I didn’t want to get admitted to that tertiary care hospital, but I sure didn’t want to risk a whole weekend of being stuck in the emergency room. They listened to my concerns about why I didn’t want to be admitted there, that my smaller hospital was part of the same healthcare system and I didn’t want people to know about my husband’s affair. I’m not embarrassed I had was about to have a psych stay; I was embarrassed about what if one my husband’s colleagues saw me admitted and figured it out. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I wasn’t worried about me. I was trying to protect him. What kind of messed up saint of a wife am I? I asked if it was possible to be admitted as a Jane Doe, and it wasn’t. I didn’t like that. I didn’t want people finding out about the affair.
I weighed my options. I had no idea what lay ahead for me behind any door. I knew that the outside facilities were not saying no to me, but they weren’t welcoming me either. The psych unit in this hospital was willing to take me. Now-ish. There were medical people around if something went awry, which could prove to be beneficial(and it did, kinda) the psych resident who had been down to see me seemed genuine. She seemed to understand I was functional person at baseline, whose life had imploded and just didn’t know where to start.
On the other hand, if I waited it out, I had finally gotten a nurse or two to give me plastic spoons to attempt a few bites of food. However, if the right nurses weren’t there, it was going to be back to paper spoons. I didn’t know what they would give me in the psych ward though. I would get to put on real clothes though. I imagined there would be windows. I really didn’t know what would be for me. I asked to speak to the resident so they could explain to me what a stay in the psych unit there would entail. Once it was explained to me, I decided that I would stay. I didn’t want to be that person. There was a television in the room that I couldn’t quite see. I had on extreme weight loss shows about morbidly obese people; my 600 lb life, 1000 pound sister and such. I found irony in this as they were over eaters, and here I was, unable to barely get a bite in. So parched, my voice had changed.
While I lay there in the emergency room, I had probably one of the last sincere conversations I’ve had with my husband. I don’t remember barely any of it. But I remember his voice on the phone and how I felt listening to him. How it soothes me. I apologized for being depressed. I can’t help the way I am, and I surely couldn’t help the position I was in. He was the one who put me there. Literally. But I just hung onto his every word. I knew how bad I sounded, my voice and dry and crackling. My tongue stuck to every groove in my mouth when I tried to speak. I just wanted my husband back. I still want my husband back. The life we had. All I ever did was love him.
When I got admitted to the psych unit, security had to escort me. Apparently it’s a rule because you’re a flight risk. I wasn’t going anywhere except where I was supposed to. What I found most odd about that was that I was a voluntary admission. I wasn’t violent. I knew I had suicidal ideation, but I didn’t have a true plan to carry out. I didn’t have the means to finish a plan. They were very nice, but I found it to be overkill. It was late as we roamed the hospital, 1045pm.
Once on the floor, I had to do an intake interview with my nurse. We went through all my medical history and my psych history. (None really, just depression which I’d been on antidepressants for most of my adult life) Another nurse and an aide went through my things. We were only allowed three outfits in our rooms. The nurse who went through my things would not let me keep three full outfits. I wear an tank top, shirt and sweater everyday. She said it was too much clothes and not necessary. It was against the rules. I argued with her that it was what I wore everyday and she told me rules were rules and to pick out the appropriate number of shirts and pants and hurry up. I learned there were no clocks in the rooms, not a real bathroom door(it was a mat that broke away) and no mirror either. The “mirror” in the bathroom was a piece of metal that you could look in. I couldn’t keep all my toiletries because my perfume was in a glass bottle and who knows what you can do with q-tips. I’m surprised I could keep my toothbrush. There was a large Tupperware container next to the bed, and a closet next to the bathroom. A bed attached to the floor. We finished inventorying the contents of my purse and decided to lock up my wallet in the safe.
I went in my room and stared out the window in the darkness and at the windows that I could see. I tried to decide which were offices and which were hospital rooms. I wasn’t ready for bed, but it was late. I knew I needed help and I knew I needed a psych stay, but I couldn’t believe I was in a psych ward on my own volition. I went out to the nurses desk for, what I don’t know. My nurse was kind to me, while the other nurse told me I needed to go to bed. Since I hadn’t been home, I hadn’t slept barely at all. A few hours a night. I peered at the one clock on the floor and decided I would at least get ready for sleep.
Once in my room, being able to make a decision on my own seemed like such a novel prospect once again. I could put on my pajamas or brush my teeth first to try and get ready for sleep. Once I had done both, I lay on my bed and shut out the light. I thought I was hallucinating. My bed was moving. I stuck one leg out of bed and put it on the floor. Nope. Bed was still moving. It was vibrating. I got up out of bed and tried to move the bed. It was bolted, or something to the wall and floor. I lay back down bed was still vibrating. This was no good. I sat up in bed. Still happening. I put the pillow against the wall. Not as bad, but still discernible. I put the pillow flat again, and lay down. Still vibrating. I shut my eyes and tried to ignore it and sleep. Maybe it would soothe me. No such luck. I got out of bed and went out to the nurses station and shared that my bed was vibrating. My nurse seemed concerned. Not my nurse told me there was no way it was vibrating and to go to sleep. So, I did an about face and went back to my vibrating bed and barely slept that first night. Not that I slept stellar any night there, but that first night was particularly bad.
The next morning, while getting an ekg, the tech asked me to stop moving, there was tremors on the ekg. I told her it wasn’t me, it was the bed. She came over to bed, and felt it. We moved around to try and get the best tracing, but we were unable to get a clean tracing because of the vibration from the bed. She told my day nurse about the bed, and we all had a good chuckle about it, at my expense a little bit, since that night nurse hadn’t believed me. That nurse was nice enough to move my room across the unit, where I ended up with a different problem. It also proved to be comical. I thought I was having nightmares about call bells and bed alarms , from my years of being a nurse and nursing assistant. I was hearing them vividly, but the unit didn’t have any on it. I would hear them at night when I was dozing off to sleep or sleeping, and would startle awake. I hadn’t said anything to anyone, because I didn’t think I was having any anxiety about work. I think it was 2 days before my discharge in the middle of the day, I heard an alarm go off, so I asked the nurses aide if they heard that. They said that sometimes you can hear the unit next door when it’s quiet. The whole time I was there, I had been hearing the unit next door through the wall at nighttime! I felt relieved.
When I was in the emergency room, they had figured out something was wrong with my heart. Throughout the hospitalization, I had daily EKGs and potassium checked. They later diagnosed me with long QT syndrome. The antidepressant I had been on, in addition to one of the medications I took for my spasticity for MS, had prolonged my QT, so I had to come off of them. I was left, in the psych ward, on no psych med, and with a tremor, which went away after 6 weeks or so. Many psych meds are QT prolonging, so, being stubborn, I would not start another one until my QT was within normal limits. This undoubtedly prolonged my stay there.
I didn’t seem to fit in with the people that were there. I was jealous of their stupors. I wanted to be like them in that way. I wanted to feel nothing. I didn’t know what they felt, but it’s what I imagined they felt. Instead, I felt lonely. I felt like a part of me was missing. Every minute of every hour of every day I wanted to call my husband. I wanted to write him letters. I wanted to tell him what I was doing. But I knew he didn’t care. Or I assumed he didn’t. He consumed my waking and non waking thoughts. I desperately wanted normalcy of him calling me and saying he was wrong; he made a horrible error. No such luck. The loneliness grew and grew inside of me like a hunger that can’t be satiated. I imagined if you looked on the inside of me, you would see a great big hole where my soul used to be because he sucked it out of me when he threw me out and took my life away from me.
Never had a white picket fence 