I Want to Thank the Doctors Who Saved Me

The doctors offered me kindness, respect, and understanding during a difficult time, restoring my belief in myself and humanity.

Photo by JC Gellidon on Unsplash

In April 2019, I came across an article about an unfortunate young black man who’d been shot dead by the police, triggering long-buried images of my encounter with the authorities. They flashed like camera lights, occluding my vision before I emitted an elongated exhale. After I finished reading the story, I felt relieved and guilty because I escaped a similar fate. And I felt obligated to offer a retelling of my interaction with the Portland Police Department.

Although I knew that those policemen would never read our story, I offered my gratitude because they’d decided against shooting me. To this day, *I Want to Thank the Portland Police Department for Not Killing Me *remains the most applauded piece of writing I’ve ever published on this platform.

I remain grateful seven years after publishing my account. Nevertheless, I cringed after recently rereading that memoir for two reasons: Firstly, the prose reflects a nascent writer, an individual struggling to refine his style and find his niche. Secondly, I think I gave those particular cops, four brutes who assaulted me in that hotel room — I was tased unnecessarily, cuffed roughly on purpose, and zip-tied — too much credit for exhibiting restraint in that situation.

I’m not going to spend too much time on the first reason because I think I’ve become a more proficient and prolific writer. The second reason, however, deserves a more thorough examination, because I should not have to express gratitude. Exercising calm and judicious restraint must be the first option when encountering an unarmed citizen who is in distress; this would be the only choice if the right person is recruited and trained intensively. Reasonable, trained, and smart officers will find it advantageous to manage an encounter without exhibiting cruelty.

Helping a person to heal is hard.

On December 18, 2003, the sheet snapped, and I fell three stories. It was bitterly cold in New York City on that day, which greatly exacerbated the impact on the unyielding concrete floor. The pain and shock were unlike anything I’d ever felt in my twenty-six years of life, shooting through my system like a bolt of lightning. I opened my mouth to scream but kept silent because I still intended to escape.

My eyes fell on my right knee as I attempted to push myself to my feet. The bone poked a hole in my blue jeans, causing the bottom of my leg to bend awkwardly to the right. Blood seeped through the hole in my leg, saturating my jeans.

I gave up.

“Help!” I said, twisting my head toward the metal fencing. A singular woman walking past furtively turned her head.

“Please help me…”

I was transported to a world-renowned hospital, where my leg was temporarily realigned and stabilized. The damage to my lower extremity was extensive, though, with a complete disintegration of my kneecap. The surgeons could not operate right away. So, I remained mostly confined to a hospital bed for consecutive days, with conspiratorial thoughts morphing the shape of my fragile consciousness. I was wary of everyone I encountered.

There was a particular person in the hospital that I despised, a balding man with a mustache who wore a suit and tie, an administrator. He’d visit my hospital room every single day and ask me questions about my mindset and how I became injured. I thought he was the enemy’s plant, tasked with extracting information that could be used against me.

After a while, my biological clock became synchronized with the administrator’s impositions. So, when my stomach roiled one afternoon, I limped to the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and pulled the door behind me, leaving a crack so that I could see who entered my room. The administrator blew past me with both hands encased in sterile gloves, making my heart beat faster.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

No part of my body moved except for my bowels.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

I kept silent and remained still because I thought that if I responded, the administrator would open the door and shoot me. After an agonizing thirty seconds or so, I heard him exit my hospital room.

The administrator was flanked by a co-worker the next day, the doctor who would be performing my surgery. Once again, my stomach roiled, but I also knew that this was an opportunity.

As I pointed an accusatory finger at the administrator, I said, “That guy has been trying to kill me!”

Understandably, the health administrator stopped visiting me after that incident. However, my outburst didn’t stop the other health care workers from performing their duties, because they rigorously acted in accordance with an oath to heal instead of harm. They knew that I was not in my right mind, but they kept coming, offering genuine smiles and comfort. A night nurse marveled at me, saying that I was brave because I did not scream in response to the pain.

The surgeon, after echoing the observation of the night nurse, pressed a placating hand on my shoulder and said, “Don’t you worry, my man. We are going to fix you up, and you’ll be better. I promise.”

I felt at ease for the first time in three months, trusting that this kind stranger would deliver on his promise.

“You told me that I was not going to have to spend too much time at this hospital. And now you are telling me that I’m going to have to stay here for two weeks?” I said, tilting my head up.

The psychiatrist, a Nigerian man with pockmark scars, exercised calm. “Someone might have told you that before we observed you. I’m sorry, but you are not ready to be released to the public just yet.”

“But I don’t need to be here! I’m not crazy!”

