The Hippocratic Joke, er, Oath

Science is a powerful persuader, asserting that people are innately good. I once believed wholeheartedly in humanity’s goodness, convinced that people were born good and stayed that way—unless something so terrible happened that they were left with no choice but to turn bad.

The Hippocratic Oath is one of history’s oldest recorded documents, a solemn vow that obliges physicians to prioritize their patients’ welfare above all else. It honors the practice of medicine, emphasizing the duty to act in the patient’s best interest and to avoid causing harm, including the rejection of unnecessary treatments driven by profit.

Understanding the power the Hippocratic Oath holds, being let down by it feels like discovering there’s no such thing as Santa—or at least, that Santa doesn’t come for everyone. Many would argue with me or demand proof, but proving my point is actually quite simple.

In late spring of 1991, the company I worked for sent me to complete a drug screen. This wasn’t an unusual request for an employer, so another employee and I headed to the designated office for our urinalysis. Naturally, I was excited—just like anyone with nothing to hide would be! Not only did I get to leave work on the clock, but I could take my time getting back and even grab a decent lunch. Who wouldn’t want that?

The medical office was unfamiliar to me, as was the physician. After the initial test, I was a bit surprised when Dr. Edwards called me in for additional questions. She took notes as I answered, asking what I did for work and a series of other questions I found unusual. Then she asked how I felt. The answer that came to mind was, “Hungry!” It was nearly 2:30, and I hadn’t eaten yet, but I held back and replied with a bland, “Okay.”

The doctor’s eyes widened in disbelief, as if I’d just sworn at her. “You’re just okay?” she gasped. Apparently, I’d given the wrong answer. I’d forgotten my tap shoes; maybe she was expecting the whole song and dance. Her reaction left me momentarily caught off guard.

“You seem depressed to me,” she said, scratching out a few lines on a slip of paper before tearing it off and handing it to me, even though she’d only just met me and had nothing to compare against.

“Prozac? What’s that?” I asked, scrunching up my face at the unfamiliar name.

She quickly explained it was something that would help me feel better. I’d already been through a phase of youthful experimental drugs, and none of it ever made me feel any better. But this was a doctor—a person who’d gone to school for years. Surely, she knew more about it than I did.

After about two weeks on the prescribed dose, I got a check-in call from her nurse, asking how I was doing. “Fine,” I replied, making sure not to give them the same “okay” answer as last time.

The nurse asked if I felt any different, and I told her I felt exactly the same.

BUZZ! Wrong answer!

My prescription was doubled. Now, instead of one pill each morning, I was instructed to take one after breakfast and another after dinner. So that’s what I did. But a week later, when they called back, I still felt no different. Another dose was added, making it a triple daily routine. The Prozac eventually kicked in while I was on the job, working around machinery that pressed ceramic tubes in a high-PSI autoclave—a device that uses intense water pressure to mold tubes for underground pipes. This equipment could be dangerous for anyone under the influence of any drug, prescribed or not, and it was making me drowsy enough to start nodding off at work.

The solution? I was instructed to take all three pills at bedtime, after dinner. Within a month of starting the medication, I had drifted into full “zombie mode.” While I believe I could still make rational decisions, my ability to emotionally react to anything had vanished. I no longer got upset or angry, but I also didn’t smile or feel any desire for intimacy. I felt like a life-sized cardboard cutout, becoming more blank and hollow with each passing day. In a word, one might describe me as quietly miserable. Sorry, two words.

When I explained this at my next doctor’s visit, I was told that the drug was finally working and that my body just needed time to adjust. I should give it a couple more weeks, they said. I was sent to the front desk to schedule another appointment, which I did—but never got to attend.

My dad and little brother were heading up to Strawberry Reservoir in Utah, and when they paused to ask if I wanted to join, I figured a change of scenery might do me some good. Hoping it’d lift my spirits, I grabbed a super cute leather bikini, tossed it on under a shirt and shorts, and we piled into my dad’s pickup. This was before cell phones, so when his truck gave us trouble along the way, we had no choice but to walk the rest of the way—just past the famous Timpanogos Cave.

When we hiked up, my dad gave his phone number to another fisherman who’d been camping there, asking him to call my stepmom when he returned home. With that settled, my dad and brother went off to fish, and I stripped down to my bikini, ready to soak up the sun. Determined to get a wicked tan, I stretched out, figuring that up in the mountains, closer to the sun, was the perfect spot to do it.

As morning turned into late afternoon, we realized that the message failed its mark. My kid brother and I hiked back down the mountain to the cave’s visitor center and called my parents’ home phone to no avail. Undecided if my stepmom was on her way or out shopping, I called my friend Brian. He came up and got us in his little pickup. I sat shotgun and my dad and bro hopped in the back. When we got back to my parents’ house, my world didn’t only change, it turned inside out!

The contrast between the sun outside and the shadows on the other side of the front door caused an odd and unwelcome feeling of disorientation. My balance was not only compromised, it was as if I was making my way through one of those spinning tunnels in the funhouse; I was pulled to the right and left. During the identical time, the living room had some surety of effect as if I was peering through a kaleidoscope. Six or eight duplications of the same object were spinning in front of my eyes no matter which way I turned or how hard I blinked. Nothing could change it. I ran down the hallway experiencing the same dilemma, bouncing back and forth, except now I was screaming as loud as I could and crouching over with my hands over my ears. It wouldn’t stop. It couldn’t stop. And no one knew what to do—so, they waited.

