Terry Murphy - Life in Rewind

A boy who perseveredover his own OCD. A doctorwilling to break the rules to help.

Cover Page

Title Page Life in Rewind A boy who perseveredover his own OCD. A doctorwilling to break the rules to help.

Foreword by Michael Jenike Foreword by Michael Jenike It has been many years since I first met Ed Zine at his house on Cape Cod. He suffered from a most severe form of an illness that I had studied and treated for over three decades - obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. Ed was as ill as any patient I had ever met. His story, his suffering and his recovery reveal an inspiring young man who has touched my own life in a way I had never expected. I met Terry Murphy while I was consulting to a charitable foundation in New York City. I saw some of the brilliant videos and writing that she had done for the foundation. I remember one of the secretaries being reduced to tears when she viewed one of Terry’s videos about the director of the Foundation. She has a knack for poignantly capturing the most pristine essence of a person. Ed had spoken many times about having someone write his story as an inspiration to other severely ill OCD patients who had given up hope. If he could get better, anyone could. I told Terry about Ed, and she became enthused and offered to work with Ed to write his story. During the course of writing and working with Ed on his story, she asked me why I became so involved with Ed. She pried into my own motivations and reasons why I would be willing to do things differently from most physicians. I had known from my early years that I was willing to do unusual things to help patients. I had even been criticized during my training for making house calls - ‘Dr Jenike gets overinvolved with his patients,’ wrote one supervisor when commenting on my visits to housebound patients. Since I had been in the military for five years and was older, these comments had absolutely no bearing on how I was going to practise medicine, and to this day I make house calls. However, Terry astutely detected parallels between my life and traumas and Ed’s life. Her teasing apart these issues has allowed me to understand my own motivations in light of my past life. This book reveals more about me than I would like, but I felt I had to step up to the plate and be as brave as Ed, for the benefit of patients who suffer from this horrible illness, as well as for the dedicated physicians who treat them. I suppose the bottom line is that we all have our traumas, histories, motivations and accomplishments. If this story touches and motivates you like it has touched Ed and me, then Terry will have accomplished more than I ever expected.

Chapter 1 The Day Life Stopped

Chapter 2 Time Equals Progression, Progression Equals Death

Chapter 3 Time to Go Home

Chapter 4 Something About Michael

Chapter 5 Michael’s War

Chapter 6 Trapped in the Basement

Chapter 7 The Betrayal

Chapter 8 History of Pain

Chapter 9 Leave No Man Behind

Chapter 10 A Different Kind of Doctor

Chapter 11 Ed’s Faith Regained

Chapter 12 A Step Forward

Chapter 13 Forward in Time

Chapter 14 Time Changes Everything

Chapter 15 Mayada

Chapter 16 In-laws and OCD

Chapter 17 A Choice of Dreams

Chapter 18 Building Dreams into Reality

Chapter 19 Ed’s Moment of Triumph

Afterword

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

It has been many years since I first met Ed Zine at his house on Cape Cod. He suffered from a most severe form of an illness that I had studied and treated for over three decades - obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. Ed was as ill as any patient I had ever met. His story, his suffering and his recovery reveal an inspiring young man who has touched my own life in a way I had never expected.

I met Terry Murphy while I was consulting to a charitable foundation in New York City. I saw some of the brilliant videos and writing that she had done for the foundation. I remember one of the secretaries being reduced to tears when she viewed one of Terry’s videos about the director of the Foundation. She has a knack for poignantly capturing the most pristine essence of a person.

Ed had spoken many times about having someone write his story as an inspiration to other severely ill OCD patients who had given up hope. If he could get better, anyone could. I told Terry about Ed, and she became enthused and offered to work with Ed to write his story.

During the course of writing and working with Ed on his story, she asked me why I became so involved with Ed. She pried into my own motivations and reasons why I would be willing to do things differently from most physicians. I had known from my early years that I was willing to do unusual things to help patients. I had even been criticized during my training for making house calls - ‘Dr Jenike gets overinvolved with his patients,’ wrote one supervisor when commenting on my visits to housebound patients. Since I had been in the military for five years and was older, these comments had absolutely no bearing on how I was going to practise medicine, and to this day I make house calls.

However, Terry astutely detected parallels between my life and traumas and Ed’s life. Her teasing apart these issues has allowed me to understand my own motivations in light of my past life. This book reveals more about me than I would like, but I felt I had to step up to the plate and be as brave as Ed, for the benefit of patients who suffer from this horrible illness, as well as for the dedicated physicians who treat them.

I suppose the bottom line is that we all have our traumas, histories, motivations and accomplishments. If this story touches and motivates you like it has touched Ed and me, then Terry will have accomplished more than I ever expected.

In the picture-perfect, white-shuttered two-storey house with its welcoming front porch, nestled among tall trees with delicate lilac bushes etched against its windows, Rita had created a gentle, loving environment for her children. It was a place where Ed could walk into the sunshine on a glorious New England day, and not worry about anything.

For, while life inside the Zine household was far from perfect, it felt perfect to Ed, because his mother made it so. She sang to him, and cooked for him while he sat at the kitchen counter watching his favourite cartoons on TV. He was her baby boy, and at a time when she was faced with the challenges of an older son who struggled with negative outside influences, she served up an endless stream of affection and support for her youngest, telling Ed that one day he would do something really important with his life. She snuggled with him while they watched movies together, carried cookies and ice-cold pitchers of lemonade out to the back garden while he played wiffle-ball or swam in the pool. She invited neighbourhood children like Rudy Harris, who would later play football for the NFL, to have sandwiches with them after school. Rita was ubiquitous in Ed’s happiest memories, and when she would pass away the tapestry of his life would change dramatically as he would be cared for by his less nurturing, seemingly antithetical father.

Bob Zine was the dark, handsome, volatile son of a Lebanese-born prize fighter-turned-bookie from South Boston who, at age 16, forged his mother’s signature, lied about his age and went off to fight for the Marines in the Second World War. During his induction, as the drill sergeant yelled, ‘I am your mother and your father now, son,’ he was frightened and homesick. Having second thoughts about what he’d done, he rang his father to bail him out. ‘Take it like a man,’ Bob was told. Whatever gentleness there was inside of him disappeared that day. His wartime experience would later inform his decisions as a father, and the regimented way he ran his family and home.