Trigger Warning: Rape, involuntary confinement and suicidal ideation.
Disclaimer: Names have been changed to protect both the innocent and the fucking evil (allegedly).
There is a relentless, unreasonable rage inside me. I’ve been “voluntarily” admitted to a mental institution. “Voluntarily” is being used so loosely here, it might as well be the premise of that .38 Special song. Voluntary means getting a panel of doctors and a judge involved to leave. Voluntary in arrangement of letters only, certainly not in definition.
To truly understand the whole story, we must start at the beginning: three months postpartum.
At the time of my 6-week postpartum follow-up appointment, I let my OB know that I was struggling with depression. Not with thoughts of hurting myself, my child or others, but depression in general. Since I was still trying to breastfeed, she put me on Lexapro. During that appointment, she referred me to a primary care physician and turned my medication management over to her.
My PCP, Dr. Dawn, asked how I’d been feeling since starting Lexapro. At that moment in time, my depression was completely under control. I’m talking miracle drug. But I was still having extreme bouts of anxiety and trouble sleeping. Dr. Dawn decided to up my Lexapro dosage from the lower 10mg to the max dosage of 20mg. “Let’s touch base in a couple of weeks to see how you’re feeling.”
A couple of weeks go by, and I tell Dr. Dawn that my depression is still gone, but my anxiety is higher than it’s ever been. Can’t concentrate, spending money like a Kardashian, then feeling guilty for the dumb things I was doing during ‘good days’ and falling back into an albeit lighter-than-usual depression.
“Bipolar disorder. That’s what it sounds like more to me than postpartum depression. If that’s the case, the Lexapro is not the medicine you need to be on since it makes manic episodes worse. Let’s go back down to 10mg of Lexapro and then, after a couple of days of that, let’s add Abilify. I’m also going to refer you to a psychiatrist since this isn’t my area of expertise. Let me know if you can’t get into the psychiatrist for more than two weeks.”
Cool.
About a week or so after the medication change, I had a horrible day of not wanting to get out of bed. The type of day that, if I was going to leave this earth voluntarily, that would have been it. My child’s father asked if I wanted to say goodbye to him before he went to Nana’s, but I told him no. I was too afraid that if I saw him, I wouldn’t go through with it. After everyone left, I gathered a few of my son’s things and put them in the bathtub. If I was going to leave, I’d want to leave with pieces of him with me.
But, I’ve dealt with depression enough to know that if I go through a sleep/wake routine enough, then my brain will “reset” and those feelings will eventually lessen. And so, they did. I wound up putting my child’s things away, taking a shower and then picking him up from his Nana’s. At that point, I was still depressed but no longer dealing with suicidal ideation.
Now, being the “truth is the best policy for healing” type of idiot I am, I told Dr. Dawn everything when I saw her the following Monday. I could see the panic—and probably guilt—on her face when I told her. And, since her previously referred psychiatrist wasn’t available for a month, she referred me to Robbie Acorn, a mental health facility in town that would take both in-and-out patient appointments. I was referred for outpatient medication management since it was obvious to everyone and the paint on the wall that my mental episode was triggered by the medication change.
Roseanne, the Robbie Acorn outpatient director, was the first person I met with. Again, I told her the whole story like a dummy. About five minutes into the interview, she left to get a random worker to “sit with me” while she went to “speak with the inpatient director.”
Before I knew it, I was being directed to a room where I sat and waited in silence for about five minutes. It was dingy at best, and the seats were akin to prison waiting room seats.
Nurse 1 entered the room and asked me to confirm God knows what. Nurse 1 reentered the room to confirm whatever she’d asked before. Nurse 1 then led me into a smaller room with three chairs and a very small window. No clock, no television, no communication with the outside world. My phone had been put into a locker during the outpatient appointment check-in, so it was legit just me, my thoughts, and the faint screams coming from the room I’d just left.
In and out, in and out, Nurse 1 would come. Then, finally, she dropped the bomb. “So, you’re being admitted as inpatient.”
“Uhh, beg your fucking pardon? I came here voluntarily for medication management, not to have my shoe laces confiscated and piercings removed.”
Didn’t matter. When I asked if I could just leave, she informed me that they had already started the paperwork for inpatient and that if I requested to leave, I’d have to interview with several doctors and a Judge would be making the final ruling. The Goddamn court system?
Oh dear God, the amount of rage that filled my veins. If looks could kill, she’d have been wheeled out in a bodybag.
