Category Archives: Anxiety

Beginnings – Part V

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By the time I was eighteen, I had run away from home twice. On one of those occasions, the reason I ran away is that my mother had told me she did not want me around.  So it made sense in my head to leave.  When my mother asked me why I had run away and I told her that, her response was something like she had said that a few days before.  The impression I got was that since she had said it a few days before I ran away that by the time I ran away she thought I should have been over it.   I am not sure if she was truly not aware of the impact that her words had on me or if she was deliberately acting as if it should have been no big deal.

The first time I ever tried to harm myself was after the slapping episode with my mother.  That was the first time I had ever tried to stop her when she was doing something to me and I was filled with an enormous amount of guilt afterwards.  To punish myself for slapping her back, I took a curing iron and held it on the back of my left hand until there was a horrible looking burn there. It was also around that age that I had some wisdom teeth pulled and was given some pain medicine. I took several of those thinking that would be enough to kill me.   My family never knew about that incident and for whatever reason made no comment about the burn on the back of my hand. 

Based on what I know now, I think I was extremely depressed through part of my high school career.  There were times when I was very cranky and short tempered with my other class mates, my lack of interest in my school work, and except for Lee, I isolated myself from people.  I had a fatalistic attitude about my life.  I assumed  that I would not live to see my twentieth birthday. I did not have any thing specific in mind that would be the reason that I would not live to twenty, I think it was just an over all view that I had about my life.

I was an angry and bitter person for many years. Like many young women who feel unloved and rejected I acted out inappropriately with men who were more than willing to take advantage of my vulnerabilities.  As a result, I have felt a great deal of shame for many years.  I do think I have reached a point where I understand that being angry and bitter are exhausting and a waste of time, and that it is time to put the shame aside.

Unfortunately, habits and behaviors that you have grown up with are very difficult to put aside.  I started off my life with the glass always being half empty and that is how I looked at things when I became an adult.  The constant worry and anxiousness I felt growing up, had become such a part of me that up until recently I did not realize that there can be days, weeks and even months where I do not wake up with a knot in the pit of my stomach and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Beginnings – Part IV

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All three years of middle school were pretty much the same.  I had poor grades, I was constantly in trouble, I was fitting in much better now, and the relationship with my mother was, well it was, still pretty crappy.  If anything it was worse.

It was time for me to start high school.  I was so excited about my first day of high school that I did not sleep at all the night before I was to start.  I fully intended to keep my grades better in high school than I had the previous years.  That did not happen.  What happened instead is that the teachers would hand out the books and I would go ahead and read everything in the literature book on the first day of school, I would look at the list of books we would be required that year and I would discover that I had already read most of them and went ahead and read the ones I had not yet.  I even read the stupid vocabulary book from cover to cover, and most of the time if I chose to, I could repeat the definition of the vocabulary word, word for word with no mistakes.

My high school was so crowded that the freshman and sophmores had to start much earlier than the upper classmen did.  When class time hit, I was bored because I already knew the material or could learn it really fast, and tired from having to get up so early.  I did what most teenagers would have done in that situation…….I slept through class.  That meant I hardly ever completed my work, and of course my grades were awful.       

This was the time in my life when I actually was able to have a “best friend”  We had lived in Georgia for a number of years and as far as I knew we would not be moving anytime soon, so it was a safe time to get close to someone.  Lee (name changed since I do not have her permission to use it here) never knew how much her friendship meant to me.  The neighborhood she lived in was right next to mine and I spent a lot of time with her and her family.  I spent most of my high school career grounded.  The only thing I could do was ride my bike.  Whenever I could I would sneak off on my bike and go to her house.

I know my parents wanted the best for me.  I know they did the best they knew how when I was growing up, it is unfortunate that their best was not sufficient.  I think they were at a loss in some ways as to why I would do so poorly in school and had such poor social skills, when in the past the opposite had been true.  Doing poorly in school was a choice on my part, I was certainly more than capable of doing what I was supposed to do.  The lack of social skill was mostly because I was still choosing self isolating behavior.  I lacked the full understanding myself as to why I changed like that and I think even if I had the understanding, I still would not have gone to my parents and told them.  It was not until I was an adult and was carefully examining my childhood that I was able to pin point why I changed into someone who did not care about much that was around her.   The change began the moment my mother did not believe me about the creepy old guy feeling me up.

The pervading feelings I had all through my teenage years were that I was unloved, dis-liked, rejected and a disappointment to others.  For the most part those feelings are associated with my mother.  She was still very easy to set off, she still said humilliating and cruel things, and often when I was around her, I felt as if she did not want me there.  My father was still gone most of the time.

Life continued to get worse in my house.  My mother was trying to keep up appearances with her friends, so the person she portrayed to them was not the person I knew at home.  The person I knew at home was the one that told me I would never be anything, that I was stupid and while she was saying these things, have me sweep the floor and tell me I would grow up to be nothing but a maid.  She was the woman that slapped me so hard and so many times in a row, when I had braces on that I felt the only way to make her stop was to slap back.  I know I was angry that she was so good at hiding what she was really like and people just thought I was a “bad seed”.

I think it was when I was around eighteen that I did my first self destructive act.

To be continued

Beginnings – Part V will be out tomorrow

Beginnings – Part III

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The little town in Spain that we lived in was great from a child’s perspective.  There was sort of a pack of us kids that wandered around and had fun together.  We were good kids, the biggest trouble we got into was when we stepped on the grass in the park.  The grounds keeper was very protective of his grass.  Most of our weekends were spent hanging out at the ice skating rink, where the boys practiced their hockey and their girls practiced their figure skating.  When we were not skating we  were getting topas off of the topa bar and playing video games.  Even our school bus was fantastic compared to the school buses we have here, it was a tourist bus, nice soft seats, a bathroom, and was very big.  We  could walk to the movie theaters on our own, they did not sell refreshments at the movie theater so we would stop at the corner candy store and load up.  I saw real gypsies in the court yard of the local church.  For the most part, I have good memories of living there.

Next to the park we used to play at, there was an old abandoned mansion that the kids loved to hang out in.  There was a huge flag pole that had a long rope hanging down.  It had been tied in a loop at the bottom, and we would sit inside the loop and swing, each of us taking turns pushing each other.  Sometimes a few of the mothers would get together and all of us kids with the mother’s would go to the park together.  On one of these a outings, as usual we all decided to head over to the mansion and swing and hang out.  When we got there we saw an older man near where we liked to swing.  As much as I had traveled, I was a very naive girl in a lot of ways.  Nothing about the scene appeared the least little bit wrong to me.

