Please Snore Louder

I'll be moving to a private room in the morning. For now I have to put up with my roommate who sleeps with the TV on, snores and wakes up every 20ish minutes for a horrible coughing fit. I've just had my dressing gown belt taken off me as a nurse walked in to find me making a noose out of it. I was just about to give up trying and google noose making instructions as my efforts were quite poor. I've taken all the medication I'm written up for and I'm wