Woman Who Could Not Forget (57 page)

It is my firm opinion that the side effects of the medication had altered Iris in a big way. In all the years we have known each other, as mother and daughter, Iris has always been strong, resilient, and undaunted and had never considered suicide as a way out. She often expressed that she could not understand how people would commit suicide. Her first attempted suicide occurred when she was on 10 mg of an antipsychotic drug, Abilify, for nine days, and on 5 mg of an antidepressant, Celexa, for two days.

I have since learned from all the sources (see Epilogue) that antidepressant drugs like Celexa belong in the class of medications called SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) which includes Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft. These medications can paradoxically have the side effects of making a depressed patient even more anxious and suicidal. It could make people confused and alter their personalities. In some patients, SSRIs can induce suicide ideation and behavior; these serious side effects of SSRIs have been well documented in recent years, but we were not aware of it at the time. And perhaps even more importantly, research has revealed that the first few days on an antidepressant SSRI, and any time that a dose was changed, were the times of greatest risk.

What happened on September 21 was very scary for all of us. The incident indicated that Iris was considering committing suicide, and now my deepest fear became a reality and I knew I had to watch her even more closely.

The next day, she got up early and seemed alert. She told me she was going to her home office to clean up and work. I went to see her in the afternoon; she was working hard in her office sorting out her papers. This was the first time since she’d come back from Louisville that I saw her as the old Iris—hard at work.

“You look good today,” I said to her.

She said, sounding like her old self, “Because I don’t want to die.”

I was overjoyed to hear her say that and stayed in her office for a while. I helped her a little before I went to pick up Christopher from preschool. Once Christopher got home, Iris played with him, and she also tried to help Luann with the household chores. But after several days, Iris became depressed again.

On Friday, September 24, Brett told us that Luann had suggested that she would like to take Christopher with her to Illinois in light of the current situation. After we heard the news, both Shau-Jin and I felt uneasy about the suggestion; but when we told Iris about it, to our surprise, she agreed. She expressed that she felt it was best for Christopher to move to Illinois. Her reason was that she believed someone was going to hurt her immediate family members, and Christopher would be safer if he lived away from her.

Once Iris and Brett agreed, it was no use for us to show our disapproval. The date for the move was October 9. Ken would come to California on October 1; then Ken and Luann and Brett would travel together to take Christopher to Illinois.

On Wednesday, September 29, Brett accompanied Iris to see Dr. A because we still had not yet found another psychiatrist for her. She complained to Dr. A that she was too sleepy with the Abilify, so Dr. A asked her to discontinue Abilify and go back to Risperdal.

On Saturday, October 2, there was only one week left for Christopher in California. It was sad for us to think that he would separate from his mother soon. Iris was very sad too, but I could see that she truly believed someone might want to harm him. Now that Christopher was going to live with Luann and Ken, she seemed calmer, even though it was such a sad situation. Needless to say, Shau-Jin and I were heartbroken that we would not be able to see our grandson every day like we had for the past two years.

At this time, we tried to cheer Iris up by encouraging her to call her close friends, such as Barbara Masin. Barbara drove up from Santa Barbara and visited Iris for a weekend. They went out hiking and saw a movie together. It seemed that Iris’s spirits were lifted somewhat when Barbara was with her. But as soon as she left, Iris was depressed again.

Iris switched back to Risperdal 1 mg and Celexa 10 mg each day after she saw Dr. A on September 29. We had been very concerned about whether the medication was right for her. It seemed like it did not help her much with her depression but just made her sleepy and agitated. We were desperate and felt that she needed a good doctor to follow her progress. Shau-Jin and I went to the San Jose State University library to do a background search on each doctor on the list provided by Brett’s health plan. It turned out that most of the doctors were either child psychiatrists, or their office location was too far away, or the specialty was not listed.

