Documenting my journey through the mental health system

My book – the first 120 or so posts in this blog – is under Amazon’s required three-day review before being posted as available.

Here is the book cover, front and back:

I have second guessed myself, edited over and over, and still kept finding things to improve or change. That could go on forever. I finally just stopped, and said this is it, it’s done. I imagine when I see this finished product for myself, I will still find flaws in it. Oh well, what’s done is done.

What a wild week at work. It’s only day 2. I had two admits right when I got here. They are in a lot of pain. One of them is 450 pounds and it takes three or four people to move them. I examined gnarly wounds all over her backside and helped dress them. Her bed is too small, I need a bariatric bed but I can’t get one till morning.

There are a lot of psych cases on the floor. When medically stable, they can go to inpatient psych but until then, urgent medical issues take precedence. But that doesn’t stop the behaviors and issues that come with profound mental illness.

Talk about triggering. I see myself in these patients so much, but I don’t dare say anything. I do a lot of listening. I hear everything. My coworkers can study and assess from an outside point of view – they are not able to even conceptualize or imagine what a mentally ill brain is like. Their treatment will stem from a healthy point of view. To them, the behaviors are bizarre, and they are unable to relate.

For me it is much different. I see myself in them. The catatonic, the hallucinating, the suicidal – I can occupy the same mental space as them and assess from that point of view because my head is already there too.

It could be a blessing, this point of view, but it comes with a lot of pain. I’m forced to relive some of my own traumatic experiences. I go right back there; my brain replays it all so vividly. The pain is aggravating and stressful. It becomes hard to focus.