Sorry to moan but literally everything is a mess. A serious big mess. Like, couldn’t get much worse mess.
This med change has truly messed me up and it’s left me wondering if the last anti-depressant was actually doing something. Fine, I still had a bad appetite and was only sleeping a couple of hours but since coming off of it now for a few days, I’m a total wreck. Like, really depressed.I haven’t managed to eat or sleep whatsoever and I literally can not stop crying. I was never emotional like this. And I can still hardly speak and I’m really shut down like I have never been before. So I’m really confused as to whether to ask to go back on it and perhaps ask if they can just add something on top which could help in a sedating sense to help me sleep and for the anxiety and help with my appetite too maybe. I don’t know. In the end, as bad as I am feeling, I am still very aware of the changes that have happened within me and no doctor can say or see that, especially because I’m obviously once again with a different doctor in a different hospital. (That I haven’t met with yet too). But I admit that I am still very confused as to what would be classed as symptoms of the BPD vs the severe depression. Hence, why perhaps I feel suicidal because of the BPD rather than it being because of the low mood necessarily. See what I mean? It’s very confusing. But all I do know is that as soon as they reduced the Trazodone (anti-depressant) down quite a few days ago and stopped it completely a couple of days ago, yesterday and today has been a true nightmare and I really don’t think that it’s a coincidence.
But I’m terrified either way at what to do about it. I will speak tomorrow with the doctor if he appears or if I find HIM and what if he says we will not go back to the Trazodone but see if this anti-depressant works better and improves my sleep and appetite? (And all the rest of it). Then I’ve only just started it so we need to wait a few weeks to see if it helps? How can I go on another few weeks with it possibly not helping anything at all and then what? Go to try another one and then wait another few weeks for that? And then go back to Trazodone? I admit, things weren’t good on Trazodone by any means but at least I was managing to eat half a meal a day in the evening and a piece of fruit in the morning. Now, nothing. It’s just a big mess with that. They say you can survive on water for a good while, but that’s taking the biscuit to say for me to not eat for a few weeks possibly. Plus the constant migraine from crying uncontrollably and being frozen with depression.
We got called for occupational therapy this morning so as bad as I was feeling, the teacher was really nice and literally held my arm and took me to the room and said even if I sit there, it will do me good. So I did. And I didn’t resist. It was art therapy and I managed to do some colouring in like a little kid, but I know, that’s better than nothing. No complaining. Two other patients sat there, one with his jumper over his head laughing and screaming and the other one telling us that she was told by voices to jump in front of a train and stuff. Not particularly the subject I wish to talk about when the same thing happened to me, well, asides from the voices, but consisted of me hanging off a fence waiting for a train to come and being stopped. But I understand, that is sick people and I know that I am one of them. (And now I’ve just broken down completely because I’ve just seen the evening local news on TV and two teenagers did a double suicide last night by standing on train tracks and being hit literally two train stops away from where I was going to do it and its really shaken me up).
The teacher told us that its only him doing any activities in the ward due to other staff members either retiring or going to new jobs and that they have been unable to fill the job positions up as nobody has applied (that’s pretty straight up honesty isn’t it?!). So he said there is art therapy once a week for 30 minutes with him and that’s it for now! Excuse me?! I’ve been told that I’m being moved to a treatment ward and there is nothing happening in a treatment ward and in the assessment ward has at least two activities a day!! I’ve come here to basically either lay in bed all day feeling more depressed or sit in the day room watching the news or Jeremy Kyle and get more depressed! What the f*ck is this?! He admitted that its an awful situation too. They all do!
There are several more patients, it’s a big ward but not so many patients and oh my, this place is just not for me. Again, I am not judging the other patients on how sick they are and am not belittling them but they are REALLY out of it and sick. I know I’m not so damn normal but I still have my mind there right now as bad as I feel and that’s why it makes it even more difficult for me to be in a place like this because nobody else seems to be aware of the situation which I’ll speak about in the following paragraphs.
My dad and his wife came to visit me in this new hospital/ward this evening. This place is truly disgusting. I’ll say first of all that I feel extremely bad for the patients here in such situations and take nothing away from that, but I can simply not be in a ward like this. It’s dirty and smelly. The men are either aggressive or walk around naked and, well, one woman walks around screaming and getting put in isolation too. The cleaners come once in the mornings and at least this morning did a half-ass attempt at cleaning (picking up used cups and dirty tissues so it LOOKED clean) whereas in the other 2 hospitals I was in in the last month, things were kept at a much more decent level and there were cleaners in the evenings too which is totally needed. They blab on about “infection control” and its a f*cking pigsty. What a joke.
