So I spent the weekend in the psych ward (very long)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

AKA “Now I know what hell is like.”

I thought about making this a “Ask the ___ Guy” thread, but my internet access is somewhat erratic and I may not have the the opportunity to check back into the thread for a day or two, so I thought this would be better. Feel free to ask questions, though, and I’ll try to answer.

Saturday started pretty well. I’d been in negotiations with a creditor to settle a debt, and we’d agreed on a settlement amount which I’d wired to them. That put me in a very good mood, as it was a step toward fixing my credit. But that night things started going wrong. At around 7:00 p.m., I was involved in an automobile accident. Obviously I survived with all my fingers intact; however, I hit my head. After skidding to a stop maybe a hundred feet from the intersection where the accident occurred, I got out of the car and stumbled back to the intersection to see how the persons in the other car were. En route I got whoozy, sat heavily on the ground and knocked my glassses off, then rose again and resumed my approach to the other car; en route I borrowed a cell phone and called my father, as it was his car I was driving when the accident occurred.

Just then I saw that an ambulance had arrived. An EMT was heading toward my vehicle; knowing there was no one in it, I called out to her to stop; I wanted my blood sugar checked, as I’d left home that evening specifically to buy addtional strips. (I have type two diabetes.) She started to examine me…which is where the trouble began.

I was, you see, a trifle emotional. I’d just totalled my father’s truck, I thought (in point of fact it’s still running, and the damage was mostly cosmetic), and that bothered me not a little. Between that and feeling woozy I began feeling as if I were only a burden to my family. The EMT led me to the ambulance. Seeing what I thought was my father’s car approaching, and being confused, I started to walk into the traffic. Happily she stopped me.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “Are you trying to kill yourself?”

“Help the other driver,” I said. “You need to help them first. I’m just a burden.”

She sat me down and checked my blood sugar: 118. “Why do you think you’re a burden?” she asked.

I replied that I lost my job about 9 months ago and had to move out of my apartment a few months later; for my new job, which is so far away from my new place I can no longer bus it, I had to borrow Dad’s truck; and just as I was beginning to dig myself out of debt, THIS happens. “Everything I touch turns to shit,” I said.

I saw, or thought I saw, Dad’s car again. Still woozy, I started to walk toward it. Again, and happily, the EMT stops me.

Dad arrives. I get a little hysterical when he does, as I’ve just WRECKED HIS TRUCK. Moreover he supposed to be at home taking care of my chronically-ill mother, and I worry that she’s alone and worrying about ME. So I lose it. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Dad, I’m such a burden…!” I say.

Now more EMTs are gathered around me, obviously concerned that I’m going to try to run into traffic. The put me on the rigid board they use to restrain persons who may have neck or back injuries and take me to the hospital. En route I feel woozier still. I hear an EMT asking me for my social security number (they’d already gotten my other info from my driver’s license), but my head aches so that I can’t remember if it’s 314-15-9236 or 314-15-9623. (Obviously that’s not my real SS#. That’s pi. I’m not posting my SS # because I am not, after all, insane.)
So I’m very slow to answer.

In the ambulance I go to sleep. Waking up in the ER–or, more accurately, the hall OUTSIDE the ER, as there’s a line–I feel an ache in my back. This is fairly typical; my back aches whenever I’m lyng on a hard flat surface without any real lumbar support. My neck, on the other hand, doesn’t hurt particularly, but the brace they’ve put around it makes it hard to breathe. Well, not HARD, really–but uncomfortable. I’m feeling more than a hair claustrophobic.

“Let me out of this,” I ask.

“Sorry, we can’t,” an EMT tells me.

I’m a little agitated, I admit. I fumble for the straps on the neck brace, get it off, and toss it away, which makes breathing a lot more comfortable.

"Mr. Creature,’ the EMT says, “please stop. You have to wait for the doctor. You’re scaring me.”

My back is still hurting, so I keep fumbling at the straps. But it swiftly becomes apparent that I’m not getting out of here that way, so I decide to wait for the doctor. Meanwhile the EMTs chat. Several times, one or another of them say to the EMT who rode with me in the ambulance that they’re sorry about his mother; evidently she died of cancer recently. This hits me right where I live, so I wriggle around and say, “I’m sorry about your mom, Tim. I hope you’re all right.”

