I took sleeping pills to escape ‘half-life' after losing use of my legs… but now I've found a reason to live
JULIE BURCHILL I took sleeping pills to escape 'half-life' after losing use of my legs… but now I've found a reason to live
WAKING up in Brighton's Royal Sussex County Hospital emergency room feeling fresh as a daisy after swallowing countless sleeping pills a few hours earlier, a tiny part of me couldn't help reflecting on my truly epic capacity for drugs.
I gave up cocaine a decade ago, but for 30 years I took enough of the stuff to stun the entire Colombian armed forces. I suppose it's just one of those things that never leaves you - like riding a bike, or herpes.
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Julie Burchill, pictured with friend Yaul Breuer, opens up about her suicide bid after a slew of health problems left her feeling like a 'halfling'
Credit: Supplied
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Julie as a writer in the mid-Eighties, when she had packed schedule
Credit: Getty
How did I get here? By ambulance, sirens blaring. But also because I'd been taken to this very hospital five months earlier on a night in December when I could no longer walk, only crawl, due to a massive spinal abscess which I had ignored the symptoms of for months.
I would leave here on a stretcher, bound for rehab, with very little chance of ever walking again.
Once a tall, swaggering show-off, I feel like a 'Halfling'- only half a person.
People address my husband of 30 years, Daniel, 53, not me; talk about being cut down to size. That this has happened to tall, swaggering, swashbuckling me in particular is a delicious irony; I often 'looked down' on people and used to occasionally pat short friends on the head. It does seem like some sort of lesson.
'Would you like to talk to one of our mental health team?' a young woman at the hospital asked me.
'Will it make me walk again?' I snapped ungraciously.
By trying to end my life - after an extremely good innings, having had enough fun, love and money to fill nine lifetimes - I was reacting in a very straightforward, un-mental way to having my capacity to be a fully-realised human being snatched away from me at the age of 65.
It's like grieving the death of my old self the way one would grieve the loss of a loved one - and my goodness, I loved myself very much indeed - and am moving in a very predictable way through the fabled Seven Stages of Grief. I've done Shock, Denial, Anger, Bargaining and Depression.
When I took those sleeping pills in May - a month's supply handed over in all innocence by the rehabilitation centre when they discharged me on the last day of April - I sincerely wanted to be done with my half-life, simply because I had loved my life as a flawed, fallible, whole human so very much.
I didn't recognise myself; I'd aged decades in months. It was as if while I'd kept moving, I kept age at bay.
Bring on ageing
After five months in hospital beds Mother Nature, of whom I had once written so blithely 'One of the best things about being a feminist is showing that bitch Mother Nature who's boss', had doled out a proper punishment-beating.
I was suffering from extreme 'Telogen Effluvium' - hair loss which can follow the shock to the body caused by severe physical injury.
My splendid rack has shrivelled and shrunk; my stomach is scored and seamed in the way which often bears witness to rapid weight loss; my once-perky bum resembles a beach ball with a slow puncture. I now wear a catheter - Caterina, or Catty for short who is the bane of my life - and will likely do so forever. It's the first thing I'm aware of when I wake up and the last thing I'm aware of before I fall, fitfully, asleep.
My legs, once lovely, are like an old man's, white and wasted; my feet, always ugly, are now less 'feet' than simply where my legs end.
On the rehab ward, my 'home' from January until May, I was the only 'Spinal' - the other ladies had all had strokes.
Every day our loved ones came in to try to talk us back to being the people we had been before.
For the first three months I had to be 'hoisted' everywhere due to the severity of my injury. This included from bed to commode, where it transpired that I could 'perform' best when hanging in the air like a filthy piñata, throwing out unwanted gifts.
We mostly wore nappies, which the nurses kindly referred to as 'pads' to save our dignity.
I refused to be co-opted into this and would announce clearly: 'I'm so sorry, but my nappy needs changing.'
'PROBLEM DRINKER'
The staff were lovely, but a couple could be condescending: 'Shall we pop a cardi on you and sit you in the fresh air?' one youngster suggested.
I don't think I've ever been so insulted, not even when some magazine published a photo of Jabba the Hutt and said it was me.
I was going to draw myself up to my full height (3ft now I'm on wheels) and declare in a Lady Bracknell/Duchess of Downton manner: 'CARDI? What is this CARDI? I AM JULIE BURCHILL - I do not wear a CARDI!'
Until rehab, I hadn't realised I was a 'problem drinker' as my life was so industrious and social. I was up writing by 5, in the charity shop by 9, lunching by 12, back to work writing in the afternoon most days, very fond of early nights.
