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…