inpatient

Rock Bottom, Part 2

~ KJ ~ 9 Comments

Being hospitalized brings up such mixed emotions. In a way, it’s a relief; you get a break from life for a while. But then you realize that when you get out, life is going to be the same, if not worse. Missed school, missed exams, late bill payments. Whatever anxiety was reduced quickly comes back tenfold.

As I rode in the back of the ambulance for an hour and a half, my mind kept coming back to two things. The first, why the fuck do these people care about me? I didn’t get it. Why did my friend care enough to take time out of her day to bring me what I needed? Why did she care enough to comfort me when was scared to go? Why did the therapist care enough to wipe my tears away? Why did my therapist care enough to not give up on me? Why did my psychiatrist care enough to save me? Why won’t they just let me be? Why is it so wrong to die? What good am I to these people, to the world?

The second thing stemmed from a conversation I had with the nurse while I was waiting for transport a couple of hours prior. In our conversation, I told her about my writing work with HealthyPlace, my articles on DID. I’m normally very hesitant to share my professional work with anyone on the outside ever since it was used against me. But I trusted her, so I told her about my diagnosis and my writing.

She read through a few of my articles.  Then she stopped and asked if she could ask me a question. I told her it was okay. Then she asked me “why don’t you take your own advice?”

It took me a minute to process. I understood her point. I’ve spent the last two plus years writing about DID, sharing ways to improve communication, work with your system, ask for help. I gave people with DID hope that life could be doable. Yet I had done very little of what I had written. I was giving others hope when I myself was hopeless, telling others to do things I gave up on doing. Why? Because I was different. Because I didn’t think I was worth it. I wasn’t being realistic with myself or with anyone else, and that bothered me.

I held on to both of those thoughts throughout my entire hospital stay. People care. I matter. It probably helped me get through the hospital stay more than anything else did.

I realized early on that the hospital wasn’t the place for me. The first night when the psychiatrist did my intake, she not only made me feel guilty for leaving my brother, but she also didn’t know what DID was. Instead of explaining it, I told her to forget about it. I didn’t have to energy to fight her on anything, or to educate her on things she should have already known. I told her about my heart condition, and my need for sodium-laden fluids. She told me they didn’t do special diets there, and I’d have to deal. At that point, I was done.

The only positive of hospitalization, aside from the friends I made, was being weaned off of my heart medication. The psychiatrist I spoke to the following day agreed that the  medication can have severe side effects in rare instances, and can cause increased suicideality and worsening depression. While I had that before the medication, I certainly didn’t need anything making it more apparent. I appreciated that this psychiatrist listened to me instead of brushing me off as knowing nothing.

I did feel a little bit better once I weaned off of the medication. I was still suicidal, and still very much depressed, but I knew that staying inpatient wasn’t going to help that in any way. I had already been there a week, and it was hell. I wasn’t allowed to leave the floor because I was considered a fall risk. I couldn’t go to outside groups or go to the cafeteria for meals. It was isolating. I called my friend every night. That helped me get through. I knew she couldn’t visit because I was sent somewhere considerably far away; it hurt, but I understood it. I cried the first two nights I was there, but after that, it got easier. I learned of her son’s plan to come in an armored truck and help me break out; I halfway wished that plan was possible.

I was placed as a dual diagnosis patient — which I had to explain several times that I was there for PTSD, not for substance abuse (which, unfortunately, I just discovered they have added DD to my medical record). Most patients there were dual diagnosis — a telling sign of the opioid crisis and its aftereffects. Psychiatric facilities here now have more patients with drug or alcohol abuse than they do general psych. It definitely changes the experience, and the needs of DD patients become priority, at the expense of other patients.

They wanted me to stay longer. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it. I was starting to get stir crazy. One of the patients had become indirectly threatening towards me. It started to feel more unsafe as the days went on. I did everything I was supposed to, so they discharged me, with an appointment the next day for intake at the program I was in before I was hospitalized.

It wasn’t as easy to come back to life as I thought it would be. I felt like a failure. I had to restart program. A program I had been in since August. I saw so many people come and go, and I was still there. And now to be there again, starting all over. Why can’t I just get over everything already? Why can’t I just be cured?

I wish I could say I climbed out of rock bottom, but I’m not sure I have.

Rock Bottom, Part 1

~ KJ ~ 6 Comments

I had managed for months to (very narrowly) avoid hospitalization. Despite the increasing suicideality, the treatment team trusted me enough to not put any of my plans into action. And I hadn’t, for those couple of months. I was honest with them, because as much as part of me wanted to die, there was another part of me that wanted even more to live.

