They admitted me to the psych ward around 3:00p.m. I went in under the pretense that they were going to give me something to make me sleep. That’s all I wanted to do. I’d been awake for eight days. I didn’t really make the leap that they’d keep me locked in for two weeks.
Surprisingly, they didn’t give me anything right away. I so wanted sleeping pills. It took me about an hour to realize that they weren’t going to give me sleep medication until night time, so my sleep patterns wouldn’t be off kilter. If they would have put me to sleep at 3:30 in the afternoon, there was a chance I’d be awake very early in the morning. At 9:00 pm, I received a shot of meds, including lithium and Mellaril. The lithium was a major mood stabilizer, and the Mellaril was an anti-psychotic. I fell right to sleep.
I was awakened about 8:00a.m. the next day. Time to get up, get showered and dressed and go to breakfast. Another surprise - I couldn’t take a shower by myself. A nurse had to accompany me as I cleaned myself. She sat in the steamy bathroom, while I soaped up and rinsed off. (Everyone there, including me, was on a “suicide watch.”)
After I dressed in some clothes my mother had packed for me, I went into the breakfast room. But first, they had to engage in what would become a daily ritual - the weigh-in, the pulse-taking experience and the blood pressure check.
A male nurse performed this task, but the nurse was about 400 pounds. It should have been I who took his weight, pulse and blood pressure.
Breakfast was eggs and soggy bacon and cold toast.
At the table with me was a teenager who cut herself with razors. She had scars all over her arms. There was also an older woman who was about 65. She was complaining that she needed a smoke. I kept to myself and ate quietly.
After breakfast came a meeting with my psychiatrist. It was then that he told me that I had bipolar illness. This surprised me. I knew I had to have something, but bipolar illness seemed very alien. Other people got that, not me.
Then, came group therapy. It was led by a psychiatric nurse who spoke very loudly, as if our malady was deafness, not insanity. I don’t remember the therapy, only the shouting nurse.
I think we went to crafts next. I made a leather belt out of leather pieces that fit together.
Lunch. Macaroni and cheese, fish, green beans, Jello, soup, milk, cookie.
By the first week, I’d gained five pounds. At 130 pounds, I felt fat.
We had free time in the afternoon. I think I watched a little television, while a scary drug addict played mind games with me. He kept staring at me, telling me how he’d gotten the scars on his face. He’d weaseled out of a drug deal and someone had tortured him with a red hot coat hanger.
Then, visitation hours. My mother and brother arrived. My brother had a dozen pads of paper and a pack of pens for me. He thought I’d write my way out of there.
The big worry was that I had to go back to school in two weeks. I was a teacher at a college in Pennsylvania. I didn’t have my textbooks to plan my syllabus. My other brother ended up traveling to P.A. to pick up my college materials so I’d be ready to go back when the time came.
Pretty soon, it was dinner time. Then, bed time.
The daily routine repeated itself for 13 more days.
The worse part was being locked in. Well, they did take away your shoe laces and your glass bottles and mirrors.
I didn’t accompany the group on field trips into the community. Once everyone but me went swimming at the community pool. I didn’t want anyone to associate me with a bunch of mental patients.
Let me just say, I survived the psychiatric hospital. I went back to work on schedule.
My arms were bruised from the multiple blood tests. Again, they’d given me lithium, which demanded frequent blood exams to get the blood level right.
Although it was late August and 90 degrees, I wore long sleeves to class.
A small price to pay.