Two patients (women) have no control over their bladders. I hadn’t eaten all day because of my own problems having a lack of appetite and feeling nauseous, then I go to try and eat dinner at 5.30pm tonight and this woman sits next to me to eat too. I straight away smelt a stench of urine on her and it totally put me off of my food. I had eaten literally two small mouthfuls of mashed potato and that’s all I had managed to eat in three days. So I sat there heaving basically at the smell coming from her and saw there was no other place to move to sit and eat. Then she gets up and literally, urine is covered on the whole chair and is dripping off. Just as that happened, my parents walked in the ward to visit me and I called them over and just burst out crying saying how am I meant to eat (and all the rest of it) when I’m in a place like this, let alone all the other things that have been going on that I haven’t written about here and neither told my parents yet.
My step-mum asked the nurse nicely if we could go and sit in another room to eat my food because of the urine and he snapped and was so nasty and said ‘don’t just assume its urine, maybe she sat on water’. He literally walked away and didn’t even check the chair or dry the “water” on it. He just didn’t give a damn. Their attitudes are so disgusting. Well, this is the same patient that walked down the hallway last night with a wet backside and told the nurse in front of me that she wet herself again so I can only assume that number one: she smells of urine which is anyway stoping me from eating (OK, something I will try have to deal with) and two: if she is known to have poor bladder control and sits on a dry clean chair then gets up and it’s wet, where did the sodding “water” come from all of a sudden? So that went on and my dad asked to speak with the charge nurse and she was nasty and flippant too saying that we need to understand that people here too also have physical problems. (Really being bitchy making it seem like we are horrible disillusioned people). Well, did we doubt that or even slag it off, of course not! And I know nurse, thank you f*cking very much that I have not booked myself in to a hotel and that I need to be here (thank you for reminding me of that). More than anything, it was the first nurses problem when he just walked away from the soaking chair because he didn’t want to deal with it. So, that’s two mouthfuls of mashed potato in three days and no other food and I’m dehydrated because of my own fault because I’ve been frozen in bed with the water cooler the other side of the ward and haven’t been able to get up to look after myself. Help, anyone? Literally a whole day in bed asides from 30 mins of art therapy, and not once did anyone come to my room to see if I was OK or anything. I looked later and the blind was down on my door so literally nobody checked me all day. No speaking with the doctor, no showing me around, no asking if I want to go down to get some fresh air at the appointed times that they never told me about, nothing. What is this?
Then my parents asked to see my room because I had told them that it was dirty and smelly. The charge nurse hesitated at first and said they can’t go to see my room but we are no fools, if she escorts us, or at least my step-mum to the women’s section, then that’s totally allowed. Low and behold that wasn’t in my own f*cking distorted mind either. The mattress smells of puke and the bedding must have been a “bad batch of laundry” because it smells of urine. So we got apology after apology for that, like all the other stuff too. It’s just not acceptable. Don’t they realise that?. So my dad and his wife, both very nice people but obviously upset at the treatment of not just me but of other patients too, were very firm and told the nurse that its disgusting. We agreed that the humid weather is not helping either because the windows only open a little and the room I am in (and all of them) are very small in size so you don’t only feel claustrophobic, but they’re dirty, stuffy and humid too. Vile. Not a good mix.
The only words that came out of my mouth was ‘I can’t be here’ and the charge nurse said there is no way I will be allowed to transfer back to the hospital I was just in because its not in my catchment area. But that’s BS because they offered me to be moved to the treatment ward (when I was there) which I saw and was newer and clean and full of activities and therapies and I could see that the patients weren’t in these unfortunate situations but I asked if my local hospital would be the same and they said yea, so I said that’s its closer for my patents to visit so I’ll wait for a bed there. What a mistake that was.
So I’m stuck here for now. Obviously, I need to be in hospital so beggars can’t be choosers but I know that I’m right in saying that this is not a place in which I can get better. No therapies, filth and stench, no care, it’s just not going to happen.
My dad and his wife were really upset to leave me here and I was really broken down, like broken down on the floor… I know, not that far off of being in a state like these other patients. But it’s still not right that I’ve been told that I’ll get treatment here and it’s so so so far from that its unbelievable.
My dad is going to make some calls tomorrow and see what he can do. It was admitted by everyone (even the attitude filled charge nurse) that this is not a healthy place for me and its not right that I’m here with the kind of diagnoses that I have that even turns out they can’t offer short term support here for that too either! So I just hope I can get my ass out of here because honestly, this place can make me only worse.
I was going to laugh finishing off writing this, but that hasn’t happened. I’m just in such total shock and despair over the whole situation. It’s just driving me downwards in to the ground. Seriously.
