Documenting my journey through the mental health system

I’m developing a routine and process in my new job. The floor is intense and busy with very sick patients. I get a lot of crazy looking vital signs like high blood pressures, low blood pressures, and low oxygen saturations. I’ve got patients in a lot of pain. There are kidney transplant patients and right now we have a kidney donor. Her brother is up in ICU reportedly doing well.

I’ve learned I use work as a coping skill. I find when I’m at work, I’m nicely distracted from my anxiety, from the sense of constant dread, from the lingering depression. I can use manic days as fodder and feed – using the energy to be as efficient as possible, all patients perfectly situated, and dazzling the next shift with a perfectly set up floor. I am a workaholic despite a long history of difficulty maintaining employment and having a lot of difficulty with interpersonal relations. With IOP and Dr Black, I’ve developed a lot more insight into my bipolar and PTSD and learned to just chill out a little more when it comes to those interpersonal relations and interactions. I take things less seriously. I’ve learned about my triggers and IOP taught me to plan it, plan around the triggers and develop a plan to manage it. I’m more stable now than I have been in a long time. But I do work myself to exhaustion – if you work yourself into exhaustion, it’s harder to feel depressed.

I’ve been more successful with sleep. The eight-hour shifts at my new job give me more time to myself before I prepare for bed. I use a lot of meds to make me sleep like melatonin, vistaril, lunesta, and if necessary, I go for the ativan or trazodone, but I really don’t like to use the trazodone because it gives me such a drug hangover. I can’t function like that and still go to work.

I’m supposed to keep a sleep log that I show Dr Black every Monday, but I haven’t done it this week. I still can, but sometimes it’s hard to remember what sleep I got and when because I work nights. I work 12 nights in a row, with two days off, then another 12. And over and over again. I know it seems extreme. I am, however, very motivated as I have debt to pay off and I want to do it quickly.

The triggers are becoming less severe. The ER right by the main entrance I use on my way to my floor. The psychiatric unit not far from the main hallway on the first floor. I have really intense memories and flashbacks of my time in psychosis, in restraints, in that ER and then in their psych unit. I detailed it all in several chapters in this blog. I still can’t believe I’m working in the hospital in which it all took place.