Documenting my journey through the mental health system

“How are you doing?”

“I’m good, I’m good. I called my brother; I need his help. I can’t do it alone anymore. I don’t know what I’m going to do about my living situation. I want to move out. I think I’ll move out.”

“How about the meds, any side effects?”

“Just from that artane the other day. It was very distressing and I felt like my insides were tearing apart.”

“I’ve not seen that reaction to that medication in some time.”

“I’m fine now, the cogentin is much better. Helps with the itching. I have itching and twitching. But I feel better.”

“Any voices, seeing things?”

“No, it’s quiet.”

“You’ve only been feeling better the last two days. I don’t think you’re ready to be discharged, so I’m going to keep you a few more days while we get your meds stabilized.”

I was sitting in the doctor’s office, listening, occasionally rambling. He was adjusting my mood stabilizer for hypomania and increasing the appetite stimulant. He wrote some notes about me. I had dropped, upon admit, almost 20 pounds, and only weighed 120 pounds from my normal 140. I was on double portions for meals, a milkshake on every tray, and I remember feeling bad when I was usually unable to finish it. The whiplash from one day’s bad med reaction to increasing hypomania the next had me, and the treatment team, reeling. They held morning meetings and discussed me at length, agreeing to keep me longer to stabilize the encroaching mania. It is either one or the other – suicidal despair or elated mania. Finding the in-between is so hard.

I felt like a radio. Dr Floura, the psychiatrist, was dialing and dialing in my meds, trying to get the perfect balance. Everyone was so nice to me. The ability of the staff to constantly perform emotional labor for others was mind-boggling. I’ve been doing my mother’s emotional labor for years and it left me empty, defeated, and hopeless.

Two of the nurse assistants were former coworkers. In fact I trained them. I work in the very VA hospital in which I was a psych patient. They left the rehab/hospice unit where we worked to go work in psych. Sometimes people from my unit float up to 3 (psych) and 5 (med surg/ICU) but I am expressly forbidden from ever working on 3. I was concerned about my charting and who would have access to my records while I was inpatient. There are very private things in those records and a lot of these people are my coworkers, after all. They had to arrange things so only the charge nurse on each shift had access to my records and would enter my chart notes.

I did call my brother, too. My older brother, the one who had spent most of his life in prison. The estrangement had gone on for years for no real reason. So I called him during the allowed phone time and poured everything out – currently in the psych ward, Mom’s more worried about raking leaves, and I can’t do this on my own anymore. I have three brothers and it’s weird for families to be so fractured besides. Our family may have a lot of issues and behave in a rather asocial way, but our mother is only getting older. I have three perfectly good brothers who can start helping out. I don’t even mean in a monetary sense. I just need more help with that pesky emotional labor at which I suck. I need them to come around, stop avoiding her and leaving it all to me, because it’s one of the many things that almost killed me. I can’t carry it all by myself anymore. I laid all this out to him and he basically agreed, asking what I need him to do.

“Just visit her. Spend time with her. Bring that kid around,” I answered. The kid being his stepson. “I need every distraction and diversion I can get. She’s just otherwise wallowing in self pity and vomiting it all over me. At least I have the decency to keep my misery to myself.”

I would eventually call her. That did not go well. And two days before I was to be discharged, I used my phone time to find somewhere else to live.