I checked myself in

Wasn't feeling better the day after my last post so I talked it over with my daughter and I checked myself into the hospital. The level of care at that place continues to deteriorate. Seems like most of the staff they've been hiring are people with absolutely no compassion or understanding of mental illness. My theory is that they probably couldn't get a job at one of the nearby medical hospitals because their attitudes stink, so they settled for the mental hospital which will hire anyone cuz if crazy people complain they can just dismiss our allegations as being delusional and paranoid. Now the staff is bitter that they couldn't land a better job and they take it out on the patients.

At times I felt like they were deliberately testing my patience. As has been the case the last several times I've been inpatient, they put bananas on my meal trays despite my menu being clearly marked that I'm allergic to them. The staff would then get mad at me for refusing to eat the other food on the tray, not understanding that the minute they put the banana on there, they contaminated everything else.

They would also arbitrarily enforce rules, but usually only for me. Supposedly, patients are not allowed to keep their toiletries in their rooms if it's stuff they brought from home. This must be a new rule because I've never heard of it any other time I've been there. The previous rule was that they had to just all be kept in a plastic bin, you couldn't leave them laying around the room on the furniture for sanitary reasons. Anyway, when I was admitted, I was issued a bin to keep my stuff in, but no one ever told me I couldn't keep it in my room the whole time. I was admitted on Wednesday and then on Saturday my bin disappeared. When I asked where it had gone, I was told of the new rule. Funny thing is, they didn't take my roommate's stuff. She still had her bin with all her toiletries sitting on her desk. So apparently this supposed "rule" only applies to me.

My pdoc had gone on vacation the day I was admitted. Wish he would have mentioned he was going out of town or I might have reconsidered going to the hospital. In his absence I was assigned to someone else. At first the guy seemed ok. He was pretty thorough during our first meeting, which was on Thursday, and asked a lot of questions. He upped the dose of Geodon my pdoc had me on to 80 mgs twice a day and gave me a different sleeping pill. Took the first dose of 80 mgs after dinner that night and by 8 pm I was feeling incredibly nauseous and felt like I was going to pass out. I had to cut my visit with my daughter short because I felt so awful.

I told my nurse how I was feeling and he told me if I felt like passing out to go lay down. 15 minutes later he's standing in the doorway yelling at me that they're having group and snack time. 10 minutes after that he's back telling me to come to the med room to take the sleeping pill. It was only 8:30 pm. When I told him I wasn't ready to take the other pill since it was still early and wasn't sure if it was a good idea to take something I'd never had before when I was already feeling sick from the other medication, he said he was going to write in my chart that I was refusing the medication. What an asshole.

The temp pdoc came to see me early Friday afternoon and I told him what had happened with the Geodon and why I hadn't taken the sleep medication. He switched me to Depakote and agreed to start me on half the normal starting dose to make sure I could tolerate it first. That was the last time I saw him. He didn't bother to see me on Saturday, even though I later found out he'd been there all day. Didn't come on Sunday. All I could think was, what if I hadn't been able to tolerate the Depakote? I'd have been sitting there all weekend unmedicated and getting worse.

As it was, I still wasn't sleeping, even with the sleeping pill he ordered. I was told on Friday by my nurse that if I wasn't able to sleep that night, they'd page the doctor to see what else we could try. At around 1 am when I told the staff I still couldn't sleep, they refused to call him. I was hallucinating and experiencing all the other negatives from long term sleep deprivation, so on Saturday I resorted to drastic measures after the doctor failed to see me. I actually had my daughter sneak me some Seroquel from home. Thankfully she obliged or I would probably still be in the hospital not sleeping.

On Monday, I figured my regular pdoc would come see me in the morning since he was back from vacation and I know his office hours are in the afternoon and evening on Mondays. When that didn't happen, I explained to the day staff how the other pdoc hadn't seen me since Friday and I was getting worried they'd forgotten about me. I was assured that someone would definitely see me that day. The later in the day it got, the more worried I got. After dinner, I explained again to the evening shift that it had now been three whole days since I'd seen a doctor. The charge nurse finally agreed to page my doctor and see if he would be coming in that evening. She paged him several times and he didn't answer.

He finally showed up around 9 pm and had wanted me to stay another day, but I talked him in to letting me go that night. I said that just being able to sleep for two nights in a row had a dramatic impact on how I was feeling. I was tempted to tell him the measures I had to go to in order to get sleep because the staff and other pdoc had failed to help, but figured if I did that, they would ban my daughter from ever visiting in the future.

So now I'm home and a bit unsure how I'm feeling. I went to a DBSA meeting last night and they felt that I was still manic because I kept talking, which is so out of character for me. I was also feeling hyper, like I wanted to run a marathon, but I tried to keep it in check as best I could. I don't see my pdoc until July 18th, but I might call and reschedule that to a sooner date just in case. I don't want this to get worse again.