When the doctor arrives, I am mildly disappointed that she is not nearly as hot as Ming-Na, or even Laura Innes. She shines a light in my eyes and asks me a few questions. The first few are about my physical state. But then she says, “Are you depressed, Fabulous?”

I hesitate. “Yes,” I say.

“Why?”

“Well, it’s been a bad 12 months. I lost a job I really liked. I had to move from the best apartment I ever had because it went condo and, being jobless, I couldn’t raise the down payment. I’m in debt. My mother has a chronic neural disease AND cancer and fears she’s not long for the world. And I just wrecked my truck.”

“Do you want to die?”

I think for a second. “No,” I reply.

“But you tried to walk into traffic.”

“No, I didn’t,” I say. I think, but don’t say, If I were going to kill myself, I wouldn’t want to do it by walking into traffic. Do you have any idea how PAINFUL that would be? Plus it would be rude. It would be involving another person in my death.

“The EMTs said you tried to walk into traffic,” the doctor says.

My back and head still ache. “Get me off this brace,” I say.

They take me to a bed in the ER and remove me from the brace. Placed on a mattress, my back immediately feels about 200% better. They do a cursory exam (all hands and eyes, no instruments) to verify that I’ve no open wounds or other obvious trauma. Then a second doctor comes in–evidently a psychiatrist. She, alas, is not nearly as pretty as Heather Graham, or even Elizabeth Mitchell.

"Mr. Creature,’ she asks, “are you depressed?”

I repeat what I told the first doctor.

“Have you been depressed long?”

I hesitate. For some time I’ve been afraid that I might suffer from clinical depression, and I tell her that. My head still aches, and I’m still a mite confused, so I say, "I’ve pretty much always been depressed.’

“Have you ever tried to commit suicide before.”

“No. Wait–once when I was in 7th grade I wanted to avoid a math test, so I ate about twenty aspirin.”

“Have you ever thought about suicide?”

I hesitate again. “I guess. But I always talk myself out of it. I think of something I really want to see or do, like watching my baby sister graduate from college, or teaching my nephew how to hunt, and that makes it go away.”

They leave me alone, and I fall asleep for about two or three hours. When I awake my headache is gone (hooray!) and I’m no longer confused. But the psychiatrist is back. “Fabulous,” she says, “we’re a little worried. Are you willing to talk to somebody from Lakeside Hospital?”

Now Lakeside I’m familiar with. My best friend is bi-polar and attends weekly outpatient sessions there, and I’ve sat in on a “Friends & Family Support Group.” (Said friend also thinks I’m a sex addict, but that’s a whole 'nother story.) Since I’d been worried about the possibility of being depressed, I say, “Sure.”

“Sign this form, please.”

Looking over the single sheet of paper offered me, I see that it simply says, "Fabulous Creature consents to be evaluated by the Lakeside Triage Program.’ So I sign it.

MISTAKE.

(end part i)

2

Ok, I’m sure interested. :eek:

3

I go back to sleep. When I wake again, a man in a security guard’s uniform tells me that it’s time to go to the Triage unit. I follow him there. Halfway I see my father and one of my five sisters. It specifically happens to be the sister I’m closest to in age; we’re only a year apart, so were in school at the same time, etc. Sis and I know each other VERY well, on a level that I would think psychic if I believed in telepathy, which I don’t. We can read each other’s expressions very quickly, on a practically subliminal level. This closeness, though, sometimes makes us the worst choices for comfort when one is hurting, because each of us tends to feel whatever the other is feeling.

Sis runs into my arms and hugs me. She is TERRIFIED–which quickly makes me terrified.

“We’re gonna take you home,” Sis says.

The guard taps my shoulder. “Sorry, ma’am, he’s gotta come with me.”

“It’s okay,” I tell Sis. “Just an assessment. Go take care of Bob.” (Bob=Sis’s only child, my beloved niece.)

