"Dad, I'm really sick."
I could barely get the words out through chest-heaving sobs.
I knew this was coming after a night of racing thoughts, panic attacks and overwhelming feelings of impending doom.
The only way I can describe it to someone who hasn't experienced it is like this...
Think of a time in your life when the mental anguish was almost too much to bare. Perhaps hearing about the death of a loved one, or some other earth-shattering event like the loss of a job or the end of a relationship. I experienced that for almost 10 hours straight with no respite.
The crisis point had come.
Dad has—unfortunately—a lot of experience in dealing with this. He drove over and I was soon sobbing in his lap as he tried to comfort me.
"And what brings you here today?" asked the emergency room intake nurse when I arrived at Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie.
"Self-referral for a mental health crisis," I answered.
I was given a wrist strap and within 30 minutes they started the intake process.
The first thing they do is place you in a safe room next to the ER and give you a nasal swab to test for Covid-19. The room is bare except for a a slab-like bed with anchor points for restraints if needed. By the screaming coming from a couple of adjoining rooms I suspected some other patients were being held down.
There is a security camera on the ceiling and nothing else. They took away my bag and boots and I was given a set of orange scrubs. This is done for a couple of reasons.
First, to take away anything that could be used to hurt yourself or others, like shoelaces or a belt.
Second, so that you're easily identifiable as a mental health patient. I found out later that, as a self-referral, I was permitted to wear my street clothes. Only those who were committed involuntarily were required to wear the scrubs. (Although they wouldn't let me wear my Blundstones, even though they are pull-ons. I brought my slippers, which turned out to be fortunate as you'll see in the next entry.)
I sat on the bed and tried to calm my racing mind. It wasn't easy due to what was happening just outside my room. The woman in the room next to me was highly agitated, pacing up and down the hall. She was muttering to herself. Several times nurses told he she needed to wear her mask when outside her room. This made her more agitated and she was soon yelling about being controlled. Suddenly half a dozen security guards appeared. Two nurses were trying to calm her down. She eventually did and when I peeked out my door she was sitting in the hall with her face in her hands.
She looked like—pardon the stereotype—a typical soccer mom you'd see cheering her child on from the sidelines. Mental illness doesn't discriminate.
After about an hour the in-patient psychiatrist stopped by to see me. She had a very thick folder with my case history in her hands. She asked what brought me to the hospital and how I was feeling.
"Frustrated. I can't believe this is happening again," I said with tears of rage welling in my eyes. "I biked 13,000 kilometres last year. I take my medications religiously. I practice CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) every single day. And none of it seems to fucking matter."
"Stop," said the psychiatrist while raising her hand, palm out, and smiling a gentle smile. "Yes, you're doing all those things. But after reading your history I think it's an issue with your medication. You would probably have been here a lot sooner if you hadn't been doing all those other things."
She explained I'd been on my main anti-depressant Effexor for almost 20 years, seven at my current dosage. I was also started on Seroquel during my last stay as an "augmentor" to the Effexor. It too had been at the current dosage for seven years. I wrote about my experience first taking anti-depressants in a previous blog entry. You can read it here.)
She went on to explain she wasn't a fan of Seroquel in cases like mine so she was recommending we eliminate it completely while adding a new one, Mirtazapene. The Effexor would continue at the same dosage.
"Let's see how things go over the next few days on this combination,"she said before heading off to her next patient.
About 30 minutes later I was taken upstairs to the mental health unit.
I was given a private room at the end of the hall behind a barrier that said 'no unauthorized personnel past this sign'. I was being placed in quarantine for the first night since it would take some time to get my Covid test results back.
The sun was sliding down the sky. I guessed it was close to 6 pm. The room was, like all the others in this unit, bare. There was a standard hospital bed, side table, a closet, a bathroom and nothing else. I lay down to try to get some rest. Being in a state of non-stop mental agitation is exhausting.
I looked out the window to try to orient myself but in my confused state I couldn't even tell north from south. This really concerned me as I'd been in the hospital literally dozens upon dozens of times due to my illness and my mom's many stays. I felt rootless, untethered.
Well, except for a couple of things. No caffeine is allowed. The coffee and tea are decaffeinated. For one thing, they don't want people who are usually in an agitated state to have access to stimulants. Second, many of them are on potent combinations of medications and mixing them with caffeine is not recommended.
The other thing is the cutlery. No knife, no fork. Only a spoon.
I barely touched my dinner the first night. I can't even remember what it was.
I lay on the bed, still filled with anxiety and dread and fearing the next few days.
Around 9 p.m. a nurse delivered my first dose of Mirtazapene. I placed it under my tongue and waited.
Night fell again.
WOW...I can't imagine going thru this for so long. I experienced something similar when my sister was killed but that was the only time, thank God!
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