Patient Violation

By Caroline Cressey

Suitable for the lay person and the professional, this book is a true account of Professional Sexual Misconduct. The author explores her life and mental health problems with emphasis upon such important issues as her hyperactivity, ADHD, Depression with the onset of puberty, and finally her diagnosis of Bipolar Affective Disorder. The author ana

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Book Bureau
• Release date: Mar 12, 2024
• ISBN: 9781960548405

Caroline Cressey

Caroline Cressey has been passionate about books and writing since childhood and first began writing seriously when in her 20’s. She emigrated from the United Kingdom with her then husband in 1983, and has since studied general and psychiatric nursing. She currently works in a private hospital in Brisbane as a registered psychiatric nurse.

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Patient Violation

Caroline Cressey

Copyright © 2024 Caroline Cressey

All rights reserved. This book is protected by copyright. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including as photocopies or scanned-in or other electronic copies, or utilized by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the copyright owner.

Interior Design by The Book Bureau

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN:     978-1-960548-39-9 (paperback)

               978-1-960548-40-5 (ebook)

Contents

PART 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

PART 2

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Epilogue

References

Bibliography

PART 1

Chapter 1

I can’t remember exactly why I decided to desert the desk in my bedroom where I was translating some French papers. It was a clear Wednesday morning of song-filled skies behind the net curtains. Not the waft of the merest breeze came in through the open window.

Perhaps the room was too silent. Perhaps I wanted the stimulation of people around me, or perhaps I merely wanted to smell and taste the aroma and freshness of coffee a degree better than the mere Nescafe I had at home. The Café Emporium had the best coffee in town.

Normally a solitary soul, I nevertheless left the comfort of my bedroom, bundled my papers into my bag, and descended the front steps to my car, parked in the driveway. Despite the winter season, the air outside was already warm but not too humid, it being about ten o’clock. I drove, as always with the windows up, the air conditioning on, and classical music playing—it was the violin concerto, by Sibelius, a rousing passionate piece of music that had always been a favorite of mine. Later in my life, I would recall a patient of the hospital where I worked—he used to play this piece of music, it being also his favorite.

I start my story thus because this morning was to be an important benchmark in my life. The decision to go to the coffee shop, made as it was on the spur of the moment, was to change my life irredeemably. Unbeknownst to me, fate was about to deal me the most psychologically challenging event in my life and, though I was to subsequently have equally difficult periods of serious physical illness and health problems stemming from this one stressor, nothing was to compare with this life experience.

The first movement, Allegro Moderato, a technically brilliant and difficult piece from its introductory pulsating pianissimo strings to its passionate finale, had just finished when I entered the car park. I was drumming the vibrant rhythms on the steering wheel, lost in its euphoric enjoyment, barely concentrating. I parked the car and reluctantly silenced the music before the second movement, quiet, compassionate, with a gooseflesh climax, could begin.

The coffee shop was relatively quiet; otherwise, I would have had a takeaway coffee and driven foolishly but safely back to my house. I never have enjoyed crowds. As it was, the Café Emporium was quiet, occupied by only a few customers, and I ordered my coffee and seated myself at a table placed on a modest dais bound by a wooden enclosure. I proceeded to arrange my papers over the table. When the coffee arrived, there was hardly a space for it, but I made one with difficulty. I took my first scalding sip—a double-strength café latte that seemed to instantly tug my mind into focus.

Hello, he said.

It would have been about ten minutes later I suppose. I was buried deeply in the psychological nuances of translation, searching for the correct words. I looked up and he was there, smiling, an expression of faint surprise on his face that matched the incredulity in his voice. I smiled too, for his voice was welcoming, interested, a far cry from his normal dismissive attitude.

Can I sit down?

Yes, I said, equally taken aback, not only by his presence, his wish to sit down, but also by the nice manner in which he was speaking to me.

What are you doing?

Translating some French papers.

Ah.

Though he should have known I spoke French, he nonetheless seemed to be impressed that I could speak and translate a foreign language. His coffee and a sophisticated-looking cream cake arrived, and we continued talking of books, literature, and writing, the details of which I now no longer remember, being too nervous to take in much, despite the fact that I hung on his every word at the time. At one point, he said that he came to the Café Emporium several days per week, usually at this time. It sounded vaguely like an invitation.

The meeting lasted probably only about fifteen minutes, whereupon he rose and left with a soft bow, the height of manners. I was left feeling warm and privileged inside, having been treated so nicely—and there was every chance that we could meet again, if I made the effort.