I follow the guard. We wait for fifteen minutes outside the Triage room, which, ominously, has an electronic lock. Then I wait for another half-hour to be assessed. In front of me is another large metal door; from behind that door come a lot of yelling and screaming. I get more nervous. I really hope Sis and Dad are NOT outside listening.

Finally I get interviewed by a psychiatric technician–not a a nurse or doctor. He asks my name, age, and so forth.

“Do I get to talk to a doctor?” I ask.

“Eventually,” he says. “But probably not before nine tomorrow morning.”

I glance at the clock. It’s midnight. The wailing from behind the door continues. It dawns on me that I’m about to go behind that door.

“You know,” I say, “I think I’d rather just go home and make an appointment with a private doctor.”

“Can’t let you do that,” the tech says. “I need your shoes and your belt and that bracelet.”

I take a moment to ponder my options. The tech is a good sized guy, and while I think I can probably kick his ass if it comes to it, I’m not especially anxious to put it to a test unnecessarily. More to the point the security guard is still there, and he’s a very big guy, and I’m morally certain that I can’t kick HIS ass, much less both of them together. And even I I did pull a Batman, there is still the locked door behind me. I think about discretion and valor.

“Okay,” I tell him, and surrender my shoes.

A while later I speak to a nurse. She asks me why I tried to kill myself. “I didn’t,” I say. “I hit my head and I was confused. But I don’t want to kill myself. Look, if I can’t talk to a doctor till tomorrow morning, I’d rather just go home.”

“We can’t let you do that,” she says. “What do you want us to tell your father?”

I hesitate. My dad, you see, is in his seventies and very old-fashioned, very country as we say down south. He doesn’t believe in mental illness or depression; he believes in demon possession in exorcism, and I say so.

“Do YOU believe in demons?” she asks me.

“Oh, hell no,” I say, perhaps a little too emphatically.

The nurse’s expression is almost exactly identical to Olivier’s saying* I think the lady doth protest too much.*

“Step into this room, please,” she says.

I hesitate again. But the guard is still there, and the tech, and the locked door, and I have not been bitten by a radioactive spider in the last five minutes. So I go in. The screaming gets louder as soon as she opens the door.

4

Oh, my! I’ll be waiting for the next episode, for sure. “Same Bat Time, same Bat Channel!”

5

Damn, I opened this thread as the “one last thread” before I go do something productive. Now I’m just sitting here hitting refresh waiting for another installment!

6

((((Hugs, Fabulous))))

I’m sorry to hear about your accident and that your mom isn’t doing well. My heart goes out to you and your family.

I know that being a patient on a psych ward isn’t fun but it sounds like the medical folks did a good job in figuring that you might have been suicidal. You were suffering from head trama when you kept trying to walk out in traffic but they have to consider other possibilities too.

I hope you have a few days off to recover. Do something nice for yourself, like visiting the local public gardens to see all the things coming into bloom or watch a sunset from a favorite place. If you can afford 20 bucks, treat yourself and someone special to a meal at a restaurant you haven’t been to in a long time but fondly remember.

Again with the hugs. Tikki.

7

Been there, done that. (Scroll to bottom of post for relevant portion)

Are you “at large” and on your own recognizance again? :slight_smile:

Welcome to the ranks of the psychiatrized!

8

Inside the room, I am heartened to realize that there is only one screamer, not a dozen as I’d thought from the volume. There are about 18 men, including me, in the room. Contrary to cliche, the walls are not padded; they are steel up to about four feet up, then cinderblock to the ceiling, except on one side, which is where a long window the tech sits behind. The lights are very bright. Behind the window a 20" tv hangs, blaring loudly as an informercial plays.

The floor is not padded–or carpeted. This is of concern because, for the 18 or so men currently in the room, there are exactly 8 chairs–and ZERO beds. Not all the chairs are in use; about 6 men are on the hard floor, wrapped in thin blankets. There are no pillows, either. I turn around to see that the nurse is already gone but the tech is there. “Can I get a blanket?” I ask.

“No,” he answers curtly, and walks out.