But I wasn’t getting better. I was still an emotional clusterfuck from the abortion. My heart issues were adding to my hopelessness, and my heart medications were adding to my impulsiveness. I had no energy. I was coasting through the days on autopilot because that’s all I had it in me to do. I had no money to pay my bills. I had been living off cash advances from credit cards that were now maxed out. I reached out and asked for help — a last-ditch effort — and was turned down. It wasn’t being turned down that hurt me, but the reasons why, the denial. I should have expected it; I got the same response when I asked for help to get away from my mother. But I was desperate.

I had given up. What use was I to the world? Broke, unstable, unable to work, to contribute to the world. I was a burden. Living in my former boss’s house, eating her food, drinking her water. She had no obligation to me, yet there I was, being a burden, taking away from her family.

I was a burden to my therapist. Four months into an 8-week program and I was still in crisis. As much as she tried, she couldn’t help me. She couldn’t get through. And I couldn’t receive.

I sat in my desk that night, scribbling down on paper what I needed to say. I couldn’t quite get it all out. Everything I wrote down didn’t seem like enough. It needed to be enough. Because it was going to be the last thing I ever said.

I went into program the next day like nothing had happened. But I was withdrawn. My therapist knew something wasn’t right. I shut her down and told her everything was okay, but she still felt something was off. I couldn’t tell her she was right.

I couldn’t keep it inside very long. The next day, after some prodding, I disclosed what I had done. I knew I wasn’t going to promise my way out of it. My hopelessness had gone too far. It was too dangerous now. I was too much of a risk. I had to contract for safety that night, but I knew when I went back the next day, that there wasn’t going to be a contract.

An hour and a half into the day, and I saw my therapist come to the door. I knew it was for me. I knew what was coming.

I sat in the office, my therapist sitting at my side, my psychiatrist sitting across at his desk. I looked down and twiddled my thumbs, trying to avoid eye contact, trying not to see the look of concern on both of their faces. As soon as my psychiatrist uttered the word inpatient, I started to cry. I hated the hospital, just as much as I hated my life.

Maybe we need to consider ECT. Great. Electric shocks to your brain. That’s where my life has ended up. We had tried all the medications. We sat through all the therapy. And we ended up at ECT. A last resort.

My mind was all over the place. I had managed to stop crying long enough to look up and see that my psychiatrist had been crying as well. A man normally seemingly void of emotion. I’ve never cried for a patient before. I knew his feelings were real. I knew his concern was genuine. He wasn’t looking to punish me. He was trying to save me.

As my therapist was making calls and arranging for my medical transport, I waited with the nurse. I begged just to smoke one cigarette. I needed to calm down. I had to promise her I wouldn’t run away; and I didn’t. I had finally stopped crying. I felt okay, or at least as okay as I could be in the moment. I talked with the nurse. I told her about my DID diagnosis, and about some of my trauma history. She asked questions, and I answered honestly. I saw her facial expression change; I saw her sadness. My immediate urge was to apologize to her, yet here she was apologizing to me. You didn’t get to have a childhood. An unfortunate truth. A reality that may not have been had someone just helped me.

I sent a text to my friend to ask her if she could bring me clothes. She packed a bag with everything I needed. My favorite hoodie. My favorite pajamas. The softest t-shirts she could find. I cried when I told her what was going on. I was ashamed. I didn’t want her to be mad at me. I didn’t want to lose my home or my family. I didn’t want her to have to worry about me. I didn’t want anyone to worry.

A few hours later, the ambulance came to transport me. I hugged the therapist goodbye. Through tears, I told her I was sorry. She wiped my tears away, and assured me I had nothing to be sorry for. I hugged her again. She handed me a piece of my favorite chocolate for the road. I hugged my therapist. I saw the emotion in her face — I couldn’t tell if it was sadness or concern — but I was sorry for it. One last hug to the nurse and I was on my way, strapped to a transport bed, just like a sick person.

I need to go

~ KJ ~ 15 Comments

It was just supposed to be a regular doctor’s appointment.

I wanted to see if my doctor would change some of my inhalers, since my recent hospital visits indicate that something isn’t working right.

I was still sick on Monday, but I didn’t think anything of it. I took the train ride down and walked a mile to my doctor’s office. No problem. I made it just fine. I was still standing.

After a few minutes of waiting in the waiting room, the nurse called me back to the room. She took my vitals, and asked if I was okay. Of course I’m okay. I’m just here to change my meds.

The nurse practitioner came in, listened to my lungs, then left the room. Well, then.

