Tag Archives: hospital

Dangerous People

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Today I went to the Community Mental Health, ready to raise hell(unfortunately she wouldn’t let me record the conversation though and I really believe it should have been), as I had been advised to, and got some differing responses than I did last night at the psychiatric urgent care. They claimed to have never told them that they wouldn’t authorize services, only that I needed to go to an emergency room no matter what. If that was the case, I can’t imagine why personnel from Pine Rest, who are in a private and unconnected system from both CMH and Pivot, would have brought up and mentioned that I had been authorized to go to Pivot once and not showed up. He shouldn’t have known that and would have had to have been told something of the sort for that message to get relayed in any way.

I asked the woman I was working with today to imagine what it was like to already feel like you should die, that you aren’t worth treatment, and hearing that you’re being punitively prevented from seeking it out because you’re bad at treatment. The kind of treatment that you need to get better at the things in life that prevent you from being good at treatment.

She said today that if I had called back last night they would have told me the same thing, just go to an emergency room. And that if anything like that happens again(which she called “basically an ‘f you.’”) to call the CMH directly and get clarification.

Last night, no part of me wanted to call and talk to the on call person who had apparently made that decision about me.

I’ll admit that I’m a vulnerable person. I’m fairly easily manipulated. Easily lied to. Every person on this whole process also has their own motivations and interests in covering their own asses and the ass of the organizations they work for. I don’t know who to trust. I don’t know if I should contact the Pine Rest people and find out the name of the CMH on call person from that night. I don’t know where to go from here.

I do know that I’m in a safe(r) place now. The mental health system is fucked and it’s taken me 10 years in it to learn how to see where the problems are, to advocate for myself. For instance, at my intake today, I was asked to sign a blank belongings inventory, before they had even completed the work of looking through my belongings and listing what would be kept on the sheet. I didn’t do it and it wouldn’t have affected me negatively to sign in advance because I have played the hospital game so many times that I don’t even buy pants with strings in them anymore, but let me tell you, when you are a vulnerable individual, all it takes is just one staff member finding something they like in your stored belongings and “forgetting” to put it on your inventory. A pre-signed empty inventory could be a disaster for someone with, say, a sentimental knife or jewelry. I also had the right to be there while they inventoried my belongings and they didn’t inform me of that or ask.

 

I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve learned enough now to know that I’m giving up an enormous amount of power and dignity when I make this decision of hospitalization. Every time. Every time is a chance to be re-traumatized or experience something cruel or outlandish and it seems like nearly every experience I’ve had in the mental health system has involved that.

 

I think a lot of it really feels like gaslighting.

Go to the Emergency Room.

Get stripped of all your belongings. Yes, even your phone. You got people worried about you? Well, they get to leave messages to your locker. You’re a danger to yourself and dangerous people don’t get phones.

Get stripped of your clothes. Sometimes even your underwear. Sometimes they’ll have you do a naked squat to show you aren’t smuggling anything. You’re a danger to yourself and dangerous people don’t get clothes.

Depending on where you are, you’ll be watched non-stop either through the window, a camera, or a security person in the room. If you’re lucky, you might be allowed a family member or friend as a sitter. You will have to be monitored everywhere you go. Sometimes this means bed alarms. This always means someone else in the bathroom with you. You’re a danger to yourself and dangerous people don’t get privacy.

You’ll get to re-explain everything that’s wrong with you at a bare minimum of six times. This means what’s happening in your life, medical background and health management you currently are in, meds, feeeeeeeeeelings and “What brings you in today?” You have to hash out your pain, your struggles, your limitations and weaknesses, again and again and again. Get reminded of how much crap you feel like, again and again and again. To strangers. Anytime they ask. You’re a danger to yourself and dangerous people don’t get personal boundaries.

You’re in gown. In a too small bed. You can see the blood spatter on the blah floral curtain. And the doctors and nurses and phlebotomists and social workers all come in and stand towering over you and imply “I’m sorry that you’re feeling this depressed, but it’s wrong to feel that bad and people aren’t supposed to be like that and we can fix you, we can make you better.”

Ending that sentence was the precise moment that I realized I’m in an abusive relationship with the mental health care system.

Maybe more accurately it makes me realize I think I have a process addiction to mental health care but it just makes me feel so good(when it’s not hurting me).

Writing a Suicide Note to Myself

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I think I deeply underestimate the effect of pain on my mental health.

Oftentimes that pain will lead me to seek out medical care.

That medical care will fall short in myriad ways.

