Touching insanity

This is the post I was writing last Thursday. It's a real downer, just to warn you. But I needed to share it, because I don't talk about this at all with anyone except Husband. It's too painful and shameful to share with anyone but you all.

I've been reading a lot of birth stories in the blogosphere lately. I don't have a birth story of my own, but I do have a hospital story that I need to tell.

In my depressed state, I have been doing a lot of thinking about hospitalization. As all of my doctors know, I am 100% against being hospitalized. I am sure that somewhere out there, someone has had a good experience with hospitalization for depression or mania, but I am certainly NOT one of those people. I would rather be tied down to my couch and force fed Vegemite, than be hospitalized, again. One sure way to convince me to kill myself would be to put me in a hospital's mental health ward.

DISCLAIMER: As a bipolar blogger, I have a reader or two who also suffers from a mental illness. I don't want to deter anyone from choosing to be hospitalized, it is a wise choice. But, this is the story of MY experience, and is NOT the experience of all.

So here's the story of my hospitalization...

In April during my 1st year of the 1st marriage, I was in the depths of depression, completely incapacitated. I only left the house to go to my therapists office. I had not yet been properly diagnosed with bipolar, so the docs were still trying standard antidepressants on me. I was on my 5th med, and nothing was working. (Coincidentally, it's the same antidepressant I am using right now, hmmm.) By then, I had already made one weak attempt. My then husband caught me in the act though, and I cried for hours from the embarrassment. Still in grad school, I couldn't bare the thought of not finishing my degree just because I couldn't drag myself out of bed. I felt trapped and saw no way out, just like so many others before me.

On my big outing to the therapists I revealed that I just couldn't hack it any longer. I had a plan and I was going to put it into action while my husband was at school, an hour away. My therapist refused to let me go home while she made arrangements for hospitalization. Her experience told her that our local hospital was not a good place for mental health, so she put me in a hospital about a half hour away.

In the meantime, I felt some misguided peace at being taken care of. Thus, I walked to a really nice restaurant, a tapas style dining establishment, to have lunch while she made the arrangements. I kept thinking of it as my last meal, and now that I look back at it, that meal was the first thing I had enjoyed in months. Sitting in the restaurant, I kept thinking about how all of the other diners had no idea that I was certifiable and about to go to a hospital ward where they lock the door behind you. There was something very amusing about this scenario and it was all I could do not to laugh hysterically while I ate my lunch. (That definitely would have clued them in to my situation.)

By late afternoon, Therapist got my husband to come get me and drive me to the hospital. I quietly wept as he drove, otherwise we were silent. Admission is through the ER and that's where you get to justify why you should be put away. It was the only time I would get to see a kind medical professional during my stay. The good doc questioned me for about 30 minutes before an orderly showed up to escort me to the proper ward. I clung to my husband for dear life. I wanted out of this whole plan, and yet, that no longer seemed to be a choice. All of my decisions were being made for me at that point.

After they took away everything I but the clothes I was wearing, showed me around, and issued my bed, they told my husband he had to leave. And that's where I lost it. I was intensely attached to my husband back then. So I watched him walk away that day and heard the door click behind him. I am sure he could hear my sobs from the other side of the hospital and in the parking lot. I was alone.

Now, perhaps you are thinking, that there were plenty of medical professionals to facilitate my transition. Nope, not a single one. No nurses, therapists, doctors, friends, technicians, or orderlies. No one. Another common misconception is that mental patients wear pajamas and robes all day. Nope, not even close. At this hospital, they require all of their mental patients to wear their day clothes and to be active. The other weird part was the other mental patients on the ward. They stared at me like I had two heads, like I was the only crazy person there.

Perhaps I was, but I was still terrified of the other patients. Two adult middle-aged males were trying to manage schizophrenia and addiction. The other 4 patients were female and either teenage or much much older than me. They were dealing with addiction, depression, and anorexia. Quite a mixed bag.

Until lights out, I just paced up and down the hall, sobbing into a wad of tissue. During one of my marches past the nurses' station, I overheard a conversation between two of the nurses. They were talking about me...

"Did you see the new girl in here?"
"Oh yeah, I hear she's even a graduate student from *** Uni.vers.ity! Interesting, huh?"
"She must be really, really messed up then."

I was mortified that they were talking about me like I was a specimen. And what the hell does being a graduate student have to do with anything? What the fuck? I was already painfully ashamed of where and who I was, and this little conversation didn't help matters.

I will continue this story in another post, as this has become too long as it is...