restraints

  • Labile Mood and Distraction

    What is it about the labile mood? And how does it affect my bipolar disorder and its manic highs and lows? Sometimes this labile mood presents with intensity and is distressing. It’s almost a daily oscillation when I miss a dose of my mood stabilizer or there are triggers in the environment. It’s not the

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  • End of Life

    End of Life

    Last night and today was a long day. I took ALL my sleep meds plus Seroquel to try to quiet the voices and calm my anxiety. When I was in the mental hospital, Seroquel quieted my overactive mind. Tonight, I am particularly tired and worn down. I still did not sleep that great and woke

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  • Trigger Exhaustion

    Trigger Exhaustion

    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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  • Regression

    Regression

    My patient is not getting better, he regressed tonight. They had taken him out of restraints and tried to keep him that way. They had also removed the foley catheter. When I got here, he peed everywhere and was trying to get out of bed. He got aggressive and even tried to hit me, but

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  • Remember

    Remember

    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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  • A Constant Trigger

    A Constant Trigger

    This is so fucked up. It is happening all over again. I’m trying to face and accept the fact it’s going to keep happening. I have another patient in restraints and this time I had to help restrain him. I did everything I could to avoid it. For five hours I tried redirection, distraction, calming

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  • Feeling and Unfeeling

    Feeling and Unfeeling

    Maybe dissociation can come in handy. Maybe my lack of feeling will have to be a tool. This job is exposing me to the good, bad, and ugly of our society and my city specifically. Med/surg is fast-paced and dynamic. And I question all my life choices that brought me here. I always wanted to

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  • Turmoil of Mind

    Turmoil of Mind

    Well that didn’t take long. At first I was a rock star. I came on the floor and it was a madhouse. There were several call lights at once and an incoming admit. I answered the lights and attempted to seek out the person I was relieving to get a report. The admit came, alcoholic

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  • Intensive Outpatient – Week 14, Validation

    On Friday morning last week, I finally had to demonstrate my competency so they could check me off and fill the hospital and legal requirement to be competent in quick release knots for restraints. I had a couple days to mentally prepare. I came to the office of the unit manager, and there she was,

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  • Tales from the Floor

    Tales from the Floor

    There is little I can do about my reasonable accommodation request over the weekend, but I do have a phone number to call, or I can try to navigate their portal from a work computer. I figure I’ll just call them and expedite it, because I’ve already worked the floor once. I’ve been doing this

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