Aided by the violent and threatening nature of certain patients I began to feel ever increasing anxiety and fear. Due to low staffing numbers often the rule of me being accompanied to the bathroom was ignored, and I was able to cut and cut and cut until finally, finally, my anxiety flatlined and I could think straight again.
The staff could see that I was struggling but limited numbers, despite good hearts, meant that I rarely received one to one input to help me through the hardest times.
However one health care assistant somehow seemed to make the time, and it was she who found me when my anxiety was at it's peak. She had observed the hour by hour descent into craziness that such high levels of fear can create from thin air, and as such requested a doctor to come and see me.
While her back was turned however, I slipped away, trying my room door which was supposed to be locked, however due to untold pressure on staffing someone had forgotten to turn the key. I slipped into the room, shut the door firmly behind me, and began to unravel my bandaged arms, removing my blade from it's hiding place as I did so.
I had barely accomplished these tasks when the health care assistant (HCA) arrived with the softly spoken Lithuanian doctor who had admitted me. I cringed away from help, even as the HCA sat beside me on the bed, coaxing me not to unravel the bandages, not yet having seen the blade.
Half way through the interaction she spotted the blade. I made a desperate grab for it, determined to hurt myself as much as possible before I lost the silver edge of redemption. The moment the HCA spotted the blade she reacted with lightening speed, grabbing my arm and spinning me before I could even react face down on the bed, pulling her alarm as she did so.
I kept my fist gripped around the minute blade, fighting hard and furiously as more staff members poured into my room and pressed down hard to restrain me. The restrain was painful and I felt completely unable to breathe with so many bodies on top of me, weighing me down.
'Please let go!,' I begged, increasingly hysterical, struggling against what felt like the weight of the world.
A male voice said 'We can only let go when you've calmed down and given us the blade,'
My fear increased at the low male tones and I fought harder, tears streaming down my face, feeling so terribly, awfully trapped. Again my mind tripped and stumbled into memory lane, my abuser's hands rising out of the gloom of time gone by.
'Let go!' I screamed to which a remarkably calm voiced nurse responded
'We will if you give us the blade, Katy, where is it?'
Desperate for these hands to leave my body I choked out 'In my hand,'
'The left or the right?" asked the voice again, urgently.
'Right,' I ground out through clenched teeth and before I knew it, my fist was being prized open and the blade was removed.
I howled in terror, I fought but all in vain. I lay, struggling for breath under the weight of so many bodies, nausea rising on a wave of fear.
'I'm going to be sick,' I gasped out and one of the male staff attempting to reassure me told me
'We've had people do that before, don't worry.'
'Please let me go to the bathroom,' I begged, my stomach twisting and turning as though on a roller coaster.
There was a tense pause and then what appeared to be the senior female nurse agreed, with the proviso that the HCA who had first found me went with me to the bathroom. I was beyond caring at this stage, just hysterically grateful that the press of bodies against mine had ended, and stumbled willingly with support to the bathroom.
Once there I threw my glasses aside and vomited into the waiting toilet again and again and again, tears coursing down my cheeks. The HCA held back the hair that stood out like a mane around my head, tenderly mopping my face when I had finished.
The nurse in charge poked her head in the door to ensure I was finished, then left just as quickly. I was returned to the communal lounge, still shaky and tearful, with no mention of the traumatic events that had just occurred. The next day I went from bad to worse, rubbing my wrists, mottled blue and purple with bruises from the previous night's restraint, my wounded pride howling like a lone wolf.
'Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.'
['There is only one thing we say to death. Not today'.']
'We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell. Oscar Wilde
Its hard to dance with the devil on your back. Sydney Carter
Finally my resolve to accept the admission cracked. A combination of the restraint, poor staffing levels and violent patients made the ward seem like the deepest circle of hell to me.
I cut yet again and sat cross legged on my bed, sobbing, before finally reaching for my phone and dialling my home number. The moment I heard my mother's comforting voice I thoroughly broke down, begging her in a voice thick with tears to come and take me away from this place.