A minute later, the nurse came back with an oxygen tank. Then the nurse practitioner came in. “You need to go to the hospital.“

I sat there, completely shocked. I just came for a followup. This was not in my planning. I had work in a few hours. I needed to get out of here so I could catch the train back home. I don’t have time for the hospital. I don’t have time for this.

But I didn’t have a choice. There was no air exchange in my lower lungs. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I ended up being taken by ambulance to the emergency room, in a hospital I had never been to, 40 minutes away from my home.

I couldn’t focus on anything but the time. If I could just get this over with, I can still make it to work. I didn’t understand what the big deal was. I haven’t passed out. These people are just overreacting. I am fine. I can walk. I can talk. I am fine.

But I wasn’t fine. The breathing treatments hadn’t helped. The IV steroids weren’t helping enough. My oxygen was still too low, and they had to admit me. It was then that the panic started to set in. Once they wheeled me to my room upstairs, I started to lose it. The emergency room I could handle, but not this. I started crying.

I could feel myself starting to slip away. I tried to tell the nurse what was going on. I told her I had PTSD, that something bad happened to me in a hospital and that this was extremely difficult for me and that I would rather leave. I kept saying I need to go.

What did my honesty get me? A psych hold. As if I didn’t have enough going on, their response was to put me on a safety 1 on 1. I wasn’t suicidal. I was in a panic state.

I was humiliated. They forced me to take off all of my clothes, including my underwear. I explained to them that I was a survivor of sexual abuse and that I needed my clothing to help me feel protected. They gave exactly zero fucks. I asked if I could speak to someone about this to explain the situation, and they told me no. I asked again to speak to someone higher up, and was told there was no one to speak to. Once they put you on a psych hold, you have no rights. I asked for water for over an hour and couldn’t even get that.

I should have been at work that night. I shouldn’t have been laying in a hospital bed without my clothes and possessions being treated like I had committed a crime. I couldn’t even pee by myself. The aide had to stand there and watch me pee and wipe, just like my mother used to watch me before she decided she needed to “help”.

I cried off and on that night. I wasn’t even concerned about my lungs anymore. I wanted my protection back. I wanted my dignity. It was stolen away from me. Again. My therapist was trying to help calm me down, but I was so out of it I couldn’t process everything she was saying. I eventually got so tired of crying that I fell asleep.

I called my program therapist early the next morning to tell her what was going on and ask for support. I was concerned about the psych hold more than anything. I didn’t want to end up inpatient, and I wanted her to be able to advocate for me if needed. My experience with the nurses had been so horrible, that I had low expectations for the psychiatrist. I expected to have to fight. But I didn’t have to. I saw the psychiatrist later that morning and after two minutes, he had taken off the psych hold. I told him I  had explained to the nurses that I had previous trauma in a hospital and I had PTSD, and he said my reaction was completely understandable given the circumstances.

It was great that the psychiatrist realized that, but I had been put through 17 hours of unnecessary bullshit, re-traumatization, and cruelty. For nothing. I was punished for being a victim.

By then, I didn’t even care how my lungs were at all. I could have been dying, I didn’t care. I was not staying in that hospital any longer. The pulmonary doctor came to see me. She saw something on the x-rays and told me I needed a CT scan. Nope, sorry. I have things to do. My patience was already too far gone. Am I dying right this second? No? Then I need to go.

I told the pulmonary doctor I would come back for the tests. But I don’t need to go back.

I don’t need any more diagnoses. I don’t need any more problems. I don’t need any more humiliation. I can’t take any more.

Smile, it ain’t that bad.

~ KJ ~ 16 Comments

On my way to therapy this morning, a man I had never met before stopped me as I was walking and said “just smile, it ain’t that bad.” Part of me wanted to slap him in the face, but I chose instead to keep on walking so I could get to my appointment on time.

Smile. I have smiled before, in the few moments of genuine happiness. But happiness is not something that comes easily to me. I’m not the kind of person that can force fake emotions. I can’t just smile if I’m not really happy. I am aware that a lot of the time, I look sad, miserable, and worried. Because I am sad, miserable, and worried.

I’m not smiling now, because my mind is racing with anxious thoughts about school. What if it’s too hard? How am I going to get the text books I need? What if they find out about my DID?

I’m not smiling now, because I’m worried about how I’m going to pay my rent next month, how I’m going to stretch my grocery budget so I can feed myself until September, what bills are going to have to be put off for next month, and what credit card I can max out so I can get my bus card.

I’m not smiling now, because I’m exhausted from work, a job I am lucky to still have because I get so stressed out sometimes that I dissociate and have trouble getting my work done.

I’m not smiling now, because I’m tired of constantly living in fear of my mother. I’m tired of having to calm younger parts and convince them we are safe, when sometimes I can’t even believe that myself. Fear takes away any smile.

