On Spencer Hyde’s 15th birthday, he boarded a plane for Baltimore, Maryland, with his parents, who had been called to serve as mission leaders of the Baltimore Maryland Mission. Teenage boys usually don’t want to leave behind everything they’ve ever known, but for Hyde, there were even larger concerns: He was suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
Some questioned Hyde family’s decision to serve, but as it turned out, Baltimore, Maryland, was home to Johns Hopkins Hospital and the leading child psychiatrist in the nation at the time. During the three years his parents served, Hyde was treated at Johns Hopkins and made tremendous progress in finding a way to live a happy life with OCD. On this week’s episode, Hyde shares with host Morgan Jones what he believes was the biggest miracle he experienced during that time.
Read the excerpt below or listen to the episode with Spencer here.
SH: When I think about our trip to Maryland, it’s hard not to see God’s hand in how everything came about. . . . My grandma passed away a few weeks ago, and I remember my mom telling me that when they got the call to go on the mission to Maryland, she knew how bad my OCD was, my grandma did. And at the time, she wasn’t very active [in the Church] and she said, “Are you two simple fools really going to leave your home to go serve the Church when your son is dealing with what he’s dealing with?” And my mom said, “What other choice do we have? If we want to get help, we know we should be doing whatever the Lord is asking of us.” So when we got there, some really amazing things happened pretty quickly. My mom drove me to Johns Hopkins, we met with some psychiatrists—and she was just hoping to get me in to see anyone that could help—and the doctor we met with said, “We could maybe get him on the adolescent psychiatric ward which is ages 12-17.”
MJ: How old were you at this time?
SH: I turned 15 the day we got on the plane to go to Baltimore. So the doctor said, “Well, our specialist in OCD—who was, at the time, the leading adolescent psychiatrist who specializes in OCD—he doesn’t take in-patients and it’s rare that he’s working on the ward, so let me go check.” He came back and he said, “Who are you?” And my mom looked down at her tag and she said, “Well, I’m here, we’re mission presidents.” And she explained it as, “We’re ministers for our church.” And he said, “No, I mean who are you, because nobody gets in to see Dr. Riddle. . . . and he wants to see your son, and he will be on the psych ward, and he does specialize in OCD.” So that was amazing. And then I was an in-patient briefly, but then Dr. Riddle met with my parents and said, “It might be better if he stays at home as long as you promise to bring him in whenever I want to see him.” So we agreed to that, But here’s where I think the biggest miracle happened:
We’d been trying for months different medications, and you know it takes a while to get [the medication] into the system and working and then out of the system. So some medications had me losing weight, some gaining weight, sometimes I was more tired, sometimes I was more energetic, and it kept changing. That was really hard, but my mom had an impression while she was reading her scriptures, and she went to Dr. Riddle and said, “You need to try Ritalin on my son.” And he balked at this, and he said, “No one’s ever tried Ritalin on an adolescent. I’m not doing it.” So he tried other medications, and she came back a couple weeks later and said, “You need to try Ritalin,” to the point that he was getting kind of annoyed, and I could tell he was getting annoyed. And finally he said, “You’re not going to let this go, are you?” And she said, “No, I’m not.” He said “Here’s what we’ll do, after this medication runs its course, I’ll give you five days with Ritalin and then I don’t want you to ever bring it up again.” And she said, “Okay, deal.” So we took the Ritalin home, and on the third day, I walked into my parents’ room and I said,” I’m back.” It was weird. It was like a light switched on and she got on the phone and [Dr. Riddle] said “Bring him in right now.” I walked into his office and I started joking about the books he had on his shelf. . . . And he looked at my mom and said, “So this is Spencer.” And from there on out, it was behavioral therapy and learning how to live with [OCD].
Listen to the entire podcast episode here.