A Hellish Week

I got home from a week in the psych unit aka behavioral medicine. I received a follow-up phone call from my insurance company with a short survey. I answered questions about the quality of care, meds, environment and didn't have a very favorable view. As the survey went on the gal on the phone asked why I was not satisfied with such and such. Finally I told her the whole story...

I needed medication adjustment but there were no beds available at the nearest hospital so I was transported by ambulance three hours north. I arrived and once I started talking about my concerns I became flooded with emotion to where I could not open my eyes and was crying like rain. After documenting all of my meds I was given a bed. It was 3:00 a.m. I had taken Ambien before getting to the hospital with my regular nighttime meds and slept in the ambulance but once I was at behavioral medicine I was wide awake and stayed that way.

In the morning I couldn't eat. My bathroom door was locked and I needed to ask a CNA or nurse to open it. It was locked for safety reasons. I couldn't eat breakfast, there was a feeling of a hole in my stomach. I cried.

One of the other patients was in a manic phase of bi-polar and was loud and talking fast greeting everyone and trying to cheer people up.

The doctor and his nurse with her computer came to my room. We discussed my meds. He wanted to give me Trazadone for sleep whereas my doctor had just prescribed Ambien. I didn't want to go on Trazadone because I had been on it for a long time in the past. I just needed something temporary. The doctor made no notes and the nurse kept finding herself on another patient's screen. That must have been where my prescription for Geodon ended up.

I saw the MD about some of my physical pain that I have been fighting and told him that I had a cold and could I please have some throat lozenges.

I got my morning meds at about 2:30 in the afternoon. I was sitting in the tv lounge area with the door closed so I wouldn't hear the girl pacing the hall, faster and faster and jamming her head into the door at the end of it, harder each time. Security was called and they took her away somewhere after a shot of Halidol.

I was informed that I was getting a roommate. She turned out to be a very young-looking 76-year-old sweetheart who had a problem with her memory and was taking Aricept. She was later diagnosed with dementia.

A new patient showed up that evening. She was irate about something, getting louder and louder, wanting to see the doctor. She had been given a medication that she never took because she claimed to be allergic to it, asking for Halidol. She had a heart condition at 40. Since she had already been given something the nurses informed her that she couldn't have anything else. Her roommate had been in the unit for 9 days and was sick. She was the loud manic from breakfast. She had diarreah, vomiting and rectal bleeding and her bathroom door was locked. She wanted to see a doctor but was denied throughout the day and by nighttime the two of them were out in the hall swearing loudly at the nurses.

When I got my nighttime meds I was not given Geodon and given Trazadone instead of Ambien. Throat lozenges were not ordered due to some mixup so the nurse got me a cup of ice chips to suck on. I never got to sleep. My head was pounding from the shouting.

The second morning I got up at 7:00. I had been awake nearly 30 hours. Each time the nurses had come during the night for "checks" with a flashlight I had been sitting up, or else I waved at them to let them know I was still awake as they told me to do. I sat in the lounge area waiting for my morning meds exhausted and depressed when my room mate asked me what was wrong. "I've been up for 30 hours, I am in pain and I have a headache." She said, "Why do you care how many hours you have been awake? Don't you think that if you just had some good thoughts all of this would go away?" Surely wishful thinking on her part.

Each phone call from my husband brought tears. I didn't think I would ever feel better. I'm still not 100 percent. He did come to see me from where he was working and came home the next weekend as well.

I realized that I am so lucky. What a wonderful man I am married to. After his visit, Tim, a CNA leaned into my ear and told me, "you're a lucky woman." I said, "I know, he is an incredible man." To deal with me and my depression for so long. I need to hang on so I can move and get to a new place where I can go back on TruHope.

Meanwhile, back at the ward, an elderly woman with a disfigured body but a sharp mind was there with a walker and could not get comfortable. She explained that she needed serotinin to help her function. I am not sure what her condition was but it appeared to be cerebral palsey. That night she had a cardiac arrest and the rapid response team needed to be called. The nurses had to make the call more than once. She was taken from the unit in the middle of the night. I don't know the outcome, but it didn't sound good when the nurses were talking about it in the morning. I had come out in the hallway during the event in the middle of the night so I knew some of what was going on. I don't know if she survived or not, but she had had a cardiac arrest. Her name was Teresa.

The next day I asked if I could take pages out of some of the magazines in the tv room to use for a collage. My own form of art therapy. We were told in the unit rules that we would have "group" each day and that we would be expected to attend.
We had one "group" where we saw a video about making the most of life. It was good. I got a lot out of it. But that was the extent of it. This time I decided to keep to myself, do what the doctor said, tried not to get involved with other patients' issues to protect myself. I'm kinestetic and empathetic. I can feel pain from others and I was overloaded as it was. My room mate and the manic wanted to do collages too. My room mate kept putting herself down saying how she couldn't do anything as good as I could. I then found out that she does Italian cut work, is a great cook, baker and keeps a clean house. I tried to turn it around and say, "what if the only thing to do here was Italian cut work? All of us would be talking to you in the same way you are talking to me." That made her feel better.

That night one of the patients attempted suicide and was not allowed personal clothing and was shot with Halidol and put in iscolation. She was not allowed phone calls nor visitors. Security came in again.

That night the manic patient was irate, she was shot with Halidol. Another patient had a migraine and was vomiting and ended up on her bedroom floor. She had already had a shot of Halidol but got a second one before bed. I don't know, but in all my hospitalizations I have never seen anyone get one shot of Halidol, and this seemed to be how everything was managed. Later that night my manic friend started accusing the nurses of taking her personal things and there was a "Code Yellow" called and security came. I don't know what a code yellow is.

By the fifth day or so I felt the knife come out of my heart and started feeling better. I had a "team meeting" the day before with my psychiatrist, his nurse, the social worker and a CNA to help with my treatment plan. I addressed again the need for throat lozenges and the doctor said, "Why is there a problem, we ordered those?" It had been three days and I was still using ice chips. The Geodon got figured out by the second night. I needed some benedryl for my cold but though they gave it to me one of the nurses told me that she thought, even though she wasn't a doctor and had no right to say it, that she thought I was "polysubstance abusive" because I had been like a zombie the first two days. That made my day. I tried to explain that I was distraught and overwhelmed. Maybe she's right. Who knows, I'll take it up with my doctor.

So, between two suicide attempts, once cardiac arrest, security called four times, a code yellow, yelling in the halls, locked bathrooms (my room mate had diarreah also), many medication mixups reported, nurses too busy to address anything, no groups, widespread dissatisfaction and overall misery I did make a formal complaint through my insurance company. When I filled out a survey at the end of my stay at the hospital, the last question was, "would you recommend this facility to anyone else?" I said, "I think I'll leave this one blank."

The worst experience I've had to date with psych medicine. I will think long and hard about entering an atmosphere such as this ever again.