I Miss You
11 Mar 2012 5 Comments
in Emergency, Life Events Tags: loss, pets, psychiatry, stress, the life of erin, writing
I must admit that things are pretty crappy right now. I can count my current woes on my fingers but I still feel some secret hope that I can’t quite identify. Perhaps it is spring. Today we’re back into daylight savings time, thank God. That is a sure sign of spring, isn’t it? It’s something we can trust.
I keep waiting to feel stronger before posting here so that I can bring more good to the world and feel sure of it. Deep down, however, I know that writing itself helps me feel stronger. So here I am, writing.
My psychiatrist keeps asking me about my plans for the future and I feel like yelling at him. I feel like he should know me better than to ask me that. I feel like my life is one big ball of unpredictability, and planning for the future is like planning to win the lottery.
One of my family’s cats died a week ago yesterday. He was fourteen and had a good life but his death caught my family by surprise. Oliver was such happy and healthy kitty that we expected to have for a few more years at least. It prompted the unofficial silence on my blog. Death humbles us all, makes us feel powerless.
Two nights ago I crashed into my dresser in my sleep. Yes, I was sleep walking, something I thought I’d stopped doing since being put on sleep medication years ago. I know I was sleep walking because I didn’t have a clue that I was even out of bed until I was on the floor, my kneecaps and my forehead throbbing with pain, blood gushing from my forehead. I stumbled around in the dark, all over the apartment, until finally grabbing a rag and making my way into the bathroom to see the damage done. I kind of screamed when I saw what I did to my head and then shortly after I started laughing.
The next morning I was pissed because I needed to get stitches instead of heading right to the Indie Media Fair as planned, to sell my buttons and zines. I didn’t have to wait long at the hospital, however, and so I did end up making it to the craft sale after I put stickers of a pug, scissors, and a cat on my forehead bandage.
I haven’t been to the hospital for something non-mental health related since I was five years old and sprained my arm. It’s a relief to be shame free when I talk about getting stitches. Imagine that! Well, I am a little ashamed because it was a really stupid accident but my ego isn’t too damaged. That said, I can’t help but feel like my sleep walking was somewhat related to my mental health and stress levels. Friday was a stressful day with therapy and last-minute craft show preparation. I am thankful, however, that I didn’t hurt myself any worse. A few inches lower and I could have lost my eye. I’m going to have an ugly scar but I can handle looking a little tougher.
I have a lot more to tell you about. Hopefully this post will break my silence and get my words flowing again. I miss you a lot.
First Impressions of a Psych Ward
14 Sep 2011 14 Comments
in Psych Ward, The Mental Health System Tags: admission, friendship, hospital, overdose, self harm, suicide
My first impressions of the London Ontario psych ward were nightmarish. A nurse had led me to an elevator taking me from the ER up to the seventh floor of Victoria Hospital (everyone just called it South Street Hospital). She handed me off to another nurse who lead me through a dark hallway carpeted in an ugly puke brown. I gazed in horror at the people around me:
A ragged man standing outside the nurses’ station, leering at me over his cane. He was missing a finger.
An old woman, thin and bewildered, clutching at her robe around her thin frame, shaking. Her eyes were like saucers.
A young girl behind me in the A.C.U. (Acute Care Unit) pressed her face against the glass, breathing heavily until she fogged up the window, encircling her head like a ghost.
It was a relief to be led into a small room and have the door shut behind me. The first nurse passed me on to a second, who sat me down and took my temperature, pulse, and weighed me. “So, what brought you here today?”
I sighed. I’d been asked this about six times already by different people in the E.R. Didn’t any of the staff talk to each other?
“I was sent to the E.R. after talking to a psychologist at my school.”
“Did you express desires to hurt yourself?”
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Incompetency in the ER
15 Aug 2011 7 Comments
in Emergency, The Mental Health System Tags: ER, hospital, self-injury
When I finish a journal I usually flip back through the entries to reflect on what I’ve been through since I started writing in it. Last night I came across an entry I’d written after leaving the ER one night. It was by far one of my worst experiences there.
In this instance from February 2010, I had gone to the ER alone, stated that my injury was “self-inflicted” and then waited for about three hours to be seen. A nurse finally came out of the swinging doors and loudly called my name. I gathered up my books and journal and followed him to a bed in a small room of three beds. The bed was folded in two so that it was like a big cushy chair. Two other people sat in the two chair-beds next to mine with a thin curtain separating each space.
The nurse was probably 35 and he gestured to my arm, “Did you do this to end your life?” When I told him no he asked whether I’d do it again if I was sent home. I said no. I could tell he was uneasy; he wouldn’t even look at my arm. I started to cry and he handed me a small Kleenex box and walked away.
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A Plea to Doctors and Patients
05 Aug 2011 9 Comments
in The Mental Health System Tags: depression, doctors, ER, mental illness, psychiatry, tips, treatment
I just turned off a rerun of House on tv and it got me thinking about the dramas we watch on tv, especially the medical dramas. Why do we watch these shows?
The storylines are interesting, love between characters ups the ante, but every episode of medical dramas tend to include a stranger being helped. This stranger goes to the hospital after being in an accident or having alarming symptoms that something is wrong with their body and they turn to medical professionals for relief. That happens in the “real world” every day, right?
The difference between tv doctors and real doctors is pretty vast. Obviously, actors on tv aren’t real doctors, and the whole thing is about drama and not science so the medical side is also a crock. The biggest difference that I see, however, is exactly what draws us to the shows in the first place: the doctors on tv care. They care because they are human beings.
Wait, what was that? Real doctors are human beings, too?
One could argue that all real doctors care or else they wouldn’t have gone into the medical field. So why do we rarely see or feel that care? Especially in the ER, a place people visit only in an emergency, why do doctors “treat ‘em and street ‘em” as fast as possible?
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The Brave New World of Medication
21 Jul 2011 1 Comment
in Medication, The Mental Health System Tags: medication, mindyourmind.ca, psychiatry
I’m not going to lie: I’m swamped in getting ready for my craft show this weekend and have not written a new post. While I hope to be a Speedy Gonzales-esque writer one of these days and write ten posts ahead of schedule, it hasn’t happened yet. Don’t be disappointed, however! Tonight you get to step into the shoes of a MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONAL. WOOO!!! No university degree required.
mindyourmindpro.ca aims at helping health care professionals help youth. They have a kick-ass blog that I’m sampling from here, a post I wrote in February on educating youth on medication. It was amazing to be able to talk to professionals in an arena where they would be open to my opinions on health care. While the post is aimed at professionals, it has a lot of good advice for people new to antidepressants. I wish I could have read such an article when I first went on medication. Click the “more” arrow below to read the article.
Language of the Uncomfortable
04 Jul 2011 8 Comments
in The Mental Health System Tags: activism, crazy, hospital, quotes, reality, stigma
After my recent post titled “The Noonday Demon,” a friend told me it was no longer politically correct to use the term “Third World Country.” Upon doing some research, I learned the alternative phrase some people are now using is “undeveloped.” While the terms of “First World Country” to “Fourth World Country” initially came about to classify political world views during the cold war, it eventually became misunderstood as people thought it was a ranking of the best to the worst. I meant it in this context:
“Despite ever evolving definitions, the concept of the third world serves to identify countries that suffer from high infant mortality, low economic development, high levels of poverty, low utilization of natural resources, and heavy dependence on industrialized nations.”
I encourage you to view the source of that quote here, a site that explores the root of that language and its future. It’s quite interesting!
I am glad that my friend brought the issue of terminology up not only because I love grammar and the evolution of language, but because this is a perfect segue to examining the language used to speak of mental illness. And holy shit, is there ever a ton to talk about there. People tend to rename things that make them uncomfortable, and talking mental illness certainly makes people uncomfortable!
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Me and mindyourmind
23 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in The Mental Health System Tags: employment, goals, life direction, mindyourmind
I am writing today’s post from the mindyourmind.ca office, my old workplace. I’m back as a volunteer for a few hours a week because I love the staff here and the work that mindyourmind does. We joke that mindyourmind is like the mob – once you’re in you can’t leave!
It was an extremely hard decision for me to leave mindyourmind as an employee because I truly loved my job. I left for a few reasons, one being that both living with a mental illness and working in a place that deals with mental illness was too much. Sometimes what we’d talk about at work would really trigger me but for the sake of my job I felt like I had to pretend I was fine. I know that my coworkers would truly would have understood me being triggered, but I didn’t want to be this flake at work, always having my emotions get in the way of doing my job. I’m such a perfectionist and I didn’t want to be seen as unprofessional. Plus, I had therapy appointments two (sometimes three) days a week and therapy is HARD WORK. I felt like I had two jobs I was constantly juggling, both having to do with mental health.
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