I reassured her that I knew she was only doing her job and that she wasn’t the one ruining my life, but she also took the brunt of the shit ass attitude seeping from my pores.
“How long will I be here?”
“That usually ranges by patient, but it could be seven days to 14 days. The longest I’ve seen is 10.”
Cue the fire in my eyes.
After signing the “voluntary” paperwork, I was ushered into a shit ass medical closet. One literal paper partition separated me and Nurse 1 from Richard, the dick nurse who had to be present while Nurse 1 made me undress, looked for signs of trauma, and made sure my bra was wireless.
“Do I need to get fully naked?”
“Well, we need to check for cuts or bruises and double-check the wire on your bra.”
“I’ll get fully naked so you can see, but I don’t wear underwear and I’m on my period.”
Once Nurse 1 got a good gander of the goods, Richard offered hospital panties, which I promptly put on. They’re comfortable, what can I say?
“What’s under that band-aid?”
Ol’ Richard, the eagle-eyed dick that he is, was condescending.
“I was planning on swimming today and cut myself shaving. Do you need to see it?”
“No, it’s fine.”
The eye roll heard around the world.
“What about those piercings? We need all your rings and piercings to be removed.”
“Umm, no. You can have my rings and my tragus piercings, but the others are relatively new, and I’m not taking them out. They will close.”
“What if I can find spacers?”
“Then we can talk.”
“When can I make a phone call?” That was the first question I’d asked when I entered the cold, dirty psych ward.
“In a few minutes. But I want to introduce you to a few people first,” Dick… I mean, Richard said.
Yada, yada, yada… He rambled on, every word falling on deaf ears. “But as soon as a bed opens in the other ward, we will move you there. Should be tomorrow morning.”
So, there I stood. Nary an instruction one as to what to do, where to sit, where my room was, or what was customary in a place as such. Luckily for my anxiety, the other patients left for dinner during Dick’s introduction to the ward. I made two phone calls: first to my child’s father, then to my boss. I let them both know this would be a 7-10 day process and not to expect me. I gave them my patient ID, which was wrong to begin with, and cried as I said goodbye.
“We’ll make sure to bring you a dinner tray.”
They did not.
The rest of that night was a blur. I met with the psychiatrist, Dr. White, who was as pleasant as they come. He questioned why I was in that particular ward to begin with and made the same promise that I’d be moved the next day. But the most surprising thing that happened was that they stopped my Lexapro and Abilify cold turkey. My prescription prenatals and birth control had to be brought in and approved, which meant four days without those as well.
I’m not a doctor. I didn’t understand why medications I’d been taking were stopped abruptly, and no one gave me an explanation that made sense to me. I guess so they could replace them with other medications, but damn, what the fuck?
Four days total in Changes. Four days of a woman masturbating in the hallway. Four days of people fighting over what movies they want to watch. Four days of picking up an old smoking habit that I’d long left in the dust. Four days of coloring pages and doing word searches. Four days of asking for tampons every time I went to the bathroom. Four days of freezing my ass off in the meat locker they call a day room. Four days of some woman ripping up the belongings of other people. Four days of Dr. White asking why I was still in that unit, but then qualifying it with “Well, I’m surprised by how well you’re coping here.”
I did make friends in Changes. I learned that while there were definitely people going through various phases of psychosis, most were pleasant people. Now, I’m not naïve enough to believe every story they told, but I was pleasantly surprised by the warmth they showed. Almost as if we all knew we were there against our will, that it sucked, and that making it harder for one another just wasn’t something we were willing to do.
The father of my child brought me sweatpants, leggings and sweaters, so that helped with the frostbite. It’s amazing how brains will learn to cope.
One group therapy session I opened up about being raped at sixteen. When asked by another patient, Phoebe, if I’d turned the rapist in, I told her no. I explained it happened on a family vacation, that I was drunk for the first time thanks to my mom getting me drink after drink, and that he was a family friend. And it’s so fucking hard to say those things out loud at 38, but to try that at 16 was incomprehensible.
That fucking asshole, Phoebe, told me that when my own child gets raped at 16, I will defend the rapist and sweep it under the rug like I’d done in my own situation. Phoebe, if you’re reading this, there are some things only God can forgive and I wouldn’t stop if I saw you overdosing in a ditch.
I digress. The real shock came from the fact that the therapist just let her say this to me, not once intervening. Tears streaming down my face, mouth ajar. Other patients stunned into silence. Finally, one of the other patients told her to stop talking, and I wound up asking if I could leave. I never went to group therapy in Changes again, and I didn’t give a single shit if I got “dinged” for it.