The older man started talking to all of us kids, we talked back, he seemed very nice.  He offered to push us as we swung.  I must have been the first or one of the first kids to go.  When he pushed me, he started touching me in places that adults should never touch children.  I knew that was wrong, so I got off of the rope, tried to get the other kids to leave with me, only my brother did and went to where my mother was.  I can remember not really knowing what words to use to express to my mother what happened to me, but I finally was able to tell her.  She did not believe me.  She flat did not believe what I told her happened was true.  I was more devastated by that than some strange old guy touching me inappropriately.  It was not until another child came and told his mother that the same thing happened to him that she realized I was telling the truth.  I was never upset that no police were called, or that nothing happened to the old guy.  We were living in a foreign country, in a place that had an active terrorist group, none of us were fluent in the language, and even though being felt up by an old guy is completely wrong, it really could have been worse.  I strongly believe that my mother not believing me when I told her about what happened was sort of a turning point for me.  I felt betrayed. Things in my mind and behavior started to go downhill from there.    

I remember it being the first time I got in trouble for my school work not being the best I could do.  This was when I also started staying by myself during recess and reading instead of playing with the other kids.  This is when I remember the self isolating behavior started.

At some point the terrorist group, ETA, got a little upset with the Americans being over there.  The situation became dangerous for us there.  When we came back to the states and was staying at my grandparents house for Christmas break, my parents made the decision that only my father would go back to Spain, and my mother and me and my brother would stay in the States.  This was a very stressful time for me.  I am sure it was for my brother and mother as well.  I was worried about my father going back to some place that was not safe, I was worried about starting school in the middle of the year, I was missing my friends, and I was missing living in Spain.

Because we did not have a house when the decision was made for us to stay in Georgia, we stayed with my grandparents.  They lived in a very small house.  My grandfather’s personality made things tense while we were there.  I think the stress of everything got to my mother a great deal.  She was very harsh during that time.   By the time school started, I think my parents had found a house, but we could not move in right away because the people we were buying the house from still had to move out.  That meant my mother had to drive us to and from school everyday.  My grades were awful, I do not recall caring about my school work much.  Some days those car rides were a living hell.  My mother would yell, scream and insult me the whole time we were in the car, and that would be punctuated by the periodic slap across the face.  Once or twice she told me not to say anything to my grandparents. It was about this time in my life when I developed extremely low self esteem and began to fill as if I was very stupid, beliefs that have stayed with me. 

The kids in school were tough.  Because of living over seas, we wore clothes that were not the fashion in the States, yet.  About six months after we got back to the States the clothes were “in”.  The kids were cruel, and I am sure that with all I had going on at home I did not have the best attitude towards other people.  There were days where it felt like I was surrounded by cruel and mean people, both at school, and at my grandparents house, when my mother was around.  I felt that I had no one I could go to.  The self isolating behavior continued.

To be continued…

Beginnings – Part III will come out tomorrow

Beginnings – Part II

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In many ways the frequent moves were  wonderful experiences that most children do not get. In other ways each and every move and adapting to new people, new locations, and new situations was filled with so much stress and uncertainty that I felt miserable.  I do believe my mother and father did the best they knew how in trying to keep each move from causing as little instability as possible.  Most of the time we moved when school was out for the summer.  However, the draw back to that is most of the time my father had to head to the new place we were living weeks or months before we could join him.  Sometimes we did not have a house to live in when we got there.  There were times when we spent weeks and weeks in a hotel while we waited for my parents to find us a place to live.  I can remember always feeling a bit of anxiousness because things often seemed so uncertain when we moved.

I cannot be sure, but I would think that uncertainty probably caused my mother a great deal of stress as well.  It seemed that the more stress she was experiencing, the more difficult she was to be around.  She would anger more easily, say cruel things more often, and if her stress was very bad, there would be some physical abuse as well.

Since I knew that we would be moving soon, I never really made friends.  There were kids I did things with, and played with but even from a young age, I never made a friend that I would miss when we moved again.  I learned the art of self isolation at a very young age.  Any time I had to walk into a class room as the new kid, it was so hard.  I never knew if the kids in the class were going to like me, or what the teacher would be like, if I was going to know as much as the other kids did, and would I be able to find a way to fit in.  I felt this constant internal pressure.  Pressure to fit in (once again) in a new place, pressure to do well in school, a huge pressure from my parents (mostly from my mother) to adapt well to my new surroundings, and a constant pressure to not upset my mother.

Despite the fact that I spent the majority of my early childhood in “fight or flight” mode, I did manage to adapt (most of the time) each time we moved.  This is how I learned the very valuable tool of hiding what you were really feeling, and make it look like everything was OK, even when on the inside you knew it was not.  From the time I turned nine and on it became harder and harder as each year passed to adapt to my surroundings and to fake that everything was OK.

I cannot point to one thing that led to my spiraling down emotionally.  Instead I think it was a combination of some pretty drastic and stressful events that, as a child, I did not have the skills to express.  Instead what I did is intensify my self isolating behavior, no longer bothered to  try and get along with my peers, and stopped trying to adapt to my surroundings and situation. I spent more and more of my time and energy in a “fight or flight” mode. 

Around about the time I turned nine, we moved to Spain.  This was a difficult move for me even before the actual move took place.  When we found out that we were moving to Spain, we were living in Vicksburg, Mississippi.  I remember when we first  got to Mississippi, I had asked my father if we were going to stay there “forever”, and he had told me that we would.  So when the news came that we were moving and where we were moving to, in many ways I was devastated.  My brother and I were sent to stay with my grandparents for at least a month, while my parents went through all of our belongings and decided what would go into storage here in the States and what they would have shipped (by boat) to Spain.  If I remember correctly, the company my father was working for would pay the shipping costs up to a certain weight, and so the whole family was limited on what could be sent to Spain.

By this point in my childhood, I was nervous all the time.  I was constantly worried, stressed and anxious about what would upset my mother and those feelings were carried over to almost any situation I encountered.  The uncertainties in my life also caused me to be very anxious most of the time.  Sometimes those feelings would make themselves known to other people in the most unexpected ways.

Once my parents got things sorted out with our belongings it was time for me and my brother to get some vaccinations or have some blood drawn.  Either way it was something that involved needles. I do not recall being all that upset in the past about needles, but I think because of the stress of all that was going on, I become over anxious, extra worried, and even more stressed out than usual.  About the time the nurse was going to stick me with the needle, I screamed.  My brother must have been experiencing some of the same feelings I had been and my scream was a little more than his poor, little kid nerves could take.  The next thing we all knew, he was running down the hall, to get away from my mother and the nurses.  They were chasing him as fast as they could go.  However, even at a young age my brother was a very fast runner.  He probably would have made a clean get away but the elevator door was not open on our floor. 

That is a funny tale about my brother, but when I look at it from my perspective now, I can see that he too, might have been experiencing a great deal of stress at an early age.  In fact if the researchers and their studies are correct, that means starting at an early time in our childhoods, our brain chemistry was being permanently altered. 

