notes contained in her file, she emphasises with a dignified kind of frustration, read like \u201ca zookeeper\u2019s or experimental psychologist\u2019s observations about a caged and frightened animal\u201d.<\/p>\n
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To begin with, Kenny\u2019s grief appeared run-of-the-mill. After the initial shock of losing her husband she suffered many of the usual symptoms \u2014 reduced appetite, sleeplessness, irregular periods \u2014 but otherwise she diligently worked her way through various coping mechanisms: holding a thoughtful funeral, reading grandly titled self-help books, chatting to a therapist who had \u201can infectious laugh and grandfatherly air\u201d. <\/p>\n
Visits to the gates of Ayesha Castle (now called Manderley Castle) became a vital ritual too. \u201cI would place minuscule bunches of bluebells and sprigs of white, pink and red valerian picked at the roadside inside the narrow mock arrow slit above the spot where he had collapsed and died,\u201d she writes. For brief moments, \u201cthe agony would recede\u201d.<\/p>\n
Something about Kenny\u2019s grief beast was different, however. More dangerous. After initial resistance to using drugs to feel better, fearful of addiction, she tried antidepressants, but a single dose caused her to wake in the middle of the night \u201cdrenched in sweat, weak with nausea\u201d. Other symptoms appeared thick and fast, most notably an \u201cexcruciating and persistent burning\u201d underneath her skin and, later on, a weeks-long bout of constipation, which eventually resulted in a number of \u201cinvoluntary bladder explosions\u201d. <\/p>\n
Gripped by paranoia, Kenny became convinced that she had poisoned her children. \u201cI was tormented by an image of my evil self standing over the cooker,\u201d she recalls, \u201cpouring pills into the simmering food with the depraved intention of causing harm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Four months after John\u2019s death, and by then on the radar of medical professionals, Kenny agreed to spend a couple of weeks in a psychiatric hospital. Rather than being encouraged to talk about positive memories of her life before John or to forget for a while the pressures of her everyday life, such as organising childcare or communicating with her employers about why she was away, treatment was almost entirely focused on pill-popping. \u201cI lay there in frozen fear,\u201d she remembers, \u201cfacing away from the world, my arms wrapped tightly around my torso.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u2022 What we\u2019re reading this week \u2014 by the Times books team<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n After a brief spell of freedom, having told \u201cwhite lies\u201d about feeling better, Kenny was rehospitalised on the grounds of \u201csuicidal ideation\u201d. (In truth, she never really considered the act, simply wondered \u201chow anyone could master the seemingly impossible logistical challenge of throwing themselves under a speeding vehicle at exactly the right moment\u201d.) <\/p>\n More tests, more drugs and more probing questions followed, and it didn\u2019t take long for things to go from bad to worse. By October 2015 Kenny was \u201cclose to physical and mental collapse\u201d, ingesting a daily \u201ccocktail of antidepressants, anxiolytics, sleeping tablets and antipsychotics\u201d but finding no relief from \u201cthe endless churning\u201d in her brain. <\/p>\n Exhausted and confused, she became \u201cprepared to confess to anything\u201d, happily admitting to appalling things she knew weren\u2019t true, such as planning to push her sons off a cliff. \u201cEven while I was gobbing them out,\u201d Kenny admits, \u201cI almost marvelled at the ridiculousness of my disclosures.\u201d<\/p>\n At one point, after being transferred to an intimidatingly high-security ward, Kenny cringed with guilt at the idea of inconveniencing nursing staff and \u201cterrified of causing further fuss\u201d mopped up her vomit by herself. She feared she would never be allowed home, and that her children would remain for ever on the Child Protection Notification System, considered \u201cat ongoing risk of significant harm\u201d. <\/p>\n