When I was waiting at home to have a visit from Dr Longton, my good friend Jimmy came to see me. He had a way of understanding what I was going though, I think because his step-dad had mental illness and was in hospital for a long time, he used to think he was Napoleon or Julias Cesear. Jimmy knew that a psychiatrist was coming later, so he said that the next person who came to the house, I could trust. He wrote this down on a piece of paper and after he had left, I sat holding the piece of paper and occasionally looking at it again for reassurance.
Dr Longton was the next person to come, so when he said that I should go into hospital, I immediately agreed. Once I was at the hospital though, I did not see Dr Longton again for several days, and I was beginning to wonder if I was at the right place. The fact that I was given a leaflet about the hospital and a map of a village near Birmingham which had the same name as the village where I was, and the pillow cases had "Doncaster Royal Infirmary" stamped on them, made me even more worried. I did see him eventually and he put me on various drugs.
After I had been at the hospital for a couple of weeks, one of the nurses said that Dr Longton wanted to see me in the main building. She did not say what it was about, but she took me there. I opened the door to see that Dr Longton was in a lecture theatre, with an audience of medical students. Straight away I felt awkward because I was so scruffily dressed and wearing slippers, while these people were all smartly dressed. Dr Longton beckoned me to sit next to him, and he asked me some questions, to which I gave suitably psychotic answers. I think the plan was to introduce me as an interesting case, show how mad I was, treat me with X and Y medication, and then invite me back some weeks later when I would be shown to have been "cured" or at least improved.
I was mortified to have been used and scrutinised in this way. I felt like the elephant man. I had not been asked for my permission to take part in any sort of study, and I did not like it at all. When I was summoned again, I refused to go, which I hope messed up his stupid little display.
Later on I needed Dr Longton's help when Iain, Callum and I were trying to get rehoused. We had moved from my first flat to a bigger, ground-floor one, but it was in a rough area and we kept getting burgled and the communal gardens and stairwells were occupied by gangs of teenage drinkers who were quite menacing. Dr Longton wrote to our housing association saying that the environment we were living in was making me ill, and, as a result, we were classed as "category A" to be moved to a house. We were offered a really lovely old 2-bedroomed house with a huge garden, in a very quiet area, and we jumped at the chance to move. A few years later though, when I was telling Dr Longton, thinking he could only have a positive reaction, that I had been going to Mass and was enjoying the social side of being part of a Church, he actually said, "If I'd have known you were a Catholic, I would never have helped you". When I filled out my admissions form when I was first admitted to hospital, I somehow felt that I should not mention the fact that I had been raised a Catholic, so I put "no religion" as my reply to that question. I have not felt comfortable about practising my religion ever since, and I no longer go to Mass. It is unbeleivable that someone who is in such a position of power over the lives of so many people, should be prejudiced against any particular group, be it Catholics or black people or whatever. Of course, he said this to me when we were alone, knowing full well that if I told anyone I would not be believed.
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