In The Words Of Simon & Garfunkel: I Wish I Was Homeward Bound

After my not so little escapade last weekend I didn’t manage to get discharged on Tuesday, despite my pleadings and grovelling to Dr Mc. I was kept as an inpatient and had my CPA meeting on Wednesday. This was a, well, interesting affair.

Around the little table, in a room that I never even knew existed, was Dr Mc, G (the assistant psychologist who was covering for Jane who was off on annual leave), me, my Mum, K (my named nurse) and Allison. Dr Mc, K and Allison seemed mainly concerned with my lack of insight, risk taking behaviour, clear elevation in mood and compliance with medication. G wanted to know if I was stable enough to be engaging in therapies or if I should wait until the meds had worked into my system so that I was mentally stable and less likely to do something stupid following a particularly bad group/session. My Mum, having been somewhat kept out of the loop, wanted to know what the bloody hell was going on and I just wanted to know when I was going to be discharged.

Dr Mc suggested that the antidepressant be stopped immediately, that I was to be weaned off the lamotrigine and onto a higher, but more in the range of therapeutic, dose of valproate. K suggested that I would benefit from having more one-to-one time with a member of the nursing staff in order to prevent repeats of the weekends behaviour by engaging me in discussion about my mood and behaviour. Allison seemed to be in agreement with this but was also concerned as to what the input from the Priory would be upon my discharge as she said that she couldn’t shoulder all the responsibility of me in the community. G said that she would incorporate me into certain groups but not groups where my energy and somewhat tactless remarks would be unhelpful, and she would find me more active groups, such as art therapy, to help me channel my energies. My Mum sat there and said she couldn’t cope with me for much longer, she didn’t know how much longer they could keep funding me and kept saying it was all so unfair. And me? Well little me sat in the corner, fidgeting and every time I was asked a question suffixing it with ‘so when will I be discharged?’.

I am still in the Priory. I am still manic and bordering on the completely insane. My Mum took me out for a coffee earlier this afternoon, only I wasn’t allowed a coffee, or a Coke, or anything sugary or caffeinated, so I had a fizzy water. All I can see ahead of me is a random section of time with me being in here, the funding clock ticking (as the NHS trust won’t fund the Priory, despite the fact they have had to admit that the care they offered me at the end of last year was ‘unacceptable’ and they have handled the situations leading to my admissions ‘to an unsatisfactory standard’) and Dr Mc trying different drugs out on me like a guinea pig until one sticks. Jane assured me that valproate doesn’t cause weight gain, as she has had patients treated with it in the past and they haven’t noticed any significant change. I think they are all saying this just to make me take the sodding tablets. It’s a ploy. Tell Ruth they won’t make her gain weight and she’ll take them. Well I’m not that flipping gullible, I mean there is a reason for the fact my mood hasn’t entirely calmed down yet, and it might have a large part to do with refusing to take olanzapine, risperidone or quetiapine as an anti-psychotic.

I’ve self-harmed again as well. This time, on Bank Holiday morning, the on call medical officer decided it was too severe for him to deal with so I ended up in the local A&E with a nurse from the Priory who didn’t take her namebadge off for the whole time. You can imagine that a lot of people were giving me strange looks. The triage nurse applied a wet dressing to both arms so this made the wounds look worse than they were because the blood seeped through and went all over them. Imagine slightly demented, lunatic, fidgeting, impatient patient with both arms in bandages with blood seeping through with Priory mental health nurse calmly sitting beside aforementioned lunatic trying to get her to sit down, quieten down and stop fidgeting. Get the picture? Well the other patients in A&E didn’t like it.

The SHO I saw dealt with the wounds and suggested I needed to see the crisis team. Bearing in mind that the Priory nurse wouldn’t leave me unattended at any point throughout my admission, she was there for triage, the suturing, mental state assessment by the SHO, I found this hilarious, and decided to laugh at the idea. The SHO was adamant that I needed to have a psychiatric evaluation, despite Priory nurse saying I was currently a Priory inpatient and that she was an RMN and that my psych was assessing me on the Tuesday morning. Baby SHO went off to speak to his consultant and returned, tail between legs, to say that this time he thought I could get away with being discharged without an assessment. I have to give Priory nurse some credit, she kept a straight face throughout and didn’t laugh until we were back into the car!

Since then I’ve attended some groups, walked round the grounds supervised, gone out with my Mum a couple of times, been isolated from the patient who got me involved in the alcohol scandal of Sunday (as of Wednesday he had disappeared and no one would say where to – I suspect the more acute, acute ward if you get my drift – they don’t like to call it an intensive care unit here) and been a complete nutcase. The patients who were in before, when I was last in, are back off leave, and the day patients are back; most of whom I know, fairly well and we are creating slight mayhem.

Together the lunatics will conquer the asylum!

Ruth