I thought about this. Ours had been a checkered past in terms of a professional and patient relationship, from our first meeting in which I had acted as translator for a French patient experiencing a psychotic break following a highly traumatic car accident in which his wife had died, to our recent dealings, involving my own traumatic illness. Most of the time, I had hated the man for his seeming arrogance and narcissism, but recently our patient–doctor meetings had been more conducive. Again, we had talked of books, literature, and writing, and he had lent me a book entitled Landscape and Imagination " by Simon Schema, which I had enjoyed.

Because of his initial indifference to my problems and his rather dismissive attitude towards me on many occasions, I had long ago resolved to attempt to please him. I was also somewhat confused by my swing of positive and negative feelings for the man, but now, I fairly quickly decided that I would give him the benefit of the doubt. Feeling currently quite well, despite being on the higher level of euthymic, having recently been hypomanic, during which time I had landed in hospital, I was prepared to adopt a more positive attitude towards him.

Chapter 2

My parents’ marriage was never a good one. It grew from the days when my father had tuberculosis in the early 1950s immediately prior to my birth, when my mother had nursed him. My father was operated on the year before my birth when one kidney had been reduced to a putrescent mass of tuberculous lesions and the other had a lesion on its apex. He survived three days of critical illness in which his life hung in the balance, with a heart rate approximately three times normal, and he was given new, untried antibiotics. He was then minus a kidney with some alterations to his plumbing yet out of danger.

My mother nursed my father throughout the ensuing months of his convalescence and through the birth of myself, but this was not enough to make the marriage a convivial one. My father was an aloof, stoic man who had been brought up as an only child by his father not to show his feelings. My mother, in contrast, was the eldest of five children and was herself a fun-loving, party-going girl, vivacious and pretty in her younger years with dark bobbed hair and wide-set blue eyes. She needed people, loved socializing. Later however, she was to become dependent on the affection my father was unable to give her.

There was an incident when I was about nine in which my parents attended a dinner. My father, as I have indicated, had a passion for yachts and racing and was at this stage commodore of the Royal Yacht Club in our area. I remember that they came home and, behind their locked bedroom door, began fighting. My father was accusing my mother of flirting with other men at the function, and I could hear mother pleading and then the thuds as father began hitting her. My mother began to moan, a low weary howl, whilst I, outside the door called out to her in futility.

I woke up the next morning still on the floor outside the door.

My mother, in some ways, was a loving, caring, and tirelessly devoted woman, both to us children and her husband. I remember how she regularly took us to the Royal Ballet performances in the city, notably productions of Swan Lake, Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, and Graduation Ball. I loved Swan Lake the best; I loved the tragedy of the Russian fairy tale and the music of Tchaikovsky. I used to cry as Odette and her Prince Siegfried ascended to heaven after the brutal betrayal when Siegfried accidentally betroths himself to the similar Odile, daughter of the evil Von Rothbart, as opposed to Odette, who had been cast under a spell by Von Rothbart to be a swan by night.

The Nutcracker, arguably more popular and shown around Christmastime, had a more difficult plot, and my memory of the ballet was sketchy, although I do remember the opening scenes of the children around the Christmas tree receiving presents, Clara’s being that of a nutcracker who was later to turn into a handsome prince. I also remember the battle of the mice, with Clara grabbing the Mouse King’s tail. I never knew what was real and what was imagined in the synopsis. Graduation Ball I liked less; it was ribald, filled with laughter and bum-slapping.

I also remember some of the dancers and my mother’s enrapturement with Dame Margot Fonteyn of the Royal Ballet Company in the United Kingdom and with her famous partner of many years, Rudolph Nureyev. To lesser extent, I remember, too, Alicia Markova, also a Prima Ballerina Assoluta, as was Dame Margot.

I, too, went to ballet school from the age of five years, until my teacher, the teacher whom I idolized, died suddenly from cancer when I was ten. I loved dancing, and I did honors work up through the grades. I was somewhat of a favorite of the teacher, of the Elfin School of Ballet. Prior to going to this ballet school, I had been enrolled in another ballet school but had been expelled for disruptive behavior. (I never followed choreographic instructions but led the children off in a dance of my own.) I took part in several ballets at the city’s Gaumont Theatre in the role of a snowflake and that of a piece of seaweed.

It was during this time that I was struck down by a mysterious illness which my father maintained I had caught from the local swimming pool; during a four-week period, I was unable to keep anything down other than Lucozade. I lost a lot of weight, grew thin and anemic. After two weeks of illness, I attempted to return to my ballet dancing but collapsed through weakness. I remember how my dancing teacher was very concerned about me as my mother was, as frequently happened, late picking me up.