Once we arrived in Spain we spent several months in a hotel, because it took a while for our furniture to get there.  My brother and I had the run of the hotel.  The staff let us get away with entirely too much, but some of my best childhood memories are from when we stayed in that hotel.

We lived in the Basque area of Spain.  There was terrorism there, there were civil police standing on street corners with machine guns.  It was very different from life in the States, but up until something happened to me, I enjoyed living there a great deal.

To be continued….

Beginnings – Part III will come out tomorrow.

Beginnings – Part I

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As you read this story, I ask that you keep in mind that it is not meant to be a “poor me” story, but instead it is me being completely truthful for the first in my life about all the things that contributed to my depression.  There will be some talk about physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse.  Unless I feel that it is beneficial to the story and to people’s understanding, for the most part I will not be discussing in detail the actual acts of abuse that took place.  There are enough blogs, books, movies and TV shows where people can go and get the details of an abuse act that I feel that it is not necessary for me to include them here.  

My doctor, counselor, friends and family have all wanted to know “when did the depression start?”  With friends and family it is easy to say that it started three years ago when I was diagnosed with Adult Onset Asthma.  My doctor and counselor know that it is not the whole truth.  The whole truth is that I have suffered from depression on and off probably most of my life.  It is only that in the last three years that it became debilitating. 

There is a link between childhood trauma/stressors and people who develop major depression.   In fact, in the research I have done, I have discovered that many experts agree that in most cases of significant adult depression, that some form of abuse was experienced in childhood.  That could be physical abuse, sexual abuse, or emotional abuse. Early traumatic experiences, that repeatedly trigger the body’s “fight or flight” stress response can lead to permanent changes in brain chemistry.  Combine these brain chemistry changes to a genetic predisposition for depression and it is almost guaranteed that the person will end up experiencing major depression at least once in their lifetime.

Based on things I remember and my experiences now, I believe strongly that my mother suffers from her own mental health issue.  I am certainly not a professional health care worker, but there are certain things I recognize in her behavior (past and present) that are similar to my own when my depression is out of control. I do know that my grandfather suffered severe anxieties when he was alive.  Things that happened to him during World War II made them worse, but my personal belief is that the anxieties were probably there before the war.  My grandmother has anxiety issues as well.  My father has a tendency to avoid, at all costs, certain issues, because I believe for whatever reason he can deal with them better by avoiding them.  Thinking about all that leads me to the conclusion that I most definitely was genetically pre-disposed to developing depression.

My childhood was stressful.  I know that compared to many other children’s lives it was not the worst childhood I could have had, but it was stressful. I do not remember the place of my birth or the financial circumstances of my family at the time, but I have been told that we were very poor at the time.  My mother was only 19 when I was born.  I am sure combined with being a young mother in a place that was not close to her own family, and not being in the best financial situation, she was under her own mountain of stress.  I believe that these circumstances set things up from the beginning of my life for my mother and I to have a difficult and at times abusive relationship.

I base that belief on a very short conversation I had with my mother about 13 years ago. My mother had been diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma.  She had to undergo the usually course of treatment, and she obviously did not feel well and I am sure was afraid she would not survive her cancer or even the treatments.  I think that she felt that she needed to “clean the slate” between us and offer some sort of apology and explanation for things that happened when I was growing up.  She shared that her pregnancy with me was not planned and when I was born, she and my father were living in a project (I think) and that they had almost no money.  That due to the stress of having a child that had not been planned for and being broke as well as a few other things, she never developed the bond with me that she had with my brother.  Furthermore, that is why she treated my brother better than she did me.  I think in her way she was trying to do something good, but instead it resulted in me being very angry.  For so many years, I had thought my brother was treated differently, slightly better than I was, but when I became an adult I decided that was just stupid childhood jealousy, and then to find out I was right all along brought up all sorts of old feelings and sadness.

Like many people who have suffered from some form of abuse, I have tried to “forget” the incidents as much as possible.  In some cases I was successful, in some not so much.  The first memory I have of the emotional abuse that I dealt with when I was a child is when we were living in Alabama.  I want to say I was four or five years old.  We had a play area, I think I back porch or something and there were toys strewn everywhere.  I believe that I did not want to pick up all those toys, you know how kids that age are.  I remember my mother getting very upset and calling me some very ugly names and if my memory is correct, she threw toys at me until I cleaned up.

Things like that happened often.  I remember feeling very stressed at a very young age.  I never knew what would set my mother off and exactly how she would react when she did go off.  That stress stayed with me all the time.  I never truly felt happy because of that constant feeling of stress.

I tried so hard when I was a kid to do things to make my mother happy.  I knew that if she was happy the chances of her getting angry with me and saying cruel things to me would be lessened.  I often felt that my overtures of affection were rebuffed and that she truly did not want me around her.  I have continued to feel that rejection from her into my adult years.

I know it seems that my mother is taking the brunt of the blame for the things that happened in my childhood.  I hold my father equally, if not more so, responsible for the things that happened.  He was almost never home.  He worked so much and it seemed that most of the time when I was growing up I only saw him on the weekends, and sometimes not even on every weekend.  I believe that when he was home he put blinders on to what was going on in the house when he was not there so that he did not have to deal with the messiness of it all.    If only he had ever truly taken the time to talk to her about the things that were going on, and not just one time, but as many times as needed to be done, I think he could have saved me from a lot of pain as a child and as an adult. I know the situation had to be stressful for my mother.  I wonder if she ever felt like she was a single parent since she was the one left to do all the parenting most of the time.

There were other family members, extended family, that were aware that things were not quite right in my childhood home.  I do not think they realized the extent of it until my family finally settled down in Georgia for several years after moving every year or two for most of my early childhood.  I was unaware that anyone outside of my home had a clue to what was going on until, as an adult, I visited my Aunt and her mother.  That is when they revealed to me that they had noticed when I was growing up that my mother was very hard on me and that even if I had done nothing wrong and my brother had done it, that I would get the blame for it.  They also told me that during the times they would watch me and my brother, if my parents had gone out of town or something, that they would not tell my mother if had I not behaved exactly like I was sup
posed to, because they knew that the fall out I would experience would be awful.   One thing I have always wondered since they told me that, is if they thought things were amiss in my home, why they never told anyone about what they saw going on and what they knew was going on?

