This is the next section of how I ended up in a state run psychiatric hospital and my experiences there.
After the crisis team and I arrived at the hospital, and the psychologist left me at the front desk, he went back and spoke to someone about me. Very quickly, I was taken back to triage and then taken to a room in the emergency department. At that time, no one seemed to be making a big deal about anything so, I started thinking again that a mistake had been made and it would be straightened out. A doctor came in, asked me a few questions and then everyone’s attitude towards me changed.
A nurse came in and told me I had been 10-13nd. Where I live that means a doctor or a judge has declared you a danger to yourself or others and has committed you against your will to a psychiatric hospital. Shock began to set in again. My guess, is that the decision to commit me to a psychiatric hospital had been made before I even saw the doctor. It had probably been made when the psychologist from the crisis team went back and talked to someone in the emergency department and had left me out front.
I was so mentally unprepared for the things that happened next. That same nurse who told me I had been 10-13nd, handed me a hospital gown and told me I had to take EVERYTHING off and put their gown on. I asked if this included underwear and she said it did. I let her know immediately that I was leaving my underwear on and that was that. She said that she would have to check with the charge nurse. She also told me they expected me to be leaving for the psychiatric hospital within a few hours, once they found one that had room for me. I was told that I would have to go in the hospital gown and not my regular clothes.
The nurse left my room, leaving the door open and within seconds a security guard showed up with a chair, which he stuck in the open doorway. By this time some of the shock was wearing off and I was getting pissed off. I really felt like I had been handed a bad deal. In my mind, I was thinking that all I had done was realized I was in trouble, and called my counselor and some how that attempt at getting help before I took any more pills ended up with me being stuck and guarded, waiting to go to a psychiatric hospital. In fact, that thought is all I focused on for several days.
The charge nurse came into my room. The guard left the room and shut the door. The thought I had was that she had come in to take my underwear away. That is what I was prepared for. What ended up happening was much much worse, at least as far as I was concerned. She told me she was going to have to strip search me. A thorough strip search. I remember staring at her for a few seconds because my mind could not fully comprehend what she had said for a few seconds. I then let her know I am not a drug user, nor do I carry weapons, and that I was in here because I had called for help and I felt that things had gone awry. I also let her know that she was NOT going to strip search me. Her response was to let me know that all the security guards in the hospital were also sheriff deputies and she would have the guard outside my door arrest me and take me to jail if I did not let her search me the way she needed to. I promptly burst into tears. I sobbed. I relented and let her do what she needed to do. It was the most humiliating thing I have ever experienced. My only consolation was she let me keep my underwear.
After the charge nurse left my room and the guard was back in his place, the doctor let me know they were going to have to hook me up to some heart monitors since I had taken extra of my beta blocker. Everything looked fine with my heart, but they did leave everything hooked up so they could keep monitoring me. At that point, I found out that my husband had been out in the waiting room for quite some time and they had not let him come back to see me. I asked the guard if he would let my husband come back and he said that he would. My husband came into my room, I explained to him what had happened, and how I felt that if I had not called for help I would not be in there. I did some more crying. He was great and stayed calm and calmed me down, and then the guard told him he had to go.
During all of this time the emergency department had been working on getting me into one of the two psychiatric hospitals in our area. The hospital that agreed to take me, said they wanted the medical hospital to monitor me for 24 hours, because of the beta blocker, before I could go there. I was taken to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where they decided to start an IV and flush out my system to help get the extra beta blocker out of my system.
I was getting angrier and angrier because I still felt that all of this was happening because I had called for help, and that things had gone awry. I really was not pleasant to be around. I knew I was only going to spend one night in ICU and part of the next day, and after that I was not really sure what was going to happen and when I would be going to the psychiatric hospital. That also had me very worried.
I have something called restless leg syndrome (RLS). Basically, it means that my legs are very uncomfortable, especially at night, and with out my medication sleep is very difficult. When it came time for me to take my night dose of my RLS medication, I was not given the correct dose. I was given a much smaller dose. I mentioned to the nurse that they should have a bag of all of my medication bottles somewhere and they could read it and see what my normal dosages are. The doctor on call was contacted and he told them to give me the proper dose and I assumed that things had all been taken care of.
After the night medications were sorted out, I settled down for what I knew would be a sleepless night.
To be continued…
I am frustrated with my anxiety disorder. I had been doing so well with it for a while but in the last few weeks it as reared it ugly head. My counselor has suggested that since my depression is getting better, that my anxiety was acting up a bit since I had more time and energy to devote to managing it. What she says makes sense, but does not make it any less frustrating.
