WAGblog

Hospital Stay #3

I refused breakfast this time and waited and waited for Dr M. Nurses and psych techs (PTs) passing my door kept making snide remarks and laughing at me, so I slammed the door shut.

Someone knocked and nurse S, the head of the Plan, came in. "Are you slamming doors again, Pam? Don't you want to go home? Don't do it again."

"I just closed it a bit too forcefully..." I mumbled and lay down, trembling, my back to her. I heard her pull the door shut as she left. Thank god for small blessings.

It was 11:30am before Dr M arrived. I expected him to stand and briefly ask a few questions and pronounce me discharged, that's the way it usually went. Instead, he took his usual seat at the end of the bed. "How are you today, Pam?"

I looked at the air near him and could tell he was being snide, laughing at me beneath his oh-so-calm demeanor and I'd had it. "Don't give me that, 'How are you today, Pam'! I know what's going on, I know about The Plan, I know you're in on it with all the others. So quit all the BS."

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."

"You do, I know you do. You and all the staff. The Plan, the Training Plan, the Game that you're putting me through. That Plan. You know perfectly well what I'm talking about. You're just dancing the Dance right now and we both know it. Don't think you're fooling me!"

He tipped his head downward as if to look at me over his glasses. "Pam, what is this plan, this game or dance you're talking about? I honestly haven't heard about any plan or game..."

"Oh, go on, continue playing with me if you want to, but I know when I'm in danger from all of you, and I'm glad to be going home because there I'm finally safe -- from you, from them, from all of the staff and patients who have made my life hell here. Everyone denies it, and everyone knows all about it. You're all lying."

"What is this game? Can you tell me what the game is, what we are doing?"

"Why should I tell you, when you're the one running it, you know what you're doing perfectly well. you know more than I do!"

"I honestly have no idea--"

I had no more to say. Scared though I was to go home, I was sick of the place, all the people laughing and making fun of me, even the TV programmed to mention me by name, I needed to go home to recover from being here!

Dr M sat in silence a moment, then slapped his knees and as he got to his feet said, "I can't let you go home."

"What?! I've got to, I've got to get to Lynn's 80th birthday party! I promised her! I've got to go home!"

"I can't send you home, I'm sorry, you're too delusional." He was moving out of the room.

I was desperate. "PLEASE! PLEASE! I've got to go home! I'm not safe here. I'm safe at home!"

"I'm sorry." With that, he was gone. I was about to run after him to emphasize the fact that I was not a danger to myself or others and that he couldn't keep me here, I'd sign out AMA on Saturday when my PEC, the 15 day commitment paper, signed 8 days into my stay, expired, when there was a commotion in the hall. Suddenly two men, two PTs appeared in my door. K came in.

He took hold of one of the three chairs in the room. "You okay, Pam?" he asked.

I nodded, afraid to say anything now.

"Mind if I take this?" He dragged the chair out of the room and I figured he needed it for another, but he just put it outside my door and sat down. I frowned. What was he doing there? I wasn't --Wait just a godammed minute!

I ran out to the nurses station. Several staff members were gathered there, staring at me. I looked around wildly for someone, anyone I trusted, and found C. "What's going on? What's that man doing there?!"

"Dr M put you on CO, Pam."

"WHAT?! Let me talk to him, call him out here, I want to talk to him!"

"Pam, let's go to your room. He won't come out. He's already written the orders. Come on, let's go talk in your room, your yelling is scaring the other patients."

I stomped back into the room, humiliated to find K following close behind. I tried to slam the door, but he caught it and gently pushed it back against the wall. "Pam," he chided, "you know how it works, don't give me a hard time."

C came in then, with M the social worker and told me that Dr M, usually unflappable, had left my room and strode to the nurses station, seeming unnerved, and immediately ordered CO. "Did you threaten to kill yourself?"

"NO! I'm unsafe here, but because of YOU, not because of me!"

"Because of us? Why us?"

"Oh, never mind. I told Dr M and look at the trouble it's gotten me in."

The social worker put her two cents in. "You must have said something that worried him, Pam. Dr M doesn't put someone on CO for no reason."

"I said nothing to justify it. Nothing! I don't know why he did it. I told him I was safe at home, and unsafe here, but not from myself."

They couldn't figure it out but Dr M was adamant and I stayed on CO, as it turned out, all weekend and longer. What the nurses and social worker didn't know, nor Dr M, was that I had been collecting "weapons", anything with a sharp edge or that could be broken to create one, in order to finish the job I felt I'd not done well enough the first time...So CO made sense, though not for any reason Dr M knew about. It may well have prevented another Incident in fact, because by the end of the weekend things had changed so radically that I admitted to Dr M on Monday that I had these implements and handed them in, having decided not to go through with it.

(To be continued)

Posted by pamwagg at August 25, 2006 09:17 PM