There was one family member in my life who I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt loved me for exactly who I was.  Around that person I could be who I wanted to be, and I felt happy.  That was my grandfather.  My grandfather was not perfect by any means.  He was a bigot, he was an alcoholic, he was a grouch, he could be very mean, but he was always good to me, so I could overlook those not good things about him.  There is a story, that when I was a baby, he and my grandmother came to visit us when we lived in Kentucky.  I am told that I just wanted to be around my grandfather constantly.  When it came time for my grandparents to head back to their home in Georgia, I did not want to have my grandfather stop holding me.  I am told that when he was handing me back to my parents, I was crying like crazy and I grabbed onto his shirt pocket and would not let go.  In fact, even though I was a baby, I almost ripped the pocket off of his shirt.  From what my grandmother says, that is what created the bond between me and my grandfather.  He is the only person I can remember who ever stood up to my mother about how she was treating me.

In addition to the stress of the abuse that was going on in my house, there was the instability of our family life.  For most of my early to mid childhood we moved every year or two.  We never really had roots anywhere.  That instability led to its own type of stress, and in its own way probably contributed to some of the things I endured.

To be continued…..

Beginnings-Part II will come out tomorrow.

Scariest Time In My Life – Part XI

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I want to apologize for not having this out yesterday.  Up until last night I had not slept in two days and I was feeling out of sorts and could not concentrate yesterday as well as I needed to, to work on the blog.  Most likely, it is the anti-depressant that is causing me not to sleep.  However, since it is really helping with the depression I am not willing to stop taking it.  I see my psychologist at the end of the week and he and I had discussed the sleep issue last time I saw him, so I am thinking he will prescribe me something that will help me sleep.  It is also taking me a bit longer than usual to get the blog done today.  I keep dozing off as I am typing and I keep losing my train of thought. 

This is the next section of how I ended up in a state run psychiatric hospital and my experiences there.

The nurse that took the time to talk to me that morning brought up several things that have actually helped me.  One thing she brought up is that the adult onset asthma, the diabetes and the diabetic complications  would be enough to make anyone depressed.  She also said that in some ways my depression was a sort of mourning for my loss of health.  Up until the time that all those illness started, I had been a basically healthy person.  The illnesses have had a huge impact on my life.  During all of that my son left home in an unexpected manner and I was mourning that relationship.  Years of being on steroids and other medications changed my body and I was mourning the loss of the body image that I had before.  There are also the hormonal changes of a woman my age, as it prepares to enter menopause in a few more years.  She told me there was nothing wrong with mourning all of those things, but combined also with brain chemistry changes and hormonal changes, I developed major depression.  She suggested a small ceremony of sorts where I put those things I am morning on pieces of paper and burn them, as a way of bringing closure.  Especially, for the things like the relationship with my son that has no closure.

She wrote down an exercise for me to do as a way to deal with the changes and loss.  Some examples of the of what was in that exercise were:  I used to be a/an _____________, Now I have time to ____________.
I miss most ___________________.  I look forward to_________________.  and  little essay for me to write based on this topic:  During this healing/grieving time, my brain chemistry dried up.  As it is being replenished…..

Between what she had I talked about and the exercise she gave me to do, it allowed me to put what has been going on with me into proper perspective.  It also gave me a valuable to tool to use when I encountered other difficulties. 

Once again a breakfast of powdered eggs came and went and with the weekend being over it was time for us to head to the day time unit.  I knew I was supposed to see the psychiatrist today and that my husband and sister-in-law were also supposed to meet with him.  I also knew that if things went well, there was a chance I could be sent home.

This time it appeared the nurses were going to be able to keep things organized and running smoothly and keep us all in a group so that there was not so much boredom.  I was even given a group schedule, with the topics being discussed in each group so I could pick and choose which room I wanted to be in.

The first group I picked for that day was something to do with Healthy Personal Habits.  Silly me thought it would have to do with personal habits to help combat mental illnesses or drug/alcohol addictions.  Instead, it was about healthy hygiene habits.  Oh like what do you do when you feel like you have to have a bowel movement.  No, I am not kidding, that was actually discussed.  Of course with the mix of characters in a small room, it was not long before someone made someone else mad, and there was a fight.  Because of the amount of people in the room and the table and chairs taking up so much of the space, it was very difficult to get out of the way.  I did manage to and I went out to the common area and sat on the floor by the nurse’s station and that is where I stayed.  While I was there a nurse let me know that my husband and sister-in-law had arrived and that he was going to go find the doctor so that he could talk with them.

Eventually, the doctor came and spoke with me.  He wanted to know how I was doing.  I told him that I was afraid to be there anymore, “that in my world, people do not go around hitting each other”, and “No, I did not have any suicidal thoughts.”  He took me out to where my family was.  It was so good to see them!  He told all of us he thought I could go home, and that I would be sent home with a five day supply of the medication I had been taking in the hospital.  That was pretty much all he said while I was with them.  He did say it would be several hours before I could leave by the time all my paper work was done and all my things were gathered.  He suggested that they get some lunch while they were waiting.  Julie and my husband said they would wait to get lunch until I was out, so I could eat with them.

After that I was taken back to the day time unit and the nurses were told to start getting my things ready for discharge.  I also let the nurses know that my husband and sister-in-law would still be in the area so when things were ready, if they would call them, they could be back to the hospital in five minutes.  I stayed by the nurse’s station while all my discharge paperwork and orders were being completed.  The male nurse who was on duty that day, took it upon himself to make sure that things were rushed through.  I was then taken back over to my regular unit where I could gather my personal belongings.

Dorthy had not been allowed to go over to the day time unit and she was in the regular unit watching TV.  Since she had enjoyed coloring with me so much, I ended up giving her my coloring books and crayons.  Once I had gotten my things together, we headed back to the daytime unit and the male nurse called my husband and sister-in-law.  I was almost FREE!!!

The male nurse walked me out of the unit to the fenced in outside area and there we waited for my family.  Once they got there, my husband asked me “How it felt to be free?”  I let him know I was not free until I was on the other side of the gate.  The nurse walked us to the gate, let us out and I declared that “I was free”.

One of the things I had missed in the hospital was coke.  Most of the time I drink diet coke or coke zero, but in the hospital we were not allowed any soda of any kind, and absolutely nothing with caffeine in it.  Julie and Farrol had an ice cold coke waiting for me in the car!  I have never had a coke that tasted so good!

As we were driving to the Olive Garden for my freedom lunch, I began to learn a little bit about what had transpired between my parents and my husband with regards to my hospitalization and some of the conversation that took place between the psychiatrist and them.  What I learned made me a little bit angry and a little bit sad, but was not really surprising.

