The Gatekeeper

Part III Love Child Chapter 9

AS THE LEAD SINGER for a successful rock band, Kurt had finally become the kind of man his misogynist stepfather could respect. To please him, Kurt became a hard-singing, hard-drinking, hard-talking, hard-living, man's man. A childhood obsession had finally been achieved, but a deep-seated problem festered in the far reaches of Kurt's malignant mind. 

There was a side to Kurt that he had to repress. He couldn't allow his sensitive, caring, intelligent interior nature to express itself. The violent emotions connected with Lauren's psychological struggle for survival were more than his fragile fractured psyche could handle. 

I suppose all this explains why Kurt was encouraging me to get closer to his troubled lover. During the next few weeks Lauren's panic attacks became more frequent and more serious.

She fixated on Kurt as a source of control over the attacks, and obsessively needed to be able to contact him if an attack began. He was becoming more and more exasperated with the pressure of such a 24-7 responsibility. On a Saturday afternoon I received a frantic call from one of Lauren’s girlfriends who was staying with her.

"Erik, thank God I found you. You've got to come over here and stay with Lauren. She's been having those attacks on and off all morning.”

"I understand . . . I'll be right there, but tell me, what have the attacks been like?" I questioned, my heart racing as I spoke the words.

"She's been screaming, hyperventilating, and choking during the episodes that have lasted close to twenty minutes. Listen, you've got to get over here. I have to get home. My children are alone."

 When I arrived the worst was over, but Lauren was still shaken by the most recent episode. She attempted to contact her therapist. He failed to respond for over an hour, then finally called.

"Yes, this is her doctor. What seems to be the problem with Lauren?"

"She's been having a series of panic attacks all morning. Is there anything you can do for her?" I begged.

"Over the phone; not really, just tell her to breath into a paper bag and take her to an emergency room if the attacks become unbearable," were his curt suggestions.

Lauren felt like she was dying and the doctor told her to breath into a paper bag. As an empathetic observer I couldn't help but think that there must be a better way to deal with such an obviously serious medical crisis.

LAUREN’S STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL began many years ago, but intensified as she began to come to grips with the powerful forces of psychic destruction lurking beneath her otherwise calm and self-assured exterior. 

That last nasty panic attack led to her first hospitalization while in the States. I was by her side every day for a month as doctors searched for a drug solution to her deep-seated psychological carcinoma.  I was forced to stand by and watch as these doctors, the so-called experts, subjected her innocent and pristine body to an ever-increasing list of powerful and potentially toxic medications. 

They began her therapy with the usual battery of psychotropics indicated for her diagnosed condition. In her case they included Xanax, to control the panic attacks, and various painkillers to deal with the migraines which still plagued her. 

As they probed her mind with their fancy pharmaceutical fingers, Lauren's collective of alters fought back to keep control. Somehow she defeated the strongest psychotropic concoctions they came up with.

When this initial regime failed to control her symptoms, what did they do, of course they simply upped the dose. Within a few weeks she was on experimental levels of Xanax and was also put on addictive narcotics. This apparent immunity to medication would later be recognized as an attending symptom of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD).