Day 1 - in hell

Wednesday. The first morning at the psych unit. They wake you up at 7.30 a.m., no matter if you have slept during the night or not. They want you to sleep and gather your strength but at the same time they want you to get routines. Well, getting up that early has never been and will never be my routine. I was a wreck. I talked to my husband on the phone who told me that he wouln't come and visit me that day. He needed some distance. That was quite a shock for me because he has never missed a day to visit me when I was at the hospital before. I was shattered. You know, him having his freak out and screaming and shouting, threatening to leave me kind of drove me over the edge. I get that my illness has a negative effect on him and that it's dragging him down. I get that he was afraid. But that doesn't give him the right to push me down mentally, to make it worse. And I had by then realized that he is the only thing in the world I'm still fighting for. The last few years I haven't been fighting for myself, I have been fighting for not making him upset. I love him and I don't want him to suffer. When he told me that he couldn't take it anymore, I just snapped. I felt like it would be the best solution to disappear. I felt like that I was a burden and that it would be best for everyone involved if I just died. It was just the final drop to my misery. So that he didn't want to come and visit me was really difficult for me. I understood that he needed some time for himself but I needed support as well. He has had a fucked-up life and still hasn't dealt with a lot of things so I understand that he has difficulties dealing with the present because of that. I just had hoped that he would understand that I needed support. Or maybe it was egoistic of me to think that I was suffering the most in the whole situtation.

They didn't have my Vitamin D-pills which I thought was a tad unprofessional. It's no big deal if you skip them one day but come on, I'm at a hospital, you should have medications. I ate half a sandwich which I threw up because I was so anxious. I spent the morning in bed, watching Dexter. I took a short nap. Then I had a meeting with the chief psychiatrist, a nurse and an intern psychiatrist. I had had met him before, J, the chief. We just never got along because he didn't get me. He is not Swedish so in the beginning I thought it was the language. He has a bad accent but his grammar is correct so I don't think it's the language. He is known to be tough and mean. I know of people who actually officially complained about him. I know of people who refuse to be in the same unit as him. But I had no choice, he is the chief of the unit and he was the one treating me. There is one thing that I like about him, he is straight forward. And he asks things, he discusses things, he is a bit like a therapist in that. His answers are never empathetic though. He understood that I was in a bad state but he decided that I should be send home on Friday. I told him that I'm not sure if I'll be alright until then but he had already decided that that was the treatment-plan: let me stay for two more nights and then send me home. I asked him about the restless legs and spasms but he said he didn't want to give me anything for that and he even doubted it was the Propavan that had caused it. He told me to try out that blood pressure med I had gotten prescribed instead. Then he asked why I had gained so much weight since we last saw each other. I told him that I have been diagnosed with hypothyrodism and he answered that it can't be only that. Well, thank you asshole. And then he told me that he wants to tell me something, kind of off the record. He told me that he had met me a few times now and that he doesn't get anything from me, he doesn't feel anything from me. He said that I don't have a personality!!! Who says something like that to a person that is suicidal and already hates herself?!? I didn't even know what to reply. I was stunned. So we shook hands and I went back to my bed.

I couldn't get his words out of my head. They haunted me. If I don't have a personality, I can't be human, I must be like an empty shell. R, my absolute favourite nurse, had heard that I was at the other unit and came over for a minute to give me a hug. It felt really good to see a friendly face. The one nurse that was responsible for me is actually someone I know, she is a friend of some friends of mine. We had never talked but we had been to the same clubs and parties. But as I thought the law prevents her from telling anyone about me, I didn't really care if she was my nurse or not. 

Then I had another major breakdown. I tried to strangle myself with the cable for my netbook and lost consciousness for a second. Another patient found me on my bed but I told her not to tell anyone. I was afraid I was going to be restrained. So I just sat on the bed, crying, shaking, having lots of anxiety. I went to the bathroom and I found a needle on the floor there. One of the women that I shared the room with was a muslim and I think the needle came from her head-cloth, I saw her attach it to another cloth underneath with needles. So I self-harmed in the bathroom. I went back to bed and on the way there my legs gave in. My legs were just so weak from the spasms and the restlessness. I crawled back to bed. And cried. I could have gone out and asked for help. The thing is that I didn't want to bother anyone. I didn't know anyone who was working. I felt like I had no right anyway, I felt like I wasn't human and just didn't have the same rights as others. Eventually I asked one of the women who I shared the room with to fetch someone. A nurse came, we went outside to some sofa to talk. She was really terrible at her job. I was crying, sobbing, telling her about how I wanted to die and how I just couldn't take it anymore. And what did she say? "Yeah, I can't solve your problems". What kind of an answer is that? So I asked for a sedative because I just wanted it all to go away, I wanted my head to shut the heck up. And guess what, they had forgotten to sign off my pills again so they couldn't give me anything! WHAT THE FUCK? How unprofessional can they be? They had to contact an on call psychiatrist again. In the meantime I was freaking out. I talked to one of the other patients for a minute or so and decided to just leave. I put my shoes and my jacket on, my cellphone and my cigarettes in my pockets and wanted to just leave. I had a 5 now, I knew that J had changed that. So I had the right to leave. But they didn't let me. This one male nurse refused to let me out. He said that he can't trust me because of the state I am in. I honestly didn't know what my plan was anyway. Just to get out of there? And then what? Kill myself? Go home? I really hadn't thought that through.

So I ran back to my room and hid under my blanket. The other patient said "I told you they wouldn't let you out!" and I was just crying. After an hour I finally got a sedative. And all of the sudden I got a lot of attention. I wasn't alone for the next several hours for a second, there was always a nurse checking up on me, trying to talk to me. I got forced to eat some dinner, I had some bites and threw it up again. I was such a wreck. But eventually I calmed down. The sedative helped a bit. One of the women in our room got discharged so we were only three women that night. The muslim woman slept all the time. I talked a lot with the other woman, a Finnish woman who was constantly knitting clothes for her grandchildren. She told me that I should take care of myself in the first place and not let my husband oppress me. He can't blame his behaviour on me. We also talked about meds and other things. You know, when you are at a psych unit, all people talk about are meds, suicide, good and bad psychiatrists and so on. Weirdly enough, she had met all the doctors I had met and had the same opinions about them as I have.

I could fall asleep that night but I woke up after two hours again, took another sedative, cried some more. My legs were driving me crazy and I could barely make it to the smoker's cubicle. Another terrible night. That was my first day at the psych unit.