After the first time I tried to commit suicide and I was not hospitalized, I was a huge mess.  My psychiatrist had talked with me a couple of times about hospitalizing me, but he did not want that as his first course of action.  My mother had taken me several times to my appointments with him.  I had spoken with her about how I did not want my daughter with me when we went because the doctor was assessing me each visit to determine if he felt that I needed to be hospitalized.  From what I understand, when my mother learned that I had finally been h
ospitalized, she stated that “this is what she (meaning me) wanted” and I had to live with the consequences. I think there must have been some other things that went on between her and my husband and my grandmother but no one is telling me everything.  I think they are trying to spare me some hurt.  From what I can gather it seemed she implied that my husband (and me when I got out of the hospital) might not be able to focus on our daughter like we should and kept pushing my husband over and over and over again to have my daughter go to her for several weeks.  This frustrated my husband to no end, as he felt that my mother should be focusing more on me (her daughter) than she should be focusing on her granddaughter who was well taken care of.    My husband mentioned to me that on one visit to my grandmother’s house he overheard a little bit of a phone exchange between my grandmother and mother.  My grandmother who hates conflict and harsh words and voices, was talking to my mother with a raised voice, it was something about me and me being in the hospital and obviously my grandmother was upset with what my mother had been saying.

I also learned that my mother had been prepared to come to the hospital on my discharge date and talk to the doctor about me staying in the hospital rather than going home.  So as a result, no one told her when the discharge date was.  My brother text messaged my father after I was out and let them know I was out of the hospital. 

Remember the medical doctor who was convinced that 30 units of Lantus was too much for me and that I was probably lying so I could kill myself with an over dose of my long lasting insulin?  I am thinking that he still did not believe that is what my medical doctor had prescribed me.  The psychiatrist brought it up to my husband and sister-in-law before he brought me to them.  My sister-in-law happens to have a doctorate pharmacology.  She was able to explain to the psychiatrist that considering the fact that I was on a sliding scale for my humalog (fast acting insulin) that 30 units was an appropriate amount of lantus for me to take.  Gotta love those smart, well educated and loving sister-in-laws. 

After that conversation, we all concentrated on the delicious bread sticks, soup and salad that we had gotten from the Olive Garden, me in particular.  I pigged out more than the other two.

This is the end of the journey of my experiences of state run psychiatric hospital care.  It is certainly not the end of my stories.  I do try and end my stories with valuable things I have learned from the experience and from the story-telling itself.

I learned that I never want to go back to a hospital like that again.  I think there are more than just people like me who do not belong there, I think there others who do not have the support I do, that are stuck there for far longer than I was.  I learned that for the most part the staff in places like that are good and mean well and want to make a difference in their patient’s lives, but because of low budgets and too little staff they are not able to effect as much change as they want to.  They end up being babysitters and body guards more than anything else.  My experience at the medical hospital before I was transferred to the psychiatric hospital, showed me that there are medical professionals who still do not have a clue and possibly the desire to treat patients with a mental illness with any type of dignity or respect.  Finally, I learned that my husband, brother and sister-in-law are strong people who love me a great deal.  They are doing so much to help me get through this period of mental unhealthiness.  In some ways, I feel like my mental illness has allowed us to become closer.

Back to Part X

Scariest Time In My Life – Part X

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For those of you who have still stuck around for this part in this very long story, Thank you!  I really appreciate the encouragement I have been getting from several of you and I have loved it when some of you told me you could not wait until the next part of the story.

This is the next section of how I ended up in a state run psychiatric hospital and my experiences there.

When the other patients heard the loud noises, and shouting and banging coming from the hallway that separated the  men and women’s sides of the unit, they starting running for cover.  I just sat where I was.  There were still a few extra staff in our side, left overs from the earlier riot.  One of them got the bright idea to unlock and open the door that led into the hallway.  The shouting got louder and as soon as the door was slightly opened it exploded the rest of the way open with the bodies of two fighting men falling through it.  One of the men was my room mate’s true love, Chester, (the guy she met and fell in love with about 24 hours before) and I have no idea who the other man was.  It took several staff members to break them up.  Once the fight was over, one man was sent back to the men’s  and Chester remained in our section.  Chester then fell face first on the floor.  He seemed to be having a hard time catching his breath.  The nurses figured the excitement of the fight set off an asthma attack, so they had him use his inhaler and he seemed to get better. 

Chester ended up spending the night on a couch in the women’s section, because the staff was afraid he and the other man would end up in a fight again.  Chester was technically discharged from the hospital, as of Friday, but he was homeless and had no transportation, so the hospital was trying to work out how to get him transportation to a homeless shelter in the town that he said he lived in.  He was a little nervous that his discharged would be revoked, but that did not stop him from fighting anymore (we will get to that later).

This was the latest I had stayed up the whole time I had been in that hospital, so I went to bed.  I got up at my usual time the next morning, not knowing then that Chester was still in the women’s side of the unit.  When I walked out to the common area, there he was laying on the couch, snoring and drooling away.  Once the morning wake up call came for the women, the nurses got him up and sent him back over to the men’s section.

Everyone seemed calm that morning.  Dorthy was put on one on one with a nurse, and she seemed calm.  I had high hopes that this would be a much better day.  Breakfast came and went, too bad they did not serve jello at breakfast time.  We then were faced with another boring day of nothing to do.  In the common area side that had the picnic table a nurse had set up a radio so we could listen to music.  Only one channel came in on the radio but listening to the radio was nice for a change.  I got the coloring books and crayons my daughter sent me and several of us gathered at the picnic table and I shared the crayons and coloring books with some of the other patients.  Patty was talking non-stop as usual, and I guess she decided that people were paying more attention to the radio than her and she told everyone she was turning it off.  Of course there were protests, including from me.  I think Patty decided that if she could get me to do what she wanted the rest of them would as well, so she got in my face and said “Listen to me, I am older than you so you have to do what I say!”  I cannot remember exactly what my response was, but it was something along the lines of her not really knowing hold old I was so she could not use that as her reasoning.  The next thing she did was grab one of my arms and tell me that since we had an equal number of books during one of our gin rummy games that “made us equals” and that I had agreed with it.  I knew she was implying that since we were equals I should go along with what she wanted.  So this may sound very mean of me, but with her holding my arm and after overhearing her conversation with her husband the day before, I was a little afraid that if I let her have any kind of edge over me that things could end badly.  So I told her “No, I never agreed that we were equals in anything” and then I told her to “let go of me now”.  Fortunately, what I said worked and she let go of me and walked off, talking to herself. 

Lunch came and went and several of us went back to coloring.  I was bent over the picture I was coloring and all of the sudden I felt something very, very hard hit me in the side of my head.  It seriously hurt.  I looked up and standing there was Angel.  She was no longer on one on one and had decided to go back to punching people.  I told the nurses what she did and all that happened is she was given a few extra medications.  One of the nurses asked me if I was ok, and I replied with “No, it pisses me off that I can get punched in the side of the head and nothing is done about it!”  The nurse’s response was, that she was given extra medication.  Dorthy asked me why I did not punch her back and I let her know that is just not the kind of thing I do.  I went to my room and sat on my bed.  Between my former roommate trying to kill herself and seeing her do that, the riot and fight the night before, and now being punched in the head, I was extremely stressed and miserable.  I did not feel safe.  I just wanted to cry.