One of my new roommates offers me his blanket. This fellow, J, is in his mid-sixties and fairly heavyset. His right leg is swollen and wrapped in a bandage he’s reapplying at that moment. J cheerfully concedes to being bipolar, but says he’s here because of an argument he had in a restaurant with two young women; like me he is diabetic, and he thinks his blood sugar is high.

I think of my own blood sugar. I last ate at 5 p.m. It’s about 1 a.m. now. My blood sugar was about 118 at 8 o’clock. I should check it, I think, and probably eat something. I go to the window. “Listen,” I tell the tech, “I have diabetes. It says so on my chart. Can I get my sugar checked?”

“No,” he says curtly. “Don’t bother me.”

I walk around. The screaming continues, coming from a small room–the “seclusion area” at the rear of the main room. A stream of urine is comeing from under the door to the seclusion room, so I nudge the fellow sleeping next to it so he can move away and not get urine on him. Walking around, I find that, among my roomies, are

  • M, a fellow who complains over and over again that he’s covered with grease and needs to take a shower and, every few minutes, feels compelled to punch himself very hard in the face with his closed fist about six times;
*N, who checked himself in voluntarily because he's a recovering drug addict and feared he was about to relapse; when he checked himself he he had his meds, for which he claims to have a prescription but whhich the tech refuses to let him have--or even CHECK to see if he should have them;

* W, who starts to hit himself in imitation of M whenever M has a fit, and between times rants long and loud about conspiracy theories and how this is actually Area 51;

*P, who insists that we're all dead;

*A, who says he has an imaginary friend who got them arrested and put on a psych hold when the friend attacked a woman who came at "them" with a machete;

along with the professor, Mary Ann, and the rest.

Hours pass. J starts to get agitated again, and physically twitchy. Being diabetic myself, I recognize the symptoms; his blood sugar is high. He asks for water, and the tech says no. He asks again and again, more and more loudly, and still the tech says no. Eventually, he comes in with a couple of guards and the nurse. They go into the seclusion room, sedate the screamer, and place J inside. They don’t bother cleaning up the piss on the floor. They don’t check his blood sugar either, or mine. J, incidentally, has been there since FRIDAY and hasn’t yet seen a doctor for his assessment.

I feel myself getting a little weak at the knees, so I sit down. Breakfast isn’t until 8 a.m., we’re told. I ask again for a blood sugar check, am denied it, but they do give us all small packets of graham crackers. Out of habit I check the nutritional label; eating this will give me 14 grams of carbs. I chow down. Looking at the door to the seclusion room, behind which J is still screaming for water, I see a fresh stream of urine.

I ask for the lights to be turned down, and the tech refuses. Around 4 a.m, after a series of increasing bad infomercials, the guard turns off the TV. Looking around, I decide to sit next to A, the fellow with the violent imaginary friend. Right now he’s lucid, and I figure it’s better to have him like me than not, as he’s a big, muscular fellow who claims to work as a bouncer at a local club.

I never get to sleep that night, though A and I do become friendly. His sister is diabetic, so he knows the symptoms; noticing my growing lethargy around 6, he gives me his graham crackers and finds three more people willing to do the same. J screams for water until breakfast finally comes, at 9:30 rather than 8. They make him clean the piss up before they let him eat, or get his sugar checked. The “diabetic breakfast” he and I are provided consists of Frosted Flakes, 2% milk, a biscuit, a piece of sausage that could easily double as hockey puck, and orange juice. They check our blood sugar first. Mine is 128; J’s is 347. He gets an insulin shot, at least.

The day crawls. There is, it develops, only one psychiatrist working today, and each assessment takes 3-4 hours, so only two persons get assessed. J and P, the fellow who thinks we’re all dead, both get taken to county mental health. Four more men are brought in, though, so the room is no less crowded than before. A spends five minutes staring at a female tech on the other side of the window, telling me he wants to make her nervous. I tell him to stop, because he’ll make it harder for himself to get out. Friendly with me, he agrees, and we agree that I’ll remind him not to do anything impulsive or violent if his imaginary friend gets out of hand. Quite casually, tells me a story about a crack whore he says he ass-raped for two hours a few weeks earlier.

