depression
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I still cannot fucking believe it. I am reeling from the way I found out I got my 100% – seeing an impending deposit for back pay in my bank app. When I went on VA.gov and signed in, there it was – right under my name, my new service connection: 100%. This is life
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The most bizarre feeling – I’ll never get over it – of watching a suicidal patient. That is my role tonight, on my last night before a couple days off. Every time I peek in on him, I’m taken back immediately to the mental hospital, forced to wear an anti-suicide turtle suit, and an aide
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I can’t get them out of my head, the terrible flashbacks. A violent detainment, struggling in restraints, paranoid and angry and suicidal. Feeling a profound fear that something much worse than death was going to happen to me. Feeling intense anger as I was drugged with a shot to my shoulder. Feeling a profound sense
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More psych patients – on a nephrology floor. He tried to hang myself, like I tried to do ten years ago. Family found him, he was intubated, and then extubated, and is waiting on being medically cleared to the psych unit. He’s a 1:1 for safety. I’ve noticed my new coworkers don’t make me sit
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As I sit with a schizophrenic patient in the same locking restraints in which I found myself not that long ago, I feel a tiredness I haven’t felt in a long time. To be sure, I didn’t think I could do this, I really didn’t. I’m still not sure how I am, other than white
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I’m leaving early tonight and hanging out with Ceila as we do at this time of night – 3 in the morning – every two weeks. We used to work together on nights and now this is like our homage to that. Usually we go to Dennys but tonight it’s drinks at her house and
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My mood is so intensely labile. I spend nights at work cracking bad jokes, riffing on everyone around me and generally being quite ornery. I spend days often staring into space, at the wall, or overcome with sadness. But at least that’s better than doomscrolling, right? I swing like a pendulum and I have to
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A polar vortex is moving through Washington, specifically, Eastern Washington and Idaho. It has been so bitterly cold, down to 1 or 2 degrees Fahrenheit. I constantly worry about the pipes freezing at either of my two properties when the weather gets this absurdly cold. I sound like a broken record reminding my tenants to
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Last week, my formerly catatonic patient was barely able to stay in bed through the night. This week, I was dismayed to see he was put in soft restraints to keep him in bed. A person in restraints is a lot of care. I remember this from when I was put in hard restraints in
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Well, it’s done. I got the sex change form notarized, filled out the mail order form, made a money order for 25 bucks, made a copy of my name change document from 2008, and mailed it all to the department of health statistics. I should be grateful I’m even able to do this under current
Documenting my journey through the mental health system 