Not even two minutes after I got to my room, I hear a commotion going on in the common areas.  It seems Dorthy decided to riot again.  This time it was because of what went on between me and Angel.  Dorthy also was pissed that nobody really did anything about Angel hitting me, and Dorthy felt that if she had done the same thing she would have been treated much more harshly.  This time the nurses did not take as long to call a code.  I was too miserable to even want to pay any attention to it, so I continued to sit on my bed.  I cried.  I was back to feeling almost as scared as I did when I first came to the hospital.  I did not want to be there any longer.

During this round of chaos with Dorthy, the pay phone started ringing.  I was the closest patient to it so I answered it.  Everyone else was way on the other end of the unit.  The pay phone happened to be near the isolation room, where the staff had finally gotten Dorthy.  It was my grandmother on the phone. There was no way I was going to tell her all that had gone on in the last twenty-four hours.  Grandma made a comment about all the noise from people in the back ground, and I just kind of played it off like it was that loud all the time.  I talked with her for a few minutes and then told her I needed to go.  I guess something on my face showed that things were not quite right in my head, because shortly after I returned to my room, one of the nurses came and checked on me.  I had started to cry again.  I told the nurse exactly how I felt and why and he had me take some more anti-anxiety medication.

I spent a long while in my room, by myself.  Then we were called for supper.  Finally, I got the orange jello that made the meals bearable.  After supper, even though I did not go back to my room, I did keep to myself.  I was just not in the mood to engage someone in any kind of conversation with all that had happened.  My brother called me.  I do not remember what we talked about, most likely it was him telling me about the yummy food he ate for supper, especially compared to what I had eaten.  He had done that the night before.  All of the sudden, Angel attacked me.  I think my brother kind of knew what was going on, but I tried to stay calm while he wa
s on the phone.  I did not want him to worry.  I got off of the phone with him and told the nurses at the nurse’s station that Angel had gone after me again. They did pretty much the same thing that they had done before, not a whole lot of anything.

After telling the nurses about Angel attacking me again, I decided to call my husband.  When I am miserable he does an awesome job at making me feel better.  I told him about how I had been attacked twice by the same person, and nothing had really been done about it.  I let him know that I was frightened and just did not want to be there anymore.  He reminded me that he and Julie (my sister-in-law) were coming the next day and they would talk to the doctor and do everything they could to get me out.  I think he may have also told me that when he got off of the phone with me he was going to call the hospital and talk to them about what had happened and see what he could do to get them to protect me better.  Either way, he did call the hospital.  He talked with one of the nurses on my unit and basically told them that it was unacceptable for me to be attacked by the same patient twice in one day.  That after the first attack precautions should have been taken to make sure it did not happen again.  He also let them know that if it happened anymore he was showing up at the hospital with an attorney, since it seemed they could not take the proper measures to ensure the safety of their patients.  After my husband finished talking to the nurse, the nurse called me over and let me know that they would make sure nothing else happened to me.  I felt some better.

I decided to go to bed, knowing that a good night’s rest would help my stress levels and help me be prepared for talking to the doctor tomorrow.  I slept pretty good, and got up at my usual time and one of the nurses let me know that Angel had been placed on one on one and that they could guarantee my safety.

There was one nurse there who always worked the third shift, so the only time I saw her was when I got up in the morning.  There was something about her that was different than the rest.  That morning she had to stay later than usual.  Since there were three patients on one on one, and the staff was short handed under normal circumstances, she had to stay longer than usual so that she could be one of the nurses assigned to the one on one patients until someone else could be called in.

She and I started talking that morning, and she probably said the most insightful things to me that any staff member had said to me the whole time I had been in that hospital.  Even though I was in a psychiatric hospital there had been absolutely no counseling in the hospital.  I was given medications, told to go to groups, and that was pretty much it.

The things that nurse said to me made me look at my depression and its affect on me in a whole different light.

To be continued…

Scariest Time In My Life – Part XI
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Scariest Time In My Life – Part IX

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This is the next section of how I ended up in a state run psychiatric hospital and my experiences there.

As soon as I got back from visiting with my family and taking my medication for the evening, my gin rummy friend, Dorthy, decided to start a one woman riot.  She started the festivities off by launching a chair across the unit.  I was too stunned to move from my chair by the nurse’s station, and all of the other patients who had been in the common areas scattered.

The chair was followed by the turning over of a heavy couch or two and some other very heavy chairs were turned over.  By then I had slowly gotten up and kind of moved over to the medication window, which the nurse had locked and closed once furniture started flying.  The rest of the nurse’s were in the nurses station hollering at Dorthy to stop and  watching to see what she would do next.  Dorthy went up to the chair I had been sitting in.  It was like one of those jail house chairs, where a line of chairs are connected together by a steel bar.  She turned those over too.  Then she saw me, walked over, and in my head I am thinking “Oh Shit!”, and all she does is to let me know she will be ready to play gin rummy in a few minutes.  Then Dorthy went after Patty.  Apparently, Patty’s non stop talking aggravated Dorthy as much as it aggravated me.  Patty ran into the laundry room and locked herself in there.  Dorthy then went to the other section of the common area and turned the chairs over there, and also dumped the very heavy picnic table over.  As Dorthy walked past me again, heading for whatever target she wanted next, I asked her how she was doing and she calmly told me she was “just fine”.  There were two large, outside garbage cans in front of the nurses station, one was used for garbage, it was padlocked and had a rectangle cut in the top for us to put our trash into. The other garbage can was for our dirty linen.  Again, heavy objects.  Dorthy picked up the garbage can and threw it over the glass partition of the nurses station.  Fortunately, the nurses were able to get out of the way before hit anyone.  That is when the nurses decided it might be a good idea to call a code, and get help in subduing her.  Dorthy then got a cup and repeatedly filled it up with water and tossed the water over the partition of the nurses station.  On her last time to do that, one of the other patients started hollering “Here she comes again”, that upset Dorthy.  Dorthy took off running towards the other patient and threw the water on her and then proceeded to punch her a few times.  Then she picked up the linen can and threw it over the partition of the nurse’s station.  That time one of the nurses did not get out of the way.  So he started yelling all kinds of cuss words at Dorthy.  A doctor who was on duty that weekend had shown up to our unit and had scrambled to get into the nurses station.  She heard what the nurse yelled and fussed at him.  No one had shown up in answer of the code yet, so the doctor had them call the code again and instructed the medication nurse to fill up several syringes. 

The code team showed up.  Rather than wait for them to go after her, Dorthy charged them.  They ran away.  Then the doctor told them to man up and that is when they began chasing her around the unit.  The idea, I think, was to get her in the isolation room and then inject her with whatever was supposed to calm her down, but that did not quite happen.  At one point they had her on the floor and the medication nurse came and injected her with about three syringes.  Every single one of them thought that this would calm her down quickly and then they could get her in the isolation room with no more problems.  Dorthy popped up and gave them another run for their money.  Finally they got her in the isolation room.