The most damage is done when I am treated like I do not know what I am talking about(which I do, it’s my body and I’m a smart cookie).

They go on to not listen or ignore symptoms.

Systemic misgendering.

Ultimately, ineffective treatments and I have wasted hours, expending myself mentally and physically, with nothing new tried, no answers, no treatments, no referrals, no belief that it would improve, a whole mess of micro aggressions, and worsening pain.

I was writing my suicide note in my head while driving home.

I wasn’t worth listening to. I wasn’t worth respecting. I wasn’t worth treating. I was a drain on the system.

 

A creature of pure torture and it wasn’t going to get better.

Because I will always be the person that writes “LOL” when a form leaves 8 spaces for you to put your medication list.

Because I will need multiple specialists who for some reason can never coordinate their blood work requests.

Because the combined costs for the surgeries I will need to no longer squirm like a child at a funeral just at the idea of being in my body exceeds that of most suburban homes.

Because I have wanted to die as long as I can remember, and only regular therapy, medication monitoring, inpatient hospitalizations, and the occasional emergency interventions keep it from happening.

 

There’s so many stories lately about resuscitating addicts. Someone mentioned a “three strike rule,” where they’d no longer administer emergency medication.

So where does that come in with suicide? How many times do you wake someone up with a smile and tell them they aren’t worthless and sit beside them coloring and chatting as they stare off in to space and beg the universe that JUST ONCE someone would have thrown up their hands and said “well I guess they weren’t worth saving after all.” How many times do you say hello and goodbye to the staff that all knew you anyway before the EMT blacklists your house?How many interventions does it take until when a patient says “I’m worthless,” the reply is, “Well, you’ve met your mental health value quota so, yeah, you’ll have to find some worth somewhere else in life. ”

The mental health system is slow, toxically still full of stigma, and prey to every -ism.

But here I am still.

I was past three strikes years ago, folks.

I thought a line should go in my suicide note- “In lieu of flowers, please send letters to local hospitals and your congressmen.”

 

I came up with some clever lines. Even some stuff about the selfishness of suicide.
Because it’s not. It’s not about you, and you’re being arrogant if you think that. If anything, it’s selfish of you for wanting to keep someone who is suffering that much around, just so you can feel marginally better.

Things like that mindset guarantee I’m not pleasant to be around, I’m pretty sure I don’t have all that many friends, mostly acquaintances.

Profound mental illness, it turns out, is uncomfortable.

I hide behind biting sarcasm a lot. It’s actually the shield that bites back.

 

Then I got to thinking about family. Ain’t that a can of worms.

I thought about the funeral. It’d probably be at the church I grew up in and was chronically awkward in. The one that was 400 people that met in a pole barn when I was 2 and vomited on someone’s shoes and will never live down. I was there as it expanded. As it moved. As it kept rejecting me socially. I was there for the newest addition, millions upon millions of dollars raised. I toured it it when it was scaffolding, sheets of plastic and exposed concrete. I watched as it stretched a video outreach across the globe and my father would occasionally do some paint touch up work on the pastor’s massive boat.

Somehow non-denominational is its own particular denomination. Whodathunkit, it has some very traditional and conservative mindsets.

I knew that without a legally changed name and gender marker, I would be deadnamed among my family until we were all dirt.

And when I came out as pansexual I was told that “a line has been crossed in the eyes of God” if I would ever touch a woman.

And when I came out as transgender I was told that “this was an exploration” and “I will find a revelation.”

“God loves her more than we love her.”

You can change if it’s supposed to cut or be supportive depending on what you emphasize.

My dad had said in the session with my therapist that I have an “emotionally built feminine psyche” and that “guys don’t deal with these emotions.” He figured that a part of my transition goal was to get over trauma through that reasoning. He also said he has nothing but compassion for those that are internally conflicted, which I have been for a very long time.

He challenged me to find one person who was truly happy having done this, 10 years out, figuring that anyone who was transgender would just be so conflicted that they’d never really improve their lives.

Months later my mother was teary eyed when she asked me if I thought I was still saved.

She said “I have to hold onto the thought that you might still be in heaven.”

I wondered at the hellfire that was currently eating her alive, fresh and meaty and ripe, right on this plane of existence.

I thought of all this while I plotted my suicide note. The idea I could be so wrong, so broken that I would be cursed to brimstone and damnation had such a hold on her heart. I fumed.

I spewed. You know, in my head.

Then I craved. I wanted someone to read the note at my funeral. Read the note at the church I was raised in.

I wanted someone to tell them that this is not the gospel. Christ’s blood was spilled so no more has to be.