Shau-Jin and I wanted desperately to lift Iris’s spirits. We were alone in this struggle, because Iris did not want us to disclose her condition to anyone outside of her very closest family members: Brett, his parents, her parents, and her brother. We respected Iris’s wishes. We did not dare to ask other friends of ours or hers for help or advice, for fear that she would think we’d betrayed her, which would mean we would lose her trust in us.

Almost every day, we asked Iris to take a walk with us on the levee in the back of our housing complex. We knew that the exercise was good for her, and we hoped the walking outside in the sunshine would dispel her depressive thoughts.

On Tuesday, October 5, it was partly cloudy, a typical northern California autumn day. I could not sleep the night before. Christopher was going back to Illinois with Luann and Ken that coming Saturday, only four days away. The thought haunted me. We went to Iris’s house that afternoon and asked her to take a walk with us. For a change, instead of walking on the levee near our house, Shau-Jin suggested that we go to Hakone Garden, a Japanese garden, located in the Saratoga Mountains, a twenty-minute drive from our home.

When we arrived at Hakone Garden, which was up on a hill, there was not a single person in the garden, and the surrounding area was very tranquil and peaceful. We passed a small arched wooden bridge and walked up the path leading to a bamboo garden. The silence gave me an unspoken anxiety. Finally, we reached a small resting place where we could sit down. It was a wisteria vine-covered shelter surrounded by oaks and pines. It was unbelievably quiet; I could only hear the wind as it blew through the woods and the rustling sound of leaves. Suddenly, Iris said to us, “They tried to recruit me.”

“Who?” Shau-Jin asked, surprised.

Iris sat down on the wooden bench, her body against a vine-covered post.

“During the book tour. There was a person who came up and talked to me in a threatening tone, ‘You will be safer to join us.’”

“What did you say to this person?” Shau-Jin asked.

“I was scared and did not know what to do, so I just ran away and did not say a word,” Iris replied. “Dad, do you think it’s safer to join an organization or not to join? I’m worried about the safety of our family.”

“Iris, you are fine.” Shau-Jin tried to calm her down. “In my opinion, not to join any organization was the safest way. You see, if you want to maintain the freedom of speech, stay where you are now, an independent writer and author. That is the best.”

Shau-Jin continued, “You may join an organization if you want to, but not because someone is threatening you to do so.”

Then I also told Iris that that was why Shau-Jin and I liked to work in an academic institution. We could have the freedom to voice our opinions at any time. We also assured her that she had done nothing wrong, and that everything would be all right. She was safe with us.

We spent about an hour discussing the issue. It seemed Iris did not feel she’d handled the situation well; said she should not have just run away from that person. I could see she was not convinced about what we told her. This was the second time she had mentioned this incident to us. The first time was right after she’d come back from the extended five-week-long book tour in April and May. She wanted us to keep it confidential.

In that garden on that day, she reiterated her fear that someone was trying to harm her and her immediate family. Now the sun peeked out of the clouds and the autumn colors of trees were so bright that it hurt my eyes. The seeming tranquility of the garden could not give me any peace. My heart was heavier than before we’d come.

It seemed that the drugs Iris was taking were not helping her at all. I started wondering about the side effects of the drugs. I had read the warnings of those medicines in fine print, stating that SSRIs such as Celexa could have a suicidal risk in children and adolescents, but Iris was thirty-six years old. At the time, I did not realize that SSRIs could induce suicide ideation and behavior in adults too. Nevertheless, the warning about suicide gave me an eerie feeling.

The doctor in Louisville had described Iris’s breakdown as a brief reactive psychosis. He also added that it could be a possible bipolar disorder onset. But Iris had no history of bipolar disorder. I had ordered a number of books on the topic and had started to read them. She did not have many of the symptoms of bipolar disorder. She had anxieties and worries about Christopher, which was natural for a mother.

In my reading research about mental illness, one book specifically mentioned that a mood stabilizer such as lithium or Depakote should be added and taken together with antidepressants. I had wondered why the doctor had not prescribed a mood stabilizer for Iris when she was taking Celexa. Several days before Iris’s suicide, the last doctor she saw finally did prescribe Depakote in addition to Celexa, but it was too late.