“You accused one of our employees of trying to assassinate you, Mr. Ihenetu. He didn’t know you before you arrived at this hospital, and you said that he wanted to hurt you. That is concerning for us. You are not in the right frame of mind. We need to keep you here.”

I was confined to a wheelchair, with my repaired knee and leg wrapped in a green cast. I had no power to change this outcome. I had my eyes, though, which I used to stare daggers at the psychiatrist, whose face remained passive, infuriating me. Only a few feet separated the two of us. I thought about jumping onto him, pinning his arms with my legs, and gouging at his pockmarked face with my fingers.

But I turned my wheelchair around and rolled away, anger wafting off me like heat from a rusty radiator.

A few days later, the psychiatrist, Dr. Ohaya, sat across from me as I sobbed uncontrollably, a jump-off point for him to diagnose me with a psychological disorder. I didn’t believe him because I thought that it was the rest of the world that had the problem. However, the psychiatrist radiated kindness and understanding as he described the diagnosis, and I appreciated that.

“Now that we have diagnosed you, we can start your treatment,” said Dr. Ohaya. “And then, once you are stable, we will release you from our care.”

I’d been cooped up in the psychiatric ward for a week, desperate to gain my freedom from a place that housed strangers, some exhibiting violent tendencies. My roommate was one of the more violent residents, a six-and-one-half-foot monster who spit in the direction of a visiting nurse one evening. I would do anything to get out of that place, including feigning acceptance of a diagnosis that I did not believe applied to me. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do everything I can to get better.”

The nurse — with police officers in tow — kept visiting to provide care despite my roommate’s presence, as did Dr. Ohaya, who stressed our shared cultural heritage as he offered treatment. There were no metal cuffs, tasers, or zip ties, just a conversational exchange between a doctor and a patient, engendering a fragile synergy.

When it came time for me to leave, Dr. Ohaya greeted my father and me at the threshold separating the psychiatric ward from the outside world. “Goodbye, my friend,” said Dr. Ohaya. I enjoyed treating you, but I don’t want to see you come back to this place.”

I would be interned in two more psychiatric wards before “healing” and finding employment at a hospital in 2013. Two years later, after ignoring the warnings of multiple psych doctors, I relapsed again during the holidays. My sisters drove me to the local hospital, where I met a new psychiatrist, a blond woman a few years removed from medical school.

After Dr. Silva finished interviewing and assessing me, she informed me of an updated diagnosis: bipolar depression, which, in my mind, sounded a lot less serious than schizoaffective disorder, the diagnosis assigned and expounded upon by Dr. Ohaya twelve years earlier. She prescribed some medications, which caused me to recoil.

“What’s wrong?” Dr. Silva asked.

“I don’t do well with medications,” I said. “They make me groggy.”

“I’ve given you a low dose, so the side effects should not be as pronounced.”

After folding my arms, I said, “How long do I have to take these?”

“For the rest of your life, probably. And you’re going to have to come and see me regularly. I want to make sure you are doing well.”

“Honestly, this is just hard for me to accept,” I said, sighing. “This has always been hard for me to accept.”

Dr. Silva shifted in her seat and said, “Your family brought you here, right?”

“They did.”

“You’re lucky. A lot of my patients don’t have that family structure to count on. And you have a degree, you are young, and have a stable job too. You still have a lot of potential, Mr. Ihenetu.”

“I know I do.”

“Then get healthy for yourself. Get healthy for your family, because they also depend on you.”

Dr. Silva’s words pierced an exterior, the mental block that prevented me from considering the effect of my actions on my family.

As a health administrator at a non-profit health organization in 2026, I interact with doctors and patients every single day. Our facility is situated near downtown, and we are open to receiving patients from all socioeconomic classes, because it is our mission to heal, educate, and become a preeminent health facility for the world. Some of our patients have criminal records and psychological challenges, and others subsist on Medicaid and other government programs, making them extremely vulnerable and complex to treat, because many arrive at our hospital after exhausting other options, as we become their last chance to regain their health.

Stress in these patients often manifests as tirades directed at doctors and other medical staff. Luckily, these medical professionals are trained to deescalate as they assess. And when patients recover, they express their gratitude because they know, at least intuitively, that good health is the primary precursor to a productive life.

My life is more than viable now, partially a byproduct of the care that I received from the doctors who worked to save me. I am truly grateful because I can perceive the world from the other side of the mountain, revealing a brighter future. One of my goals as a health administrator is to bring hope to others like me, sensitives who are vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the world.

And after managing my illness through regular interactions with a therapist and the ingestion of the right concoction of psychotropic medications, I have not experienced a relapse for more than a decade, and I am on my way to achieving the goals I’ve scrawled on that piece of white paper attached to my bedroom wall. I could not have embarked on this salient journey without the intervention of the healers.