One of the more interesting but less traumatizing group therapies was art. We got to watercolor whatever we wanted on paper. Well, well, well… If it wasn’t the outpatient director, Roseanne, leading that group therapy. We immediately recognized each other. Again, if looks could kill.
During our watercolor, I painted “Mother” and then crossed a giant black X through it. Roseanne asked if I wanted to talk about it. I’d rather have lobotomized myself. I hope she felt the disdain in my voice towards her when I told her “no.”
Towards the end of the fourth day, they finally moved my roommate, Selina, to the calmer units. It felt like starting over from scratch. But after a day or so, I made friends again. The most heartbreaking part of the whole experience was a patient with dementia. He very clearly didn’t belong there. I’ll never forget him, and I’ll never stop wondering if he’s okay or where he is.
In the new unit, promises were made about when I’d speak to a psychiatrist again, but those promises were broken. Same with a patient advocate and whomever does the discharge paperwork.
I skipped lunch one afternoon in a state of protest. That finally got someone’s attention. Hours later, I’d spoken to both a patient advocate and the discharge worker. That was a Wednesday; they told me I’d be out on Thursday.
When Thursday finally rolled around, discharge went as well as expected. However, they did not give me my birth control or my prescribed prenatal, both of which I’m still fighting for.
That’s the nutshell of my experience in Robbie Acorn. A place that I fully believe takes advantage of people. I left feeling less like a patient who needed help and more like a walking dollar sign. Insured or state-funded, I couldn’t shake the feeling that somebody was making money from every body occupying a bed. Either way, big green dollar signs everywhere. From where I sat, medication sometimes seemed to be the answer to everything—including behavior the staff didn’t want to deal with—while others seemed to be just going through the motions because they’d been through it all before.
The everyday staff, with the exception of Dick, are quite pleasant people. The people dressed in black or pink/red, gray and blue are good people. But I can’t shake the feeling that there are people at the top making money off the backs of people who genuinely need help—and the people genuinely trying to help them.
But harder than the traumatic experience of the hospital has been readjusting to normal life. From asking for toilet paper, water and tampons, to being in total control of myself again… we don’t talk about that enough. I make my medication decisions now. I’m in charge of a tiny human again. I’m trying to explain my trauma and experience with my loved ones that just don’t get it. I’m experiencing mood swings and still the effects of stopping some medication cold turkey and starting others out of the blue, but I’m expected to come back magically healed. Drugged within four walls, being told when I can eat and sleep, no real therapy, no real medication management… but then I go home to people who think I’ve been ‘getting help.’ The same people who walk around on eggshells around you, who babysit you, who come to your house if you don’t text back fast enough… those are the same people telling you that your reactions are extreme or telling you to have patience with the one person in your life that promised to be there that wound up giving up after four days. The world I left is not the same one I came back to. There isn’t a connection that hasn’t been collateral damage. And for what? No progress to speak of. Just a new set of orange bottles, labeled with words only scientists can say and God forbid you forget to take one. But also if you take them, people question your competence to be around your own baby; but if you don’t take it, then are you even trying?
To say that I’m mad is an understatement. To say I’m pulsating with rage would be downplaying the constant mental and physical state I’m in. Am I a danger to myself? Probably not. Am I a danger to my child? Go fuck yourself. Of course not. All I’ve been is a $30k walking dollar sign with a stigma that will follow me forever. Those who say they won’t throw it in your face somehow manage to mention it in conversation ‘just as a timing reference.’
I don’t know if I’ll ever get over this. I start therapy next week, and I’m praying it does something. In the meantime, I’ll keep swallowing the pills, paying the physical and mental consequences of quitting some medications cold turkey, and praying nobody uses this experience against me for access to my son.
We have to do better for our people. We have to understand more, talk more, listen more, hug and love more. We have to stop assuming we know everything. We need research from people willing to go undercover and see it from the inside. I don’t know the answers, but I’m willing to be a source of knowledge to anyone, literally anyone, with the power to change the system.
The last 15 days have sucked ass. I’m jaded. I’m angry. I’m not the same person I was and I don’t know if I’ll ever get her back. And I’m mad at every single person who supported this, talked shit about it, or tiptoed around me. In a perfect world, I’d be left the fuck alone. But my sweet baby deserves more. So, I will become the mom I need to be, breaking generational curses and bringing light into this darkness. Because if, God forbid, he struggles with any of the same mental illnesses I have, at least he will have a guidepost and lights for his path.
anna in the clouds 