Because Iris did not want us to disclose her condition to our relatives and friends, I began actively looking into the national and local support groups for mental illness. I immediately joined the local chapter of NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) of Santa Clara County. I also learned that there was a local support group for bipolar disorder that met regularly at the Stanford Psychology Department building. Even though I did not believe Iris was so-called “bipolar,” I was eager to learn what bipolar disorder was and how it could be treated and cured, as I did not want to rule out any possibility of helping her.

I told Iris about the support group with high hopes and asked her to come to the meeting with me. At first she refused, but after much urging she finally agreed. That was on Wednesday, October 6. We drove to Palo Alto and found the Stanford Psychology building in front of the fashionable Stanford Shopping Center. It turned out the group was a self-help organization, formed entirely of bipolar patients, and had nothing to do with Stanford University or its clinic. The organization borrowed the room from Stanford. The only connection to Stanford was the organizer, who was being treated by the famous bipolar expert at Stanford, the psychiatrist who had been recommended by the doctor in Louisville.

It was not a pleasant experience. First of all, the organizer and another co-organizer described that they both had bipolar disorder. They were being treated with numerous psychiatric drugs, a total of six or seven at a time, and finally they’d had to stop all medication “cold-turkey” in a hospital under supervision and start all over again. This was definitely sending a chill down our spines. Then the other patients, one by one, described their symptoms and the drugs they were taking. Essentially they were comparing notes, but they were prohibited from quoting or commenting on their doctors. My original intention in going to this meeting was to get a possible idea of how to cope with Iris’s depression. But what we got were horror stories from each patient. It seemed that every one of them took several different drugs simultaneously on a trial basis, and the conclusion was that none of them worked very well. It was a totally disappointing meeting.

At the meeting, even though Iris was depressed, she was the most alert among all the people in the room, and she asked a lot of very logical questions. When we came out from the meeting, Iris told me that she felt bad that all of the people there were like “zombies,” and she was appalled to learn that a doctor would prescribe so many drugs which did not help them in any concrete way. She vowed to me on the way to the parking lot that she would never come to this kind of group meeting again and she was going to stop taking her medication from that moment on.

I was very much regretting taking her to this support group meeting, and the result was completely the opposite of what I had anticipated. That night, I was very agitated and depressed myself. I felt a melting-down sensation from my shoulders on down, and I could barely breathe. I thought maybe I was in the throes of an anxiety attack. I felt fearful and hopeless because I couldn’t help Iris.

Iris tried to spend as much time as possible with Christopher because he would be leaving for Illinois soon. She pushed him in the stroller and walked with us on the levee. I could see that her heart was struggling with so much emotion.

On Saturday, October 9, we got up at 5
A.M
. and went to see Christopher off for the early flight to Illinois. The taxi van was waiting in front of their house. It was still dark. Christopher was pulled out of his warm bed and was half awake and did not know what was going to happen. Iris got up early and stood there watching as Brett moved suitcase after suitcase and handed them to the taxi driver to load into the van. Luann and Ken packed most of Christopher’s clothes, toys, books, his favorite blanket, and so forth in several big bags. The luggage completely filled the back part of the van. Iris stood there without any expression. She seemed to be trying to insulate herself from the sorrow of the scene. Finally, after Brett put Christopher in the car seat in the back with Luann, he got into the front seat next to the driver. Iris walked around the van to the other side where Christopher was sitting. She gave Christopher a big hug and then she gently touched his face with her soft hands. She stroked his face up and down a few times. She did not cry; neither did Christopher. Finally, the car engine started and the van disappeared in the dark morning mist.

We returned home and tried to get some sleep, but I could not. I went to see Iris in her house. With all the people suddenly gone, she was the only one in the house, and I felt I needed to be with her.