Nothing just is.
Sanele. The official face of happiness. That’s what I used to call myself. 25. Well traveled, degree in Accounting, relatively good job at a top firm, internationally. Single. Living alone. Paying my own bills. I was happy! Or so I thought.
January 2016. I am spending my WHOLE weekend in bed, sleeping. My phone is on silent because it has suddenly become too loud for me. It’s off vibrate because even that vibration sound is annoying to me. Traffic makes me so mad I wish I had a gun to shoot all the annoying drivers. I spend a lot of time crying as soon as I get home from work and when I am bathing some mornings. EVERYTHING feels like such a chore. My body is SO sore no amount of sleep or massages can help.
One day I snap at a friend at work who’s asked for such a small thing. She sits next to me, so I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. I get in there and just cry. NOW I am convinced something is definitely wrong with me. I return to my desk, tell her that I think something is wrong with me and I apologize. The following day I call in sick because I know for sure something is wrong with me, I just don’t know what yet. On my sick day I go to my aunt who is a psychologist and tell her everything that’s been going on with me and all I’ve been feeling. She gently asks me if I know anything about depression. I tell her,” Yes, it’s something that happens to people when something tragic happens to them.” She responds, “ Not quite.” Then she explains what depression is and that day I learn that all I’ve been feeling actually has a name. Depression.
I see a GP who officially diagnoses me with depression and puts me on antidepressants. I’m booked off work A LOT during that time because I am just not coping. The dose of my meds also steadily increases as it’s clear that I am NOT getting any better.
April 30, 2016. I receive an email from my ex-boyfriend with whom I have an agreement, ‘no contact unless the house is on fire’. The email tells me his brother was found dead in his hotel room in South Korea. I cry because, what do you mean Daffy (as we so fondly called him) is dead? As in, he is un-live, his heart has stopped beating. He is dead. I make a last-minute decision to attend the funeral in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe because I need to see for myself that this is not a case of mistaken identity. His body arrives and we have a memorial service. I beg my ex who is now my friend really to come with me to view his brother’s body. It is indeed him in the coffin. I break down. It’s not a dream. This is really happening. Daffy IS dead. Un-alive. Heart not beating. Dead.
I’m back at work on Thursday 12 May and I ask everyone to not ask me anything or say anything to me. I CANNOT talk. I am wearing all black because every color suddenly seems too happy, too bright- stuff I cannot relate to. My involuntary vow of silence carries on for a week. I am working in Finance in a job that is also slowly killing my soul. One woman comes shouting at me asking why her invoice has not been paid. Remember my decision to go for the funeral was a last-minute decision so I did not even get a chance to put an “out-of-office” response on my work email so she is clearly not aware I have not been at work. I process her invoice then I have to go to her office to ask what budget her invoice should go to. I walk into her office. She says something about her invoice before I can speak. I do not even remember what she said. All I remember is me responding, “My brother died”. And then I break down.
She tries to console me but now my whole body is shaking. She goes to call my boss and HR. I am taken to my boss’ office. They ask if there’s anyone who can come and fetch me from work as I am in no state to drive myself home. I give them my boyfriend’s number. He comes from work to take me home. A wonderful lady from HR arranges for a trauma counselor to meet me at home and I’m told to not come in to work the following day.
The trauma counselor shows up the following morning, asks me a couple of questions then tells me I have major depression and need to be hospitalized. She tells me to pack my hospital bag, she will arrange for me to be hospitalized. I need to stay ready so when she has finalized everything, she will call me and tell me what to do. She calls mid-day and tells me to go to Fourways Life hospital and tell the admissions team that I’m Dr Moola’s patient. I do as instructed. My brain is clearly broken at this point so I will do anything anyone with their head together tells me to do.
I get to Fourways Life and wait in bed to meet this man I have never heard of before but apparently will be able to help me. Dr Nai’m Moola. He has to wake me up to speak to me when he arrives and the first thing I tell him is, “I hate my job”. He asks me several questions, then orders blood tests for me and prescribes some meds for me in the meantime. I think it odd that he would need blood tests for a broken brain but like I said, I will do anything anyone with their head together tells me to do.
I spend 7 days at Fourways Life. On the 7th day one nurse finds me sitting up on my bed having breakfast and exclaims that that is her first time seeing my face because I am just ALWAYS sleeping with my head covered by my blankets. I smile politely but say nothing because my mother raised me well. That evening I’m told I am being moved to a mental health facility, Life Riverfield where Dr Moola also practices. An ambulance arrives for me at night. My mother who has been by my bedside from day 1 comes with me. It’s dark and I cannot figure out which direction we are going in. I hate not knowing where I am so that is quite frustrating for me.