Once in there Dorthy started spitting on the door, and the observation window, she took the straps off of the tie down bed and was beating on the door with them, then she started beating her head against the wall.  I noticed that one of the nurses was standing there with her finger on a button constantly.  I thought it was an intercom button so they could keep track of anything she was saying.  So I asked about it.  That is when I learned that in our state, no mentally ill patient is allowed to be locked into a room without being constantly supervised. The state decided to deal with it in their psychiatric hospital by making it so the isolation room could not be locked unless someone stood there and kept constant pressure on this button.

The nurses were trying to get Dorthy to take some more medication that the on call doctor had prescribed to further calm her down.  Dorthy was refusing and the nurses told her that she could not get out of the isolation room until she did.  Dorthy kept screaming at them and telling them no.  So when no one was looking except the poor nurse holding the button, I snuck over to the observation window of the isolation room, and started talking to Dorthy.  She instantly calmed down.  I told her about the coloring books my daughter had sent me and how I had not seen them yet because the nurses had not had time to go through my presents. However, if she would calm down and take her medicine, she and I could color together.  That seemed to do the trick, after that she took the medication, and the nurses let me have my coloring books and crayons. Dorthy and I sat down and colored together for a while.

A couple of hours after the one woman riot, there was loud shouting and banging and cussing coming from the hallway that separated the men and women’s sides of the unit.  I could only imagine what was happening now.

To be continued…

Scariest Time Of My Life – Part X
Back to Part VIII

Scariest Time In My Life – Part V III

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This is the next section of how I ended up in a state run psychiatric hospital and my experiences there.

Visitors!  I was so excited when one of the nurses told me that my visitors were waiting for me.  I was ready to get out to where they were right then and there.  Unfortunately, I had to wait, and wait and wait and wait.  I had to wait for a nurse to be available to walk me out to where my visitors were, and that nurse also had to be available to stay with me and my visitors for an hour.  Finally, one of the nurses was ready to take me to my visitors.  There was no visiting room, we had to meet and talk in a very small lobby area.  Right about the time we were heading to the lobby, nurses from both the men and women’s section decided it was time to take everyone who could outside.  All of those patients had to go through the lobby area.  More waiting.  Once the path was clear, I was able to see who all had come to see me.  My husband, my brother and my sister-in-law.  I was so happy to see all of them.  There were hugs all around.  Those were the best hugs I had ever had.  We all sat down, including the nurse who found a chair a few feet away.

I think my husband and brother were shocked at what they had seen at the hospital.  My sister-in-law had done an internship there a few years ago, so she was more prepared than the rest.  My brother told me how when they were waiting by the gate to be let in, a patient that was out in the “yard” took a great deal of interest in his watch, so when the patient was not looking he put his watch in his pocket.  They all mentioned that there was a pile of poo by the gate, and since there are no animals at the hospital, they all highly suspected that it came from a patient.  Later on when I mentioned that to a nurse, she verified that there was a male patient that had a habit of doing that.  I think with what my family had seen when they were coming into the hospital, they became more concerned about me, but being how they are, they did not voice their concerns so that I would not become more anxious.

I told them what unit was like, and how awful the food was.  I described some of my fellow patients and nurses.  Then the difficult conversation started.  They all wanted to know, from me, what happened the day I ended up in the hospital.  I told them how for several days I had been feeling bad, and how at the time I did not recognize that it was because of my medication not working properly.  I described how as each day passed I felt worse and worse, and that my emotions were out of control.  My brother and sister-in-law wanted to know why I had not told anyone, and I honestly did not have a good answer for that.  I then got to the day when things went awry.  I explained how it had been time for me to take my medications, and how I took ten extra beta blockers and in my mind I was already planning to take more extra medication in an hour and how I was just going to keep repeating that until I had successfully committed suicide.  I told them how after I did that I realized that my thinking was not right, and I tried to call my counselor, and I was told she was not in.  After I was told she was not in and did not have any available appointments the next day, the receptionist transferred me to the crisis line, telling me that the crisis line could get me an emergency appointment.  I explained how the person who answered the phone at the crisis line decided the crisis team needed to come to my house after she learned I had taken ten extra beta blockers and I had plan, before I called, to take more in an hour.  From there I told them that the crisis team decided I needed to be hospitalized.  I expressed how pissed off I was, that I had called for help and that in calling for help, I ended up in the state run psychiatric hospital, and how I would not be calling my counselor for help again, if this was the end result.

My brother is courageous.  He was the only person to point something out.  He pointed out that before I called for help, I had taken extra medication.  He also said that he felt even if I had gotten a hold of my counselor she would have had to have me hospitalized too.  He also said that give the same circumstances, that if I had called him or his wife they would have done the same thing,  I had taken extra medication and had plans to take more. 

I really hate it when my little brother is right, and he was.  I was not wanting to take responsibility for the fact that I had thought about and started attempting to kill myself, so it was very easy for me to blame the crisis team for me ending up in the hospital.  However, I still believe that how was I treated, in the medical hospital especially, was unacceptable.  I agreed that in the future, since I now knew what it felt like when my medication quit working, I would call someone before I started trying to kill myself.

My brother then wanted to know what would make me try and kill myself twice.  The best answer I had at the time was that it seemed like the only solution for what was going on in my head.  I gave him a better explanation later.

My doctor had asked that my husband come to the hospital Monday.  My sister-in-law let me know she was going to come with him.  That way if the doctor had any questions about family support or anything else she could be there to help my husband and show that I did have family support.

My visitors came bearing gifts!  My husband was a brave, brave man and had actually gone clothes shopping for me, and bought me some more comfortable clothing, and a new bra.  In my opinion it takes a real man to go bra shopping for his wife.  The day before, when I was talking to Anna (my daughter) on the phone I told her how bored I was, she had picked out some coloring books and crayons for my husband to bring me, so I would have something to do.  My sister-in-law had brought me some old pictures of my niece.  That was such a special gift, giving me something that had good memories attached to it.

For whatever reason, the nurse who was supervising us piped in and told me what a nice family I had.  He also offered his opinion that he did not think I would be in the hospital much past the weekend.  He said the nurses had noticed that I was socializing, participating in groups, and a few other things.  Then he let us know that it had been an hour and it was time for me to go back to the women’s section.  We all said our goodbyes, the nurse took my gifts so that one of the other nurses could check and make sure no one had snuck me a saw or some other escape tool.