Most of my adult life, I was anticipating, having or recovering from sex; now I'm anticipating, having or recovering from constipation.
But when I got taken into hospital for my abscess and there wasn't even a drop of rubbing alcohol to be quaffed, all became clear.
Reading from my consultant's notes I see that my 'recovery was complicated by hallucination/delirium, secondary to alcohol withdrawal.' I thought that the doctors were trying to kill me.
But it wasn't despair or anything dramatic that drove me to my suicide bid; it was impatience. EVERYTHING TAKES SO LONG!
Once, I was notorious for being a fast woman, hasty even, always eager to move on to the next bar, pub, club or restaurant.
Now everything takes forever. Keeping clean's the worst thing; I'm NOT dirty, but I feel dirty - and not in a good way. For most of my adult life - ever since I was 17 - I was either anticipating, having or recovering from sex. Now I'm either anticipating, having or recovering from constipation - the same with UTIs.
Some of my disabled friends suggested that I go on the Happy Pills.
But I'm reluctant to do so - while totally getting why they do - if I can possibly avoid it, as I'm wary that they'll make me a less good writer.
'Ready to go home?' asked my husband, 24 hours after my suicide attempt.
I nodded, too sad to speak as I slithered from gurney to wheelchair.
A month on from my little 'hiccup', it looks like I've moved onto Acceptance & Hope (Stage 6) and Processing (Stage 7).
When I was first told last Christmas I'd be dependent on a wheelchair (who I have named Wendy) I was naturally dismayed to the point of self-dispatching, but over the past six months I've become dependent on Wendy and to some degree she's helped me become independent.
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Julie, pictured with her friends, may need to be in a wheelchair for ever
Credit: Supplied
I get excited about everything: 'LET ME PUSH THE BUTTON!' I yell as we approach street crossings.
I can hop from wheelchair to toilet by myself; I can wash most of myself, feed and clothe myself. I can't get into the bath, and thus I need my husband's help in my bathing chair (very Regency) every few days - but we tend to have a laugh while doing this. I don't have a *carer* - unless you count him.
People sometimes drink to celebrate the moment, as I did in my previous incarnation; people drink to escape from themselves, as I do now. Sometimes I simply cannot stand the slowness of my life; only alcohol takes me out of my head.
I'd be an idiot to say that what happened to my spine and put me in a wheelchair - probably for life - has left me unharmed.
'MISS MY OLD LIFE'
But I don't feel dead because my brain still works; I can earn my living from my wheelchair and don't plan to give up until I lose my mind or drop off my perch.
The difference is that I go in a wheelchair rather than a taxi to lunch.
When I see in peoples eyes an almost parasexual desire to pity me, I know how they must have envied me before, and how they're really quite enjoying this happening to me.
How to get help
EVERY 90 minutes in the UK a life is lost to suicide
It doesn't discriminate, touching the lives of people in every corner of society – from the homeless and unemployed to builders and doctors, reality stars and footballers.
It's the biggest killer of people under the age of 35, more deadly than cancer and car crashes.
And men are three times more likely to take their own life than women.
Yet it's rarely spoken of, a taboo that threatens to continue its deadly rampage unless we all stop and take notice, now.
If you, or anyone you know, needs help dealing with mental health problems, the following organisations provide support: CALM, www.thecalmzone.net, 0800 585 858
Heads Together,www.headstogether.org.uk
HUMEN www.wearehumen.org
Mind, www.mind.org.uk, 0300 123 3393
Papyrus, www.papyrus-uk.org, 0800 068 41 41
Samaritans,www.samaritans.org, 116 123
I miss my old life terribly; I hate the modern habit of calling a disability a 'superpower' but I am by nature a perky person and I can't pretend to experience a level of tragedy I don't feel.
Even now, writing from my room in the hospital where it all started in December, I try to find the bright side.
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I miss my old life terribly, admits Julie
Credit: Rex
I'm back here because I have a grade 3 pressure sore which can take months to heal but for the first time, I've got my own room.
I don't feel like an Undead - neither a zombie nor a vampire. I define myself as a writer and losing the use of my legs hasn't affected my ability in any way whatsoever.
I've been paying tax since I was 17 and I plan to keep working until I drop dead, (and if my sore turns into a grade 4 I'm probably not long for this world) something many thousands of able-bodied people certainly can't say.
I'm hoping that the theory of bouncing back to baseline happiness holds true for me; research indicates that miseries who win the lottery soon go back to being miseries while cheery types who lose the use of their legs go back to being cheery.
I feel like a 'Halfling' as I'm half the height I was - but I don't feel like a Poor Old Thing.
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