I get to the hospital and I’m assigned a temporary room for the night. In my head I think I’m about to spend the next two weeks sleeping, yay me! Wrong. I am expected to be up, showered and having breakfast by 7:30am. Uhm, did this Dr Moola just move me to hell?
We have sessions all day with a lunch break in between and these sessions end between 3 and 3:30pm. We are not allowed to keep our cellphones on us. So, we surrender them to the nurses at 8pm and only get them the next day at 3:30pm.
During the day we have sessions with mental health specialists, psychotherapy with a clinical psychologist and a session with our psychiatrist. Mine is Dr Moola. I go for my first session with him there and he casually asks me, “How’s the heartburn?” Listen, I look around because, yes, I have been battling with this intense heartburn, but I know without a doubt that I have NOT told anyone there about it. So how did HE know?! Is he psychic? What is going on? I ask him how he knew about that. Then he explains to me that when the body is under the kind of stress I’m in it produces a lot of acid so the GP in the facility will put me on antacids. I say thank you low key bewildered by this man’s “psychic abilities”.
I’m always SO anxious when I am late for my appointments with him and I let him know each time how anxious I am. He gently asks me, “Sanele, if you are late. What am I going to do to you?” I tell him nothing I can think of. Maybe he will be mad at me? He says no. Then I learn about challenging my anxiety. That’s what he is teaching me.
He knows it is Daffy’s death that has landed me in hospital. However, he tells me there are other underlying issues that we need to address without invalidating my very real grief. Ah. Okay.
Ten days later I am released. My psychologist aunt comes to fetch me from the hospital, and we have a final session with my psychiatrist before I leave.
I come back every week as an outpatient to see Dr Moola and my clinical psychologist. Life is wild and largely inconvenient. Think of that time you spilled coffee on your white shirt on your way to an interview, the day your mother died before your baby was born, this lockdown that began a week before your vacation? Yea.
8 June 2016 I get a text from my brother letting me know my grandfather has passed away. My mother is an only child and I am her youngest child, so my grandfather really adored me. I’m in the car with my boyfriend’s younger brother when I get the text. We pick up a friend I was living with at the time and we drive to HydePark corner. My friend and I get out of the car while my boyfriend’s brother remains in the car. I tell my friend once we are in the mall that my grandfather passed away. Immediately after saying it out loud I feel like I cannot breathe. We have to walk out of Clicks in case it is the shop without enough oxygen for me. I am not getting any better. People are starring. A kind lady who owns a shop that sells furniture calls us into her shop and lets me lie down on one of the fancy couches on sale and an ambulance is called for me. To this day I am quick to get out of the way for ambulances because of my own experience that day. The ambulance could not arrive fast enough.
The ambulance FINALLY arrives, I am put on oxygen and wheeled into the ambulance. I tell them my doctor is at Fourways Life so that’s where they take me. They take me to the emergency room where it is confirmed it was a really bad panic attack and Dr Moola is advised that his patient is in the ER. He tells me to come back to the hospital the following morning. I go home.
My angel man aka my boyfriend takes me to the hospital in the morning before going to work. We meet with Dr Moola and he explains to both of us that I will be sedated and will only be up on Sunday to help my struggling brain catch a break. Boyfriend kisses me goodbye and I settle into my bed and the first injection comes. I am injected on my spine. This is serious. I’m out until about mid-day Sunday. I am released because Discovery only gives us a 21 day mental health hospital benefit and my good doctor knows if I stay past twelve noon I’ll have to pay for a full day and he knows I cannot afford that because somehow I have managed to tell this man all my secrets.
August 2016. I honestly cannot remember why or how we are here, but I have to go for electroconvulsive therapy. It’s a last resort at this point. I just want to die. I am mad at Dr Moola, my therapist and God for fighting for my life when I do not want it anymore. I sign lots of forms for an ex gratia application for Discovery to cover my ECT sessions as I have used up my mental health benefits but the situation is now dire. Discovery approves 6 sessions.
I get an email within an hour of arriving at my mother’s house in Hukuntsi in Botswana where she is working as a midwife at the time that my sessions have been approved which means I need to come back to Johannesburg. Dr Moola does not conduct the sessions himself but his colleagues do. They explain to my very freaked out and anxious mother about the procedure and what to expect. Newsflash: an ECT wipes out your short-term memory (which is why it is used as a last resort) so they brace my mother for that.
I go through my 6 sessions and slowly but surely start feeling better. September, I resign from work and move in with my father so he can pay our bills. December, I feel well enough to go back to work also I desperately miss having my own money! Dr Moola gives me the green light to return to work. I get a job and start mid-December. In that job I am so drained I eat lunch alone in my car then take a nap for the rest of the hour. For a depression patient, that is a red flag. I book an appointment with Dr Moola and he changes my meds. The good doctor neglects to mention the side effects of transitioning between meds. I get these dizzy spells that have my GP booking me off work thinking it’s a bad case of vertigo. The meds she prescribes work and I return to work after a week off.