I’m not smiling now, because I feel so alone. Even when I am surrounded by people, my ability to trust others is so shattered that I live in a constant state of fear of people.

I’m not smiling now, because I sat through my therapy session earlier this morning and cried as my therapist talked about inpatient hospitalization. Because I am a mess. I’ve been dissociating so much that I don’t even know when and if I am ever fully here anymore. Last week was so bad, that people were actually scared of me. And I don’t remember a thing.

I went to therapy last Thursday and barely remember what happened. Apparently it was obvious that I was not present. That seems to be the theme of my life lately. Not present.

I saw the concern on my therapist’s face. I tried to listen to what she was saying, but my mind was just going to other places.

The sinking feeling in your heart when you know your best isn’t good enough.

The hopelessness you feel when you realize you can’t be helped.

All of these things went through my mind. I’m not good enough at life. My therapist can’t even help me. She wants me to go to a hospital, and they’re not going to be able to help me. Then what? I can’t even miss work. I can’t afford it. This is a lose/lose situation.

Despite my doubts, I understand where my therapist is coming from. She is concerned that one little thing will happen and push me off the edge. Next month, when I start school again, it just may be too much for me to handle. I am on a roller coaster ride and she cannot ride with me. She can’t be with me all day, every day, to deal with issues as they come up. And even though I am (barely) managing that on my own, it’s not going to be that way every time. I am headed for a breakdown.

So no, I can’t smile. And yes, it is that bad.

Involuntarily voluntarily admitted

~ KJ ~ Leave a comment

I’m back.

A few hours ago, I was released from the psychiatric unit of my local hospital.  I had been there since Friday.  I didn’t want to go to the hospital.  In the end, I knew it was the right thing to do.

Friday night, everything just came to a head.  My flashbacks were occurring quite frequently to the point that I was becoming almost paranoid.  Looking back, my thoughts were so irrational.  I genuinely believed that my mother was going to come and hurt me.  I heard her voice in my head and I couldn’t get it out.  I didn’t feel safe.  I jumped at every little noise.  I couldn’t breathe because I had gotten myself in such a panic.  I was switching between wanting to die and wanting to find safety.  I ended up cutting myself more than I even consciously realized.  I taped menstrual pads to myself, grabbed my hoodie and my sneakers and ran out of the house.  I left the house originally planning to take a walk, hoping I would be able to find some relief.  Instead, I found myself panicking even more, constantly looking over my shoulder, running through the streets in the dark of night.  After awhile I decided to walk to the hospital.  I waited in front of the emergency room for a while still hoping the feelings would go away.  But they were still there.  I knew I had no control at that time.  So I went in.

When I first got in the ER, I was panicking. I kept telling the nurse to “please don’t let them (my family) find me, please don’t tell them I’m here.”  When I met with the social worker in crisis, she asked me if I was hiding from anyone because of what I kept saying. I told her the basics, that I left my family because they were not nice people. No one wants to hear that shit anyway.

After a few hours in the hospital, the panic began to subside.  I started to feel safe again.  I wanted to leave, but of course you can’t just do that.  If you don’t admit yourself voluntarily, they will involuntarily commit you.  Then, if you try to sign out of voluntary before you are released, they will involuntarily commit you.  So not much of a choice, is it?  The staff kept trying to tell me I was depressed.  I specifically told them I was not depressed.  It was an issue of anxiety and PTSD.  I know the difference very well.  It always seems to be a fight, though.  I was more upset at the fact that I was now going to be missing my first day of work, and I’d probably be out of a job.  All these steps forward I took and now I’d have to start over.

In the hospital, I contemplated going back home.  Maybe I just wasn’t cut out for this freedom.  I don’t know.  I moved away, yet I still ended up hospitalized.  So maybe it wasn’t the right choice.  Maybe I missed something.  Maybe my mother was right.  Maybe I can’t live without her.  I just want to be normal.  But maybe I have to acknowledge the fact that I will never be normal.

It doesn’t help hat my support system is lacking.  I have no family, and while I know that is for the better, hospital staff see that as concerning.  I tried to reach out to someone on Friday night, only to be shut down.  I couldn’t contact my therapist because she was out of the country.  While my online friends are available, I often think there is a lack of understanding, especially when some of the comments they make tend to piss me off or upset me even more than I was upset to begin with.  I’m not even surprised I ended up in the hospital.  I have no one here.  I’m not even sure the people I have a distance away are supportive for me anymore.  At this point, I only have complete trust in my therapists.  Everyone else is just sort of out there outside of my protective bubble.