 

I got home.

I took some medication.

I pet fuzzy animals.

I relaxed on the bed.

I felt a little bit better.

 

Then I got angry.

Angry enough to do some good.

When you are low enough that you’ve almost stopped feeling bad, stopped feeling anything, you can find angry.

You can tap into it.

 

I realized that no one is going to do my advocacy for me.

I may already be fighting hard.

I will have to fight every damn day.

And it will keep hurting.

But I can’t give up and leave my mantle for another, they must carry their own.

I have to be vulnerable.

I have to do it myself.

I have to tell my story myself.

I have to live long enough to improve MY life myself.

To show who I am.

To prove it.

Maybe only to myself.

Whisper Sweetly

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I have never been able to view myself as smart. Other people would hold that for me- teachers, tests, peers. My self esteem would not allow it. My parents had a systematic lack of regard for what I HAD done versus what I COULD do. “A 97? Why not a 100? A 100? Why not perfect attendance? We’re worried about your weight. Say, why are you coming home in tears so often? I guess it’s a teenager thing. Must need some space.” I lived in the shadow of my own potential, and my potential whispered sweetly about dreams and a future and having worth.

I cried writing the end of that sentence right there. It sinks me that I remain so far away from viewing myself as a creature with worth, yet I can dialectically hold the concept that all lives have inherent worth. I remain a raw, rotten lump of meat in the corner, an exception.

It’s been a rough 6 weeks or so. I’ve gotten strep, kinda beat it, had it come back with a vengeance and morph into walking pneumonia. My testosterone shot caused a giant weird painful lump in my leg. My mental health regressed enough that I ended up in a crisis residential program for a week. Additionally I’ve been in the ER three times, the Urgent Care once, and my PCP once. I got in a car accident and messed up my shoulder nicely. My anxiety is through the roof. Also, I’m not sure if it’s related to the car accident or the strep-hell but I can’t bind because it makes me completely unable to breathe. I’ve missed enough work that I’m worried about whether they’ll just give up on me like my last employer did.

I also got married, so that was cool.

I kept doing this weird thing during all this stress though. I kept house shopping.
See, I found out we were eligible for a down payment assistance program that’s really nifty.
It was a fun distraction if nothing else. But I let myself hope, and when it came down to it, if you’re getting 36 hours and your company still calls you part time, you have to have been there for 2 years.

Bye-bye hope.

I’ve had big dreams in the past.

Now all I want is a cute little fixer-upper and to SOMEDAY finish a damn degree above an Associate’s.

I was supposed to be so smart. One of those assholes that throws off the curve.

I’ll probably work entry level for the rest of my life because I am deeply, profoundly mentally ill.

Maybe smart doesn’t mean much if you’re broken.

The big bad monster crept out of my mind to stab potential repeatedly.

It doesn’t whisper anymore.

Fecal Experience

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It’s hard to come up with a way to say a resident sharted in their charting summary.

She looked a little proud of herself for an instant before it happened, almost like this was a punishment for the two staff she was talking to. She may have forgotten that she had been constipated and in a lot of pain, so laxatives were given. She waved the air behind her and warned people to get away. “Ooh, boy that stinks.” Then her face fell. “I think I shit myself.”

“Then go to the bathroom.”

She said, “No, really, I think I pooped.” This time she was quieter, conspiratorial..

I made a large gesture towards the bathroom with both hands.

She finally shimmied towards the restroom muttering “I can feel it…”

A few minutes later she emerged. “I get to be excused from group.”

Group was still a ways away. “Or you could change and then go to group.”

Her eyes narrowed, she seemed to be calculating how she could still change her clothes and manage to get out of going to group, but she went to change with no further complaints.

Five minutes into group she comes out. “I really need to shower.” It wasn’t hygiene time, but the supervisor was going to make an exception in this case. However, another resident overheard that and wanted to shower too. So I got them their soaps and towels, and an additional resident walks up, asking for deodorant.

I swear to god, I spent the next 20 minutes in a conversation about which of the three deodorants she had was the best, and “is that the superman logo on the front of this label”, and “I’m pretty sure this one isn’t mine but it’s got my name on it.” By the time I finally managed to wear her down into making a choice, she hands them all back to me and says “I didn’t actually need one right now, I was just checking them.”

I don’t really know what the moral of this story is. If you administer a laxative, you’d better be prepared for nihilistic deodorant juggling?

By the way, my solution for the charting? “She tried to get excused from group about a half hour after she farted and had a, erm, fecal experience.”