I carry on seeing Dr Moola and my clinical psychologist and take my medication in the morning and at night as prescribed. 2017 I am okay-ish. I survive. 2018 I can feel dawn starting to crack for me but I do not want to get too excited because, life. June 2018 my grandmother passes away and I do not fall apart? I attend her funeral and I survive that without any incidents.? Ah progress! October 2018, I turn 28 and I feel great for the first time in a long time! I start a new job at a firm I’ve wanted to work in for a while. I am still on medication but that’s almost my little secret because NO ONE can tell I am depressed or have been or even that I’m actually sustained by medication. I shine in that job!
Dr Moola then tells me that just as he had promised me in the beginning that I would not be on medication for the rest of my life he would like to wean me off. BUT, before he weans me off I need to write my life story for him. Sigh. Just as I was starting to really like him. I stay on meds while I procrastinate. Oh, he is very patient with his patients! He doesn’t rush me. He tells me to write “when I’m ready”. Then I start. I have a lot of questions for my brother because he is older than me and most likely remembers things I do not remember about our childhood. I also ask my mother who does not understand why I need to understand all these things that happened SO long ago. I write. Until one day I find that would you look at that, I just wrote my life story!
And then, a magician quasi spiritual guru shines through this wonderful, very warm and gentle man I had know for three years by then. He walks me through my life story and identifies the core of all my issues. Now my eyes are wide open, because, is he even real?! You know what he says to me before telling me to start lowering my medication doses until I get to the lowest dose then stop? (That’s how you get off psychiatric meds) He tells me I lack I sense of self and as a parting gift he would like to give me that back to myself. We then have weekly sessions where we talk through my whole life story and how we could basically rewire my brain. Here, I am hooked! I am drinking from his cup because this man knows EXACTLY what he’s doing!
August 2019 I’m off sleeping meds and the anti-psychotics I’d been taking at night since I met this freakishly brain smart man. September 2019 I am completely off medication! Oh happy days!!
But now I am so in awe and inspired by this man that I just won’t let go of him. I mean, he has basically discharged me but now I want him to treat all my ailments. I’m in a new job from August 2019 and the environment just unsettles me. So finally, I have an excuse to call Dr Moola. We talk through it. Dr Moola does not like throwing pills at everything. Yes, medication is a life jacket but sometimes you think you’re drowning but you are actually not even drowning in an ocean but in the shallow end of the pool. There he will teach you how to swim and boy will you learn, as long you stay open to what he’s teaching you.
I had a relapse triggered by a work situation in March 2020 but even when he put me back on the meds he told me it was just glue to stick together the parts I kept saying I felt were falling apart. I remember two weeks into taking the meds I went back to him because I had fallen asleep while driving and in the same week I forgot my bank card at the ATM so I went to him mentally prepared to be told I’d be hospitalized. I list 3 symptoms and he finishes off the list for me. I ask if he’s been following me around and he tells me that it is because he knows the side effects of those meds on a healthy brain, essentially, I am getting better! I cry in disbelief. I did not even need to take the full cocktail of meds for a full month even though his prescription was for a month. I keep my medication but not because I need it anymore but because I know medication is just a life jacket.
I have learnt SO much from him as his patient because he does not prescribe medication for you without telling you what it is for. I have been able to temporarily help some friends who were drowning without realizing by putting together some meds based on what he has taught me about them and then checking with him first before giving them while they wait for their appointment with him.
This man FOUGHT for my life when I did NOT want to live anymore. Words alone will never be enough to express my gratitude for ALL he did for me, a complete stranger. I managed to go back and complete my postgrad after a two-year break thanks to the genius of this man and my own desire to live that he went all out to bring back.
When he faces his own challenges because, life. I ask him how he manages to cope, and he tells me that he practices the very same things he tells me. I am in awe of this man’s genius! Anyway, all this is true. I have had people call my recovery a miracle but please, it would be an insult to not acknowledge the hard work and dedication this man put into saving my life. Words alone are honestly not enough to express my gratitude for his passion and dedication to his work.
“Nothing just is.”- Dr Moola. That’s one of his favorite sayings!
This could happen to ANYONE. Most people who are called “lazy” are actually depressed. I mean, even “happy” Sanele went through all THAT. “But you looked SO happy!” I’d hear. yes, I did. I also thought I was happy until well, this happened.
Good doctor, makwande. I have said nowhere will my name be mentioned without Dr Nai’m M. Moola being mentioned as well.