Going back to my hospital experience, I can’t tell you how much I dislike going into psychiatric hospitals because you have to answer the same horrible questions so many times, tell all your problems to at least one person on each floor.  It’s frustrating for me because I always struggle with whether or not I should be open about my history.  If I say I have flashbacks, they want to know of what and why.  When they ask about any abuse history, they want to know who, how, and how long.  I never know what reaction I’ll get when I say it was my mother.  I admit, the last couple of times I was hospitalized prior to this, the staff were accepting and appropriately responsive to me.  During this hospitalization, when I revealed that my mother was my abuser, the nurse made a face and asked me “Are you a lesbian?  Is your mother a lesbian?”  What? Hold up.  I just told you that my mother and father both abused me, which means my father was in the picture, which means my mother was not a lesbian.  But even then, what the hell kind of a question is that?  Saying something like that makes me feel like you are insinuating all parties involved are homosexual.  Mother-daughter sexual abuse has nothing…I repeat NOTHING…to do with homosexuality.  This assumption gets me so infuriated.  If I was a male who admitted being abused by a male, would she have asked me if I was gay?  I highly doubt it.  Sexual abuse is rarely about sexuality.  I am not a fucking lesbian.  Fuck.  If it weren’t for the fact that I hadn’t slept in about 30 hours at that point, I probably would have blown up at her.  But I was so physically and mentally exhausted that I just let it go.  It makes me rage just thinking about it, though.  Then again, I can’t blame people for their complete lack of knowledge about MDSA.  I just need to use this experience as more fuel for me to spread awareness.

I have to say, the one (and probably only) positive that came out of this hospitalization experience was seeing the psychiatrist.  This psychiatrist had a brain.  He had a concern.  He actually talked to me for a good 30 minutes, which is something I have never experienced from a psychiatrist before.  He listened to me.  He listened to my concerns.  We went over my whole lengthy medication history.  For the first time, someone is focusing on treating my PTSD.  Not depression.  Everyone always wants to shove anti-depressants down my throat.  In fact, within 10 minutes of arriving on the psych floor, they wanted me to take a dose of Celexa.  I refused.  First of all, been there, done that drug.  Second of all, these people don’t even know me or my history yet, how are they medicating the unknown?  I am glad I stood my ground, and the psychiatrist agreed with me.  I think he liked me.  He told me that I should pursue a career in psychiatry.  When I told him I wanted to be a counselor, he said “you can do both, you can do whatever.  You’re probably smarter than I am.”  This dude just met me.  What?  How does he assess me so fast?  At the end of our session, he said “I would be honored if you would be my patient.  I genuinely enjoy talking to you.  Can I shake your hand?”  It was late at night.  Maybe he needed sleep.  I don’t know.  Everyone else was saying how much of an asshole he was, but he was anything but to me.

Anyway, he prescribed me Prazosin.  It’s actually a blood pressure medication but has been used off-label to treat combat veterans returning from war with PTSD with considerable success.  He said it should help my nightmares and night terrors.  He also prescribed Topamax, which has been used in treatment-resistant PTSD (since I haven’t responded well to anti-psychotics) and hydroxyzine for panic attacks.  So far, so good.  I had no problems in the hospital.  No side effects, except for the hydroxyzine making me extremely tired.  But I’d rather be tired than in a panic.

Overall, the other patients were cool people.  I talked to everyone.  There was one girl who was a little inappropriately attached to me and the other patients were saying she was in love with me.  She may very well have been.  She was constantly sitting next to me and at one point pulled me over to the side to ask me to help her fix her bra.  She also touched me several times despite me telling her please do not touch me.  It irritated the hell out of me.  I try to be nice to everyone but between the MDSA and the nurse’s question about being lesbian, I was just not in the mood to be involved in that shit.  I knew I had to be patient and bite my tongue if I wanted to get out of there.  Acting out would have just gotten me involuntarily committed or punished with a longer stay.

Since I was doing well on the medication and had a therapy appointment already scheduled today, they released me.  I’m glad, because being in that place was not an overall positive experience.  It was very unstructured.  There were very few groups and activities, no outside time, and very little staff.  There were no individual counseling sessions and no meetings with a social worker, which I have always had in my other hospitalizations.  It just seemed very disconnected.  You never really knew what was going on.  If it wasn’t for my roommate getting in contact with my therapist for me, I don’t think the hospital would have even ever contacted her to tell her I was there.  I learned a lot of the patients were “regulars”.  With the lack of care there, I am not surprised.  Many of the patients were just homeless and needed a place to stay.  It’s sad.  The system isn’t working.  It needs to be fixed.