I went to ballet school on Thursdays after school, and my father was also supposed to pick me up after work at 7:30 p.m. Often he was either late or forgot altogether, although my mother had more of an excuse as she had to rely on corporation transport, not being able to drive. Miss Moore would find me waiting alone downstairs where the ballet classes were held and would invite me up to have tea and crumpets together with her husband, Jimmy. On these days, I had to make my own way home, which was a lengthy convoluted affair involving three buses. Often, I did not get home until nine o’clock at night. Once, whilst alighting from the bus at the final stop, I fell into a ditch and sprained my ankle. I was thus unable to make the final walk home of approximately one mile to the farmhouse where we lived. I remember limping across the road to a house opposite to call for help.

Chapter 3

Despite having taught myself to read before going to school, I did not do well. I was impatient, impulsive, easily distracted. Though I loved books and reading, my arithmetic was poor, my writing and artwork messy, and my sewing work consisted merely of a never-ending battle to thread my needle. I remember the needlework mistress shaking me by the shoulder in frustration. I was not considered bright enough even to take the eleven-plus examination, an examination to decide whether or not a child was academically competent for grammar school education. I was described by the headmistress as below standard and backward for her age. Besides, it did not matter that I would fail as I was already going to grammar school; my father, a relatively wealthy man, was paying for our education.

I always sat at the back on the left-hand side and would come near the bottom of the class in all subjects—until one day at fourteen years of age, I shocked my English teacher into reading the exam results from the bottom upwards. At eighty-eight percent I had topped the class, the only one to have got over eighty percent.

I had quoted the entire poem of Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats thus:

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:

‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,

But being too happy in thine happiness,

That thou, light-winged dryad of the trees,

In some melodious plot

Of beechen green and shadows numberless,

Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage! That hath been

Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of flora and the country green,

Dance, and provencal song and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South!

Full of the true, the blissful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve and quite forget

What thou amongst the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin and dies;

Where to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow.

Away! Away! For I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,

But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:

Already with thee! Tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown

Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet

Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit tree wild;

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

Fast-fading violets cover’d up in leaves;

And mid-May’s eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunts of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain,

While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad

In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain-

To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by emperor and clown:

Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amidst the alien corn;

The same that oftimes hath

Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! The very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Adieu the fancy cannot cheat so well

As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu! adieu! Thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,

Up the hill-side; and now ‘tis buried deep

In the next valley-glades:

Was it a vision or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:-do I wake or sleep?

Not only had I quoted the whole poem, but I had analyzed almost every line and had achieved 100% for this part of the examination.

My English teacher was ecstatic with my results and remarked so to my parents at the parent-teacher night. That year, I also gained a first in human biology and religious knowledge but continued to fail in mathematics, geometry, and algebra, my father making the observation that I would never get anywhere without a pass in these subjects. I also began to do well in art, history, and geography, achieving a place in the top six out of fifty students; however, I failed physics and chemistry.

My mother had a rhyme she used to recite. I can only remember a small, relevant part:

Wednesday’s child is full of woe, Thursday’s child has far to go.

I was born on a Wednesday.

As mentioned, we had moved once more when I was ten. My Grandfather Cressey, on my father’s side, had died suddenly of a heart attack and left his small farm to my father’s younger brother William. William did not wish to live there, so he sold it to my father, and we duly moved. I recall that it was a huge change for all of us, living in the country after having lived for so long in suburbia. The farm was only seven acres, but being England, there was enough pasture for up to a dozen cows. We also had two hundred chickens, an orchard, and a vegetable garden. The house itself was an old rambling building of complex rooflines with five bedrooms upstairs, a kitchen, large dining room, lounge, study, and sixth bedroom/dark room downstairs (my grandfather was a keen photographer, who won awards for his work).

It was a house I already knew fairly well from the Christmases we used to spend there with Grandfather Cressey, Uncle William, and Auntie Alicia and their son, our cousin Anthony. I remember how we all slept in the same bed, all four of us. As usual, I was having trouble sleeping, so I was still awake when the empty stockings were taken by my Uncle William and then redelivered full to the ends of our beds. My belief in Father Christmas thus did not last beyond the age of nine.

Those were happy times though; sitting round the huge dining room table eating roast turkey and duck, roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, brussels sprouts, peas and greens with gravy, Christmas pudding lit with brandy and served with a dollop of brandy butter; then there were the mince pies, the crackers, the presents around the roaring fire in the lounge, the Christmas tree and the lights, outside the falling snow and the white virgin fields . . . these were indeed among the happiest times I remember.