More time passes. I again ask if I can be released, since I came in of my own free will; again I’m told I cannot. Two more people go into the seclusion room. Everyone who goes in there stays at least four hours, and none are given water or food or access to the bathroom. Unsurprisingly they recruit the floor as a toilet.

The TV stays on. The lights stay on. People continue to scream. At eight p.m. a tech comes on duty who is much less curt that the fellow working last night, and he gives out fresh blankets and gets the floor mopped. (It’s a a perfunctory cleansing, as you might imagine. Around 2 a.m. on the second night, the tech, after continual begging, finally agrees to dim the lights. A and I remain awake all this time, because it’s simply impossible to find any comfort on the chairs or floor. The only people who can sleep are those who are sedated, but since the only way to get sedated is to be spectacularly disruptive, loud, or violent, and that will probably raise your chances of being involuntarily committed, I am determined to avoid that. Also the air conditioner is on constantly, which is rather a trial for the six men I count, including me, wearing short pants and sleeves. Around midnight a discussion starts on what women are good for. Except for me, the consensus is fucking and sucking; likewise everyone but me agrees that a man is completely justified in killing his wife or girlfriend for cheating on him, though no one agrees to the converse.

Morning comes. One fellow refuses to move from the vicinity of the main door. He and A get into it, and this time I can’t calm A down; he begins telling the guy, who is maybe half his weight and 30 years older, that he has a very pretty mouth, and that A will really enjoy knocking all his teeth out and treating that mouth as a pussy.

Around 11 o’clock I get assessed. Telling the doctor my story,I am very careful to remain calm and collected, not to let loose the rage and frustration that has been building in me for the past 36 hours. They let me go home at noon.

I showered for an hour and slept for 12.

9

Hmm…I forgot to write THE END. Ah well, you guys are smart.

Apropos of nothing, I’m pretty sure this is my first MPSIMS thread to start, and possibly only the first or second time I’ve posted in this form. It’s a pity; I’d always hoped I’d begin a thread in this forum that began “Well, this weekend I was kidnapped by amazons and told I would not be released until I had impregnated their queen, who happens to look exactly like Kristen Bell, and her two identical triplet sisters.” Ah well.

10

Oh, my God.

I’ve got no words.

Damn, Fabulous Creature. hugs tight

11

Wow. Just…wow.

12

Wow. I’m really sorry you had to go through that.

13

Phew! Glad you’re out. Note to self: do not lose marbles.

14

S’ok, Faulous, I likes 'em crazy. :smiley:
What?

15

Damn. Preview is my FRIEND. Sorry about the name misspelling. I hate it when I mess up being kinda funny with a typo. :smack:
I really am glad you’re ok, dear. Sending good vibes atcha.

16

::tossing a bag of marbles belonging to Sal up and down casually with a sneer on my face::

Had you been wiser, sir, the note would have read “Do not lose marbles or allow them to be stolen.” But alas, you, unlike Batman, were not prepared.

(Hey, just 'cause I’m not crazy doesn’t mean I’m not evil.)

17

Yeah well… only because crazy people are crazy does not mean they should be treated like beanbags, either :mad:

How are conditions like those supposed to help anyone get better?
{{{{{{{Fabulous Creature}}}}}}}}

Oh, and no, you’re not a waste. An occasional klutz, yes, but that’s a general defect owned by every member of our species. Promise.

18

It’s a good lesson. Never assume that the marbles can’t be spirited away if you let your guard down.

19

Jeepers! Wasn’t there any way you could get the big indian to rip out the water fountain and throw it through the window so you could all escape??

Seriously, bummer, dude!

20

The water was OUTSIDE the room.

I know you’re joking, but I actually did come up with an escape plan. Sunday morning, a young man checked himself for detox; he became friends with A and me. As the day wore on and it became more apparent that we would not be getting out any time soon, I considered enlisting the two of them and one other to help me throw one of the (very heavy) chairs through the window. Then we’d have to fight our way out. I figured it would work as I was the sanest person among the four of us…then I realized what I was planning was not at all sane, as it was guaranteed to get us arrested, committed,and/ or shot.