Once she had agreed that she and my father would come and get me I went to the staff office and asked them to discharge me, stating as calmly as I could that I would discharge myself against medical advice if necessary. It turned out it was.
The on call doctor tried to persuade first me, then my parents to persuade me to stay, but to no avail. The unit was doing nothing constructive for me. Before the doctor had even conceded defeat I had packed my belongings and stripped my bed. A nurse popping her head in asked 'What will you do if the doctor says no?' I shrugged and gave the obvious answer 'Put it back.'
Luckily however events unfolded differently and my parents and I were off on our way home, glad to be reunited, as was my dog judging by her hysterical tail wagging upon my return home. Despite the joy of being home however, the dark shadow of depression continued to linger in the darkest corners of my mine, waiting, biding it's time.
'Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.'
['There is only one thing we say to death. Not today'.']
'We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell. Oscar Wilde
Its hard to dance with the devil on your back. Sydney Carter
Don't know if anyone is still interested in this, but in case they are, here's the next instalment:
The following few days were extremely distressing for all concerned. My depression hovered like a dark cloud over the house, occasionally illuminated with lightening strikes of anxiety, which pierced my heart and made me sweat and shake.
Despite my parents' support the spectre of suicide hung heavily over me, making every silver edge an opportunity, every tablet a ticket out of the world of the living.
Mum drove me back to my university's city to see the Crisis Team there, as I was still technically under their radar, but I remember very little of the visit due to my distress and complicated trains of thought.
A few days later I had to go to my local GP surgery so that a nurse could check on my wounds, remove steri-strips and so on. I just about managed the walk there, paranoid thoughts making every step seem as though I were entering another circle of hell, intrusive images playing on an ever spinning reel in my mind.
Arriving at the surgery I was a quivering verging on delusional wreck. As the nurse tended to my wounds I shook violently, struggling to speak in answer to her gentle questions.
After she had re bandaged my arms and legs she stood back, studying me. 'You're really not okay are you?' she said gently. Through shallow and panicked breaths I shook my head, too out of it to even think about lying. 'I'd feel a lot happier if a doctor saw you Katy, would you agree to that?' I nodded, willing to do anything to attempt to quieten the thoughts which were shouting at fever pitch in my head.
The nurse left the room briefly, talking softly with the doctor in the next room. Next thing she was leading me into the room, where an unfamiliar female doctor sat, a look of puzzlement on her face. I sank into the chair she indicated and the nurse left, shutting the door quietly behind her.
The doctor asked me a few questions and I tried to answer rationally, but my words came out in a garbled confused mess, the intrusive thoughts and images weaving their way into my words, causing me to feel paranoid and on edge, worrying in my often obsessional way that the doctor could hear these awful thoughts, and was judging me for them. In my hysteria I raised my voice and the doctor raised up a hand and said 'Katy, I want to help you, but you need to stop shouting at me.'
I took some deep breaths, trying desperately to calm down. 'I didn't realise I was shouting,' I murmured, focusing on quieting my voice. The doctor's strict face softened at that and said 'I know you didn't. Right, I'm going to ring the local Crisis Team and ask them to come out and see you, I'm really not happy sending you home alone like this. Would you be willing for you or us to ring a relative or a friend to come and pick you up and look after you until the Crisis Team can see you?'
I desperately wanted to say no, I was frightened of meeting new people who would judge my deteriorating mental health, and Mum was the only person near enough to collect me and she was in work, strained enough as it was. However even I could see in my befuddled state, that I needed help.
Another way of anxiety washed over me as I agreed to contacting both the Crisis Team and my mother. Whilst we waited for both to respond I begged the doctor to let me go out for a cigarette, my fear and stress having hit panic attack levels and she reluctantly agreed, on the proviso that one of the secretaries came out with me. I accepted this out of desperation and followed the secretary obediently out of a side door and sat down beside her on a step, lighting up with some difficulty due to the shaking of my hands.