The farm was situated in an area of southwest Hampshire along the south coast of England known as the New Forest. The New Forest is made up of unenclosed pasture, heathland, bogs, and forest. It was created as a royal forest by William the first, otherwise known as William the Conqueror, in 1079 for the private hunting of mainly deer. Today the area has been turned into a National Park and is used for the grazing of ponies, cattle, and pigs and belongs to local commoners. This is one of the rights extracted from the crown by locals centuries ago and is guarded vigorously to this day. The ponies have recently improved in quality and breeding through the selection of a higher quality of stallion and are allowed to roam freely. Every year following the spring birth of foals, they are mustered and branded or sold on. The New Forest Pony is a breed in its own right and has Arab blood in its veins.

The New Forest is also a beautiful area, comprising 140,000 acres, with two rivers, the Lymington and the Beaulieu, and its many walking and cycling paths. Some of the most beautiful of areas are the Rhinefield and Boldrewood rhododendron walks near Brockenhurst. Rhododendrons are my favorite bushes, being the national flower of Nepal. They can be perennial or deciduous, varying in size from small shrubs to large trees. The widest variety of species is found in the Himalayas. They are predominantly found in the Northern Hemisphere, but there are species in Northern Australasia. Some species of rhododendron release toxins called grayanotoxins harmful to animals. Humans can suffer hallucinations and diarrhea if they eat honey made from the rhododendron flower.

Other areas of the New Forest have a forlorn harsh beauty characterized by poor soils that only support impoverished grassland, heath, moor, and some forestlands. Along the coastline are salt marshes, mudflats, sandbanks, and tidal estuaries. In summer, the New Forest comes alive with the pink beauty of the heather and the blaze of gorse. Small villages dot the countryside, including Burley, rumored to harbor a witches coven, a village where no church stands, the last having purportedly burnt to the ground.

King William I the conqueror had two sons who both died in the New Forest. The first was Richard, blasted with a pestilent air, and the second being Rufus, shot through with an arrow. The Rufus Stone allegedly marks the ground where he died, not too far from the town of Ringwood, where I was later to live before embarking on a new life in Australia with my husband, Dennis.

A description of the New Forest would not be complete without a mention of birdlife, flora, and fauna. The New Forest is home to several birds of prey including the sparrowhawk, buzzards, including the rare honey buzzard, hobbies, and kestrels. The rare firecrest and its relative, the goldcrest, are also found here. Other birds that inhabit the valley mires include the snipe, curlew, lapwing, and rarely the redshank, whilst on the heathlands can be found the Dartford warbler and woodlark, rare in England. Summer overseas visitors include the nightjar and Montague’s harrier. The New Forest is also home to England’s only poisonous snake, the adder, whilst all of England’s native reptiles are found here.

There are many different species of deer, including the red deer, fallow deer, roe deer, sika, and muntjac. Gray squirrels, considered a pest because of the damage they do to trees, are controlled by the introduction of the pine marten and goshawks. There are also badgers in the woodlands. In the last few years, two new mammals have been introduced into the forest: the nocturnal polecat from Wales and the pine marten already mentioned.

The New Forest is also home to thirteen of seventeen nationally registered bat species. This includes the rare bechstein and barbastelle bats.

Chapter 4

My maternal grandfather was Scottish, and my maternal grandmother was half-German. I remember how they once visited us at our home in suburbia when I was about ten or so. They looked after us, whilst mummy and daddy were away. I remember that my grandfather had a fierce temper at times, whilst at others he was gentle and kind. He won a scholarship for his voice at the age of nine years and sung in the choir at Westminster Abbey until the age of forty when he had a heart attack and no longer had the breath to sing. I only ever heard him hum. I was often invited to stay at their little terraced house in Winchester during the school holidays. I spent a great deal of my time reading whilst my grandmother took great pride in introducing me as the eldest of her grandchildren to all the shopkeepers, whilst I used to go with my grandfather to evening meetings with the territorial army.

My grandmother had a love of swans. Porcelain figurines of these animals were everywhere in the tiny house. She used to take me regularly to feed the swans down by the river until the day one of them attacked her. As for my grandfather, I remember walking by his side up the street. It was only a slight incline, but he would stop and place a small white pill under his tongue, wheezing as he did so. He smoked a pipe for many years that stopped after his first stroke. He had several strokes before dying at the age of seventy-four.

I did not love them as much as I loved my paternal grandfather. Every year, a week or so before my birthday, he would come to our home, sit me on his knee, and ask me what I wanted for my birthday. I always got exactly what I asked for. I particularly remember him coming to Hazelwood two years in a row. The first year I asked for a teddy bear; the second year I asked for a scooter.

He died suddenly at the age of sixty-four from a heart attack, and I remember how my father came to tell me. I was in my bedroom, and he entered, leaned on the windo sill with his back to me. He said:

"I don’t have a mother or a father anymore..

For the first time, I went over and comforted him: it was not to be the last.

At around the age of twelve, at puberty or a little before that, I began to chang, from a loud, brash, domineering child to one