Mentally Numbed: Being Sedated Whilst An Inpatient Kept Me Safe

So where was I?

Ah yes, after lots and lots of lorazepam on the Monday afternoon/evening/night the duty medical doctor decided to delete it from my drug chart as the drug of choice for calming me down when needed. Instead he added hydroxyzine which is a sedating antihistamine. The next time the nurse offered me some PRN meds, I think I was opening the window and trying to squeeze out through it, this was the drug I got. I was offered what dose I would like but was told that I could only have a maximum of 75mg in a day and the tablets were 25mg, so I opted for 25mg and settled down to think I would be vaguely relaxed and a little chilled out. Instead of which I slept most of the day. I remember my mum coming to visit me but apparently she left because I looked so dozy, I don’t recall her leaving, but the rest of the day is a blur.

My consultant came to visit me on Tuesday afternoon and in my dozy state I agreed to start taking olanzapine again at night to try and combat the night wandering and nightmares but also to switch off all the noise that was in my head. This inevitably meant that I slept beautifully on Tuesday night, and through much of Wednesday and only started to wake up on Wednesday when it was time for my night meds again.

I don’t think they deliberately tried to sedate me from Tuesday through to Thursday afternoon when I was discharged but I believe it did make their lives easier as I was hell bent on self destruction and by the simple fact that I was asleep most of the time, it reduced my risk of doing anything. As I was discharged on the Thursay I noticed I had finally been marked down to hourly observations and deemed a low risk, which pleased me as I had never been such a low risk before, and yet I was sad because I knew in my heart that it was only because of sedating meds.

Immediately after being discharged I saw my CPN who did her own risk assessments which deemed me to be at high risk of suicide and self harm and low risk of violence and neglect. Then on the Friday I had a joint appointment with my CPN and a guy from the Crisis Team to assess whether I could be taken onto the CRHT (Crisis Resolution Home Treatment Team) caseload or whether I was sane enough to cope on my own. Their joint opinion was for CRHT to have input and so far I have been working with the team for just over a week. I have a care plan review on Thursday, which I presume they will cease contact with me afterwards but for once they have actually been helpful and supportive. I’ll write more about them in another post.

Ruth