Most of what happened directly after, I have no clue. I can remember a few things such as taking a shower and not being able to determine the direction of hot and cold were throughout the shower. Then, when I got out, my hair still maintained the suds I’d forgotten to rinse. Sometimes it would be shampoo and other times, bubble bath. My memory was extremely short and confused.

I had my father drive me to work, because I couldn’t drive. (I still have no idea what happened to my vehicle.) But on the third time, my supervisor packed me on the back of his motorcycle and took me home. He told my father that under no circumstances could I return without a note from my doctor stating I was safe to be around machinery. There was no such doctor that would declare me competent for that job. I had what is called anterograde and retrograde amnesia via dissociative amnesia. This means that in addition to being unable to recall things from my past, I also could not remember anything new. When my friends called, you may imagine with this new situation just how short those calls were with me. 

Additionally, I’d been attending law school. My dad would take me and drop me off. At first, I determined I would write everything down and then study when I got home, but I couldn’t write fast enough. Since that didn’t work, someone suggested I record it and play it back, taking notes to memorize. That didn’t work either. Being a perfectionist, I became extremely angry and hateful. What had I done to deserve this? Wasn’t I a good person?

Still, in writing this now, recanting one year that I counted on a charity providing my children’s Christmas that never arrived, I remember my five-year-old crying, “What did I do wrong? I was good!” Sometimes, bad things happen to good people, but Fate wasn’t even close to being finished.

Over the course of the next thirty-two years, I’ve learned a lot about trusting others. Being vulnerable with the body of an exotic dancer and the mind of a three-year-old, with no one to watch out for my best interest, throws one to the wolves—and the wolves aren’t going to sniff a fresh body and walk away, are they? At least not any wolves I met.

I worked hard to revive my brain and its functionality. I kept going back to school, piling up fees over $140,000, trying to become someone I wasn’t—someone who didn’t have to rely on others for rides to the store, to get the mail, for just about everything. If I’d thought of it, I would’ve made a financial investment in Post-it Notes, considering how many I went through; I probably paid someone’s salary for a year or two with all my purchases. And I couldn’t set dates or make plans without immediately forgetting. I was always jealous of Guy Pearce in Memento because his system actually worked for him—though I still wonder how he managed to remember where his tattoos were. But he hadn’t been on an experimental drug, prescribed by a careless physician, with no warning about staying out of the sun.

What did I do to support myself? I returned to something I used to do, brainless work, but it paid the bills. I went back to stripping full-time. From there, I became an OTR driver with a guy I had to marry to work with, which was the law at the time. I moved from there to an independent dump truck and pup driver, returning to school to try again every five years or so, certain I could do it now.

Then, at thirty-five, I became pregnant. My insecurity had grown with my memory issues, and I feared I wasn’t a good mom. I did my absolute best, fighting the urge not to cling too tightly to my precious baby, overwhelmed by the love I finally had. My baby adored me in a way his father never did. His father didn’t do everything he could to end the pregnancy, but he tried like hell to convince me to. After that, I didn’t date for four years.

When I finally started dating again, the new guy said he wanted to get married and have a baby, so I shouldn’t stay on birth control. Being the seemingly mindless, sexy imbecile I was, I stopped. When I got pregnant and found out it was a girl, he decided an abortion was necessary. He was a hockey coach and insisted on having a boy. When I refused, I was left alone with a second child. But before she could be born, there was something else I needed to do.

As a school bus driver attending school to become a teacher this time, I was struck by an oncoming truck that ran a red light and hit me broadside in my last trimester. The impact compromised my spine. Multiple doctors told me I’d need an expensive surgery—over $150,000—every decade if I wanted to keep walking. Most days, I couldn’t sit upright, making it difficult to care for two small children, and I’d wet my pants just trying to rise from bed in the morning. Even shopping became nearly impossible; my four-year-old had to grab and carry the gallons of milk. There were days that I couldn’t even make it to the car.

One night, I shifted in my sleep and woke up paralyzed when something in my back gave way. I missed out on the simple joys of playing with my kids and even carrying them. By consistently driving forward and refusing to give in, I can walk again. It’s still painful, but it certainly beats where I was.

Now, my twenty-two-year-old is planning a wedding, and my eighteen-year-old is graduating from the Marine Corps, where she’ll serve as a cryptolinguistic translator. Amid the pressure of living on my own, the bittersweet feeling of watching my children move on, the exhilaration of finally graduating from college, and countless hypnotic sessions, I managed to regain my memory—after thirty-two years. It was on April Fool’s Day. 

This is the short version of my life and why I see the Hippocratic Oath as a distant dream, perhaps once imagined by someone who truly believed that a physician, in pausing to recite its promise, would reject payoffs and ignore opportunities for profit. In reality, when new drugs hit the market, doctors find themselves with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar, seeking out prime targets—like a young, healthy woman who’s single, childless, a perfect specimen. One who’ll trust anyone.

Science is a powerful persuader. And while it claims that people are innately good, I disagree. I once believed in the goodness of mankind, but now I’d argue against it. In fact, the final statement of the Hippocratic Oath reads, “To the extent that I live by these precepts, I shall be a worthy physician.”

Dr. Susan Edwards abandons her patients, just like so many others who call themselves physicians. She denies any responsibility for my condition, dismissing any possibility that I could participate in my own healing. The medical system has taught me a valuable lesson: if you want something done right, you’d better damn well do it yourself, rather than trusting a salesman—er, uh, I mean, doctor.