Claustrophobia

By Ed Smith

(Life took a turn for Newfoundland journalist Ed Smith in 1998 when he sustained a spinal cord injury in a car accident and became quadriplegic. Doing what he does best, Ed has put his rehabilitation experience into words in his upcoming new book, "From the Ashes of My Dreams." Part of it was adapted into radio commentary for a "First Person Singular" series on CBC Radio’s "This Morning," winning acclaim - including the prestigious Gabriel Prize for excellence in broadcasting. In the following excerpt, an old phobia is put into a new light for Ed.)


For most of my adult life, I have been a practising claustrophobic.

I couldn’t go into a public washroom and lock the door. That in itself completely drained my lifetime allocation of embarrassing moments. When my girls got old enough, their job was to hold service station washroom doors ajar and stand guard against any intruders. For some reason, my wife refused to do it.

Airplanes filled me with dread. I flew only with the combined help of the modern pharmacy and the modern liquor store.

My special nemesis was that little tin box better known as the elevator. I avoided elevators the way Stockwell Day avoids questions. A colleague and I once had a meeting with Premier Joey Smallwood in an effort to negotiate an end to a teacher’s strike. The premier’s office was on the 10th floor, but I told myself with steely resolve that just this once I would conquer the monster inside those elevator doors. I made it only to the second floor before I literally flung myself out of the elevator, retching all the way.

Education in Newfoundland hasn’t been the same since.

My wife was in hospital having operations on her feet. Her room was on the fifth floor, but I’ve walked enough stairs in my life to walk that backwards. However, on this one night, the doors opening to the fifth floor from the stairwells were temporarily locked. There was no way I could get to Marion’s room. I sat in the lobby for an hour feeling utterly wretched, and then looked up to see my poor wife hobbling across the lobby on her two bandaged feet, coming down to visit me. It’s not something I’m allowed to forget.

Then one day, two and one half years ago, we had the accident that left me quadriplegic. Now there was a kick in the teeth. Claustrophobia was immediately bumped out of first place on my personal handicap scale, although it remained a close second.

Even in the first terrible hours after surgery, one of my first concerns was that I might have to use an elevator to get to other floors in the hospital. And of course I did - just once. It was a major operation involving Marion, technologists, orderlies and my daughters singing loudly, if not well, "You Are My Sunshine" until the elevator doors opened and the panic retreated to its lair.

Everyone was unbelievably supportive. The rehab center in St. John’s even had my physiotherapist bring her equipment down to a first-floor classroom so that I could again avoid the elevators. But before long it became distressingly obvious that there was no way I could avoid having to access different floors in hospitals or anywhere else. I was desperate again. What was I to do?

The psychologist at the Miller Centre suggested that a colleague of hers who specialized in phobias might be able to help.

"No way," I said. "I’ve had this for too long."

"Do you have anything to lose?"

"No," I replied, "just as long as she understands that I will be her first complete failure."

And so this psychologist, a lovely woman named Mary, went to work with me. At first we just talked about the problem. Endlessly, we explored every facet of my fear until I was sicker of talking about it than I was of the claustrophobia.

Finally we graduated to spending time just sitting in front of the elevator doors and doing still more talking.

And then, after several days, the doors were opened on both sides of the elevator and I’d zip right through, in one door and out the other at Formula One speeds. It never occurred to me to wonder what might happen if the second set of doors were to accidentally close while I was speeding through the first.

Sitting in the elevator with all the doors open was the next big step. For that alone I should have gotten a Purple Heart.

We progressed from there to staying in the car with the doors on one side closed, and then with both doors shut tight for a second or two.

Surprisingly, the last hurdle was relatively easy.

"Take it up," I said one day in a quavering voice and up it went with me, Marion, Mary and a young student from somewhere-or-other who was observing how people react under stress. She had the right person and the right situation.

Mary said she wouldn’t be satisfied until I could stay in a moving elevator for a full 30 minutes. I would have been satisfied with much less, but somehow I held on for the required time before finally bursting out of that accursed car into the blessed light of day.

But the war was at long last over, and I knew that I had won. Claustrophobia would no longer be the life-smothering monster that had subdued me for so long. A whole new vista had opened up: the world above the first floor. Now, I often wonder how different my life would have been had I earlier sought the help that was there all the time.

When we came out of the elevator after that first half hour, the student from somewhere-or-other leaned over and said softly, "In my country you would be a warrior. May I kiss you?"

Are you kidding? Does Bill Gates have money?

And as she did, and as I was saying to myself, now there’s a country you just have to visit, Smith, one other thought was vibrating throughout my entire being.

"Today, I AM a warrior!"

(Ed Smith lives in Springdale, Newfoundland. For information about ordering his book, write to Ondina Books, 4 Brinex Ave., Springdale, NF, A0J 1T0.)