I figured that now that my visitors were gone I would be a little sad the rest of the evening.  With what happened in the unit after we got back, I never had time to feel sad. As soon as I got back into the women’s section, it was time to take my medications.  I lined up with the other patients.  Dorthy was in line behind me, and she and I talked while we were waiting.  We made plans to play some more rummy after we took our medication.  When it was my turn, I took my medication and then found a chair by the nurse’s station to wait for Dorthy to finish her medication.

I overheard Dorthy tell the medication nurse that she was not going to take her medication.  No patient can be forced to take their medication if they do not want to, but the nurses do try and convince people to take what they are prescribed.  If that does not work then they mark in our charts that we refused the medication.  That way the doctors can see if we are being compliant.  So after Dorthy said she was not going to take her medication, the nurse began trying to convince her to take it.  Dorthy wandered away from the wi
ndow, spoke to me for a minute, she seemed calm as could be to me.

Two minutes later, I see a chair go flying through the unit.  It seems Dorthy decided to start a one woman riot.  People scattered, nurses started yelling, and I was too stunned to move from my chair.

To be continued…

Scariest Time In My Life – Part IX
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Scariest Time In My Life – VII

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This is the next section of how I ended up in a state run psychiatric hospital and my experiences there.

I realize that this story has ended up being very long.  If you have not gotten so bored that you have quit reading it by now, I probably should warn you that I am not sure how much longer it will take me to finish telling it.  Once I started writing it, the thoughts and the memories started to flow and I feel the need to keep writing the story until it is completed.   I want to hold on to the details, the thoughts and feelings I had during that time, and this seems the best possible way to do that.

I was up at my usual four in the morning time that Saturday morning.  It was nice and quiet and I was just using the time to get myself prepared for the day.  Since it was Saturday and there were no groups, I had an idea that it was going to be a very long and boring day, up until the time my visitors arrived.

A few minutes after I sat in the common area, one of the other patients got up and went to the restroom.  When she came out she realized that I was sitting out there and she decided to come and talk to me.  Her name was Patty.  I had seen her around the day before, and my impression of her was that she was loud, and used to getting her own way.  She started the conversation off by telling me she was getting out of the hospital that evening.  I did not say much to that because even I knew that patients were not discharged on the weekends.  She started to tell me how she ended up in the hospital, basically her husband tricked her and dropped her off there is how her story went.  She also shared her theory with me about why all of us women were in the hospital.  She felt that it was a punishment from God.  That because we had all married someone that God did not want us to, and that was the ultimate sin, that God was punishing us by making it so we had to be in the hospital.  I should not have done it, but I challenged her on what she said and told her that I thought she was wrong and why.  It appeared my disagreeing with her set up some kind of weird competition in her head.  She decided that she had to do anything she could to prove to me that she and I were equals or maybe even prove that she could dominate me.  Finally, I got up and wandered off and did my morning routine.

While everyone else was scurrying around taking showers and getting dressed, I sat on the couch near the pay phone.  Patty took that time to call her husband and give him some very strict, and slightly scary, instructions.  Like I mentioned earlier she had it in her head she was getting out that day.  Nothing that anyone could say would deter her from that thought.  So she called her husband up and told him she was getting out that evening when he came to visit.  I heard her say that she had not discussed it with the doctor but felt like if her husband came and brought a couple of friends with him, they could convince the doctor to let her go home.  I do not think her husband was all that convinced that she should come home, because the next thing I knew she is screaming “Be a hero, don’t be a zero” and telling him that if he did not do exactly as she told him to do and bring the proper friends to the hospital to get her, when she finally did get out of the hospital she was going to make his life miserable and even trick him and stick him in the hospital to see how he liked it.  She proceeded to scream the “Be a hero, don’t be a zero” phrase several more times, she told her husband what a complete idiot he was, and then she would let him know he was coming to get her out that day.  She seriously reminded me of the character Kathy Bates played in the Stephen King movie Mercy. 

We ate breakfast.  While I was in the dining room eating my breakfast I heard some woman screaming “I want my medicine!” and a lot of things being banged around.  I did not think too much of it until I got back to the women’s side of the unit, then I realized it was my new roommate pitching a fit because of the doctor not letting her have her regular medications.  My thought at the time was, I hope she does not get too nutty at night when I want to sleep. 

After breakfast there was nothing to do and most of the patients went back to bed and slept most of the day.  One of the nurses had clued me in on the fact that they take notes about us all day long and one of the things the doctors look for is if we are able to get along with our “peers”.  I decided it would be a wise decision to mingle with the other patients for a little bit.  That is when I met Dorthy.

Dorthy was a very young black woman, who had been in that hospital for four months, this time around.  She and I were talking and I happened to mention that it was too bad there was not even a deck of cards around the unit for us to amuse ourselves with.  She told me she had a deck in her room and went to get them.  She and I spent hours and hours playing rummy and talking.  Since we were not allowed to have anything to write with we could not keep score, the winner was decided by whoever had the most books by then end of a hand.  It greatly helped the time pass by.  Every once in a while another patient would join us.  Even though the setting was rather yucky, I really enjoyed getting to know Dorthy. 

Patty decided she wanted to play rummy against me.  She made up this rule that if she won or we got the same amount of books then that meant we were equals.  It took her three hands but finally she and I ended up with the same amount of books.  That is when she decided we were “equals”, that thought see to make her very happy. 

Lunch! Blah! Thank goodness for the jello!  I had decided that after lunch I would head back to my room and take a nap.  As I turned the corner, I noticed that my room door was shut.  I had been leaving it open because my roommate needed a shower and leaving the door open allowed the air to circulate more.  I figured she had shut it again because of the noise in the unit.  I opened my room door, and I remember standing there in shock, not really understanding what I was seeing.  My roommate had taken one end of her bed sheet and had wrapped it around her neck and then taken the other end of the bed sheet and wrapped it around the foot of her bed and was trying to choke herself.  I started hollering for a nurse, and they all came running.  After that she was moved to another room, where she could be placed on one on one observation. 

My new roommate was a patient who had been in the hospital for a few months and was going to be released on Monday.  Her name was Rhonda.  When she came into the room with her sheets and pillows and her other belongings, I noticed that on top of her t-shirt she had a man’s pajama top on.  She asked me if I had heard the news about her and Chester.  Chester was a patient from the men’s section of the unit.  The story she told me is that she and Chester met the day before in the unit where the groups are held and it was love at first sight.  Chester had given her his pajama top to wear, in much the same fashion that teenage boys let their girls where their letterman jackets.  So all that Rhonda needed to do at this point, was break up with her fiance, after he picked her up from the hospital, and then she and Chester, and her children would live happily ever after. 

All of this made for a very chaotic Saturday.  My brain felt over loaded with all that I had seen and experienced so far that day.  Right about the time, I thought I could not take anymore craziness, I was told my visitors had arrived.

Scariest Ti
me Of My Life – Part VIII
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