The body electric

After I have scrawled my name under his, I hand the paper to my ex-husband who does the same. Then we walk alongside the bed that is being wheeled with effort by two medical students into a large, bright theater. They talk excitedly as we walk: This is the first time they will observe an actual ECT treatment.

Just then, the female student glances in our direction. Her face softens. "We'll take good care of him," she says.

And I nod blindly, through stupid, angry tears.

Then my former husband and I stand against a wall while they coax our son onto a fancier gurney, one with long straps that they pull out to their full length and buckle snugly around him. We watch the anesthesiologist lean over his frozen form and slip a needle into his arm. And I remember the day of his tonsillectomy, 13 years ago, when we -- still hopeful young parents -- held him down, our hands meeting on his Winnie the Pooh gown, while someone lowered a rubber mask over his small face.

Suddenly, there is a problem. "They don't belong in here!" a voice says, and we are hustled out, into a small waiting room where I sit uncomfortably across from the man to whom I was married for 14 years. "Don't worry, it'll be all right," he says, in lieu of touching me. And again, I nod.

Twenty minutes later, the male medical student comes out to talk to us.

"Your son is fine, everything went well," he says in a bright voice. "And you should know, we got a really good seizure using the very lowest level of current."

"Is that better?" I ask. "What does that mean? Is less current safer, or a sign that he's closer to the surface than we think?"

The boy's eyes cloud and he looks suddenly bewildered. He pauses, then says, "Honestly, ma'am, I have no idea."

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By the early 1940s, electrical current had replaced chemical agents to become the standard method for convulsive therapy. Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, the Italian researchers who developed the protocol for "electroshock" by experimenting on animals, were nominated for (but did not receive) a Nobel Prize in medicine.

But ECT's popularity plummeted briefly in the 1960s when drugs such as imipramine and chlorpromazine were introduced and deemed preferable by most doctors. And it dropped off again in the mid-'70s, when the film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" depicted electroshock as medicalized torture, used by venal healthcare workers to keep mental patients in line. Despite a series of movies and television shows that vilified the therapy -- "Law and Order" even did an episode about ECT, called "Cruel and Unusual" -- rates crept back up over the next several decades, mostly for patients with drug-resistant forms of mental illness. And by the mid-'90s (the most recent period from which statistics are available), about 100,000 people in the U.S. were being treated annually with ECT.

"One of the major reasons ECT is so controversial is because of the way it's been portrayed in the media," says Dr. Teresa Rummans, professor of psychiatry and the former medical director for ECT at Mayo Clinic. "Our challenge is to get people to consider this therapy as an option, despite the negative things they've seen in the movies. It's not a panacea. But for certain people who can't be helped any other way, it can be life changing, or life saving."

Today, even anti-ECT activists admit the therapy sometimes works in cases where nothing else has. But there is a debate raging about whether the side effects of ECT -- including memory loss and confusion -- are temporary or, in the language of the medical establishment, "persistent." Earlier this year, Harold Sackeim -- a professor of psychiatry and radiology at Columbia University -- published the results of a 25-year study in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, confirming that ECT can cause permanent memory loss.

We didn't turn to this treatment until it was the only option left and our son was so lost, overwhelmed and deluded that his quality of life was entirely gone. I remind myself of this. I've read and reread the quote from novelist William Styron -- author of the visceral depression memoir "Darkness Visible" -- after he underwent ECT in 2000: "I'm writing. I don't sense any memory loss whatsoever ... I would say that my memory is somewhat better than it might have been a year ago." I remind myself that today electroconvulsive therapy is practiced not only by the Mayo Clinic but also by neurologists and psychiatrists in nearly every well-respected academic and teaching hospital in the country.

Still, I pray that this is not a terrible, irreversible mistake.

After his first treatment, my son is wheeled back to his room. I check him over, anticipating strap marks from where he strained upward during the convulsion, or burn marks on his temples. All I find is a white bandage on the crook of his arm, from where the IV needle went in. He sleeps the rest of the afternoon. When he awakens, he appears confused, but he is able to drink some water. The nurse asks him if he has a headache; he thinks for a few moments then signals "No."

Drained, my ex and I drive back to Minneapolis together. We've told no one what we'd gone to Rochester to do, in fear that some distant relative with a Scientology bent might file an injunction to stop us. Now, the weight of this sits between us and we barely speak.

Eighteen hours later, my husband drives me back to Rochester. It is 10 a.m. on a Saturday. We walk onto the unit and while we are being checked for contraband (anything with a blade, a sharp edge, or a cord), my son ambles out of his room and smiles at us. He raises a hand. "Hey, good to see ya," he says, and walks -- not quickly, but purposefully -- into the lounge where three other patients are sitting in front of the TV. "What are you watching?" we hear him ask one of the others.

My husband turns to me, eyes freakishly wide. "Holy cow," he says, grabbing my hand. "Have you ever seen him move like that?"

And, of course, I have. But it was long ago: before I met this man, before my son became depressed and discouraged, before the catatonia set in.

Later that day, we play hearts and when my son shoots the moon [taking all the heart tricks, plus the queen of spades; a move that requires careful strategy and a straight face], he gathers up all the cards and crows the single word "Yes!" out loud.

It is an eerie, wonderful sound that doesn't fade for me, even as we are riding home.

Next page: Tics, disordered thoughts and twilight around the edges of his mind