Electro Convulsive Therapy

At the Royal Cornhill Hospital in Aberdeen

Forced ECT with No Warning or Preparation

On the morning of Christmas Eve 2021 I got out of bed, got dressed, and started walking down the corridor to the dining room for breakfast, as usual. I was stopped by a nurse before I got there and told that I wouldn’t be having breakfast because I would be taken for electroconvulsive therapy.

No one told me that this was going to happen and I had not been prepared for it in any way. What happened was among the worst experiences of my life. I will never forgive the bastards who did that to me. There was no one to talk to about it - the consultant had departed for her Christmas holidays and Dr Hannah Badial, who had made the arrangements for it to happen, deliberately avoided me. This goes against all guidelines and is unethical and cruel. I vividly remember the helpless feeling of being pushed in a wheelchair, with my objections and distress being ignored. Then through double doors into a room that looked like the operating theatres that I had seen on TV. I can still remember the canula being pushed into the back of my right hand as I was given my first ever general anaesthetic with no preparation whatsoever. Now that I have seen my notes they confirm my distress and strong objections. How could they do that to a fellow human being, let alone someone with a terminal cancer diagnosis? This was assault and I will hate Dr Hannah Badial for the rest of my life for her callousness and for what she did to me - may she rot in hell.

My notes confirm my objections and distress, but they carried on with the inhumane ‘treatment’. On 28th December they gave me the second ‘treatment’ despite documenting my strong objection and Dr Murdoch’s notes afterwards saying ‘describes reduction in concentration and memory’ !

The third ‘treatment’ was on the 31st December, and again the nurse’s notes record my concern, and the ECT doctor’s notes record ‘Continues to voice objection.’

The notes to the fourth, and what turned out to be the final, session on 4th January 2022, say that I was ‘verbally resisting’ and had a brief period of asystole on the monitor. This is a potentially serious type of cardiac arrest!

The Second Opinion Doctor Lied

When I read my notes I made some disturbing discoveries. Not only did Dr Hannah Badial exaggerate my condition to the point of lying when she completed the form that she sent to the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland, but when I received a copy of the form T3 completed by the second opinion doctor, Dr David Rooke of Stracathro Hospital, after making a subject access request to the Commission, I was appalled. His legal duty was to safeguard my interests by visiting me and making an independent assessment of whether to overrule my objections to ECT. In fact, he never met me or spoke to me but lied on the form authorising the treatment by saying that he had consulted me. My notes record only that he had a Microsoft Teams meeting with Dr Hannah Badial on 21st December.

Dr Hannah Badial’s notes say “Spoke to Dr Rooke DMP who will kindly arrange a TEAMS meeting 2.30pm today to virtually assess. J for T3, staff aware of this.”

So everyone knew what was going to be done to me and the cowardly Dr Hannah Badial deliberately didn’t tell me and arranged a meeting with the second opinion doctor without my presence or knowledge. In my opinion both Dr Badial and Dr Rooke are guilty of serious professional misconduct.

Flashbacks

Around three months after I left hospital, after I had resumed normal life and had tried to forget what had happened to me at the Royal Cornhill Hospital, I began to have flashbacks, triggered initially by hearing a programme about ECT on the car radio. These started to keep me awake at night. I have blood tests and my blood pressure checked every month as part of the cancer treatment and one time last year my blood pressure was so high (over 190 systolic) that the nurse was alarmed and told me to go straight home and contact my GP. I explained to her that I had a flashback of the forced ECT as I was driving to the hospital. I told her what had happened to me in the Royal Cornhill Hospital, which astonished her.

The flashbacks gradually subsided, but occasionally return unexpectedly, including this summer, over three years later. Seeing a photograph of the bruise on President Trump’s hand and speculation about the reason for it on a news site brought me back to the ECT suite and the forced treatment, with a vivid memory of the canula being pushed into the back of my right hand while I lay helpless.