The secretary was a kindly woman who I suspect recognised me from my visits to the surgery as a child and spoke warmly, putting her arm around me. I fought the urge to push her away and allowed myself a moment of weakness, leaning gently against her as she held me, even managing to tell her some of my intrusive thoughts connected with the abuse i had experienced and other peoples' safety.
Despite not being trained in dealing with things like this the secretary said all the right things, holding me loosely and allowing me to talk, despite the occasional incoherency of my speech and assured me again and again that none of what had happened was my fault.
This was how my Mum found us as she came tearing into the surgery's car park, berating herself for not accompanying me in the first place. I tried to dissuade her of her misplaced guilt, reminding her that it was I who had insisted I could do this by myself.
Together we walked back into the surgery where the secretary lead us into an empty room and offered us tea, which we accepted. Soon after the tea arrived and I was sipping cautiously, the doctor who I had seen materialised, bringing my mother up to speed in a sympathetic tone, explaining that the Crisis Team, which had recently changed their name to Home Treatment Team would see me once I had been assessed by their assessment team.
I had an appointment to be assessed for the following day and I seem to recall the doctor prescribing a dose of Lorazepam to see us through the rest of that day, although my memory of the meeting is unreliable, and the rest of the day has, perhaps for the best, left my memory forever.
'Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.'
['There is only one thing we say to death. Not today'.']
'We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell. Oscar Wilde
Its hard to dance with the devil on your back. Sydney Carter
^ Thankyou. The NHS was rubbish in the area I was at university, my treatment subsequently in my parents' area was much better. The A&E treatment was much worse there as well.
Last edited by Buttons. : 28-10-2012 at 04:49 PM.
'Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.'
['There is only one thing we say to death. Not today'.']
'We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell. Oscar Wilde
Its hard to dance with the devil on your back. Sydney Carter
Next instalment:
The assessment went well the next day, taking place in a familiar building associated with the main hospital in the town, and the woman was pleasant and down to earth, understanding my quandary as to whether to attempt to continue to see the Crisis Team with whom I was familiar in my university's city, meaning that due to the distance I could only see them once a week at most, or whether to make the leap and take a chance on the local team, with whom I had never had contact.
In the end we decided it was best to take the plunge, and on the nurse's advice I rang the city's Crisis Team, asking them release my case to the Home Treatment Team in my home town. They agreed, and reassured me that if/when I returned to university if I still needed high levels of input they would happily retake my case. I found this reassuring, knowing that I still had a familiar safety net.
Later that day I received a phone call from Home Treatment, to arrange a visit for the following day. The woman on the phone sounded warm and caring so I was relieved when she stated that it would be her who would come to visit me. The rest of the day came and went unremarkably and before I knew it the sun had risen on the following day and I was sat, leg jittering with anxiety as I waited to meet the worker from Home Treatment.
She arrived bang on time which reassured me, as lateness on behalf of myself or others I find intolerably anxiety provoking, hence I am almost always early for everything. The woman had a frank open face and a wave of blonde curly hair and when I opened the door she offered me a warm smile before following me over the threshold.
We both took a seat and I offered her a drink of tea, more out of politeness than expecting her to say yes, I knew from personal experience working with a community team that most workers refuse beverages at their patients' houses, some because of being unsure as to the cleanliness of the individual's kitchen, but most because accepting a drink on every visit would usually end in a ridiculous number of loo breaks.
The meeting was a tad awkward as my parents were in the next room so I felt I had to edit what I said. The woman seemed to understand this and offered to meet me tomorrow in my village away from home where I could talk more freely, an offer I gratefully accepted. She explained that someone would see me every day until my mental health settled, which reassured me, I was incredibly grateful not to be left to cope on my own.
'Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.'
['There is only one thing we say to death. Not today'.']
'We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell. Oscar Wilde
Its hard to dance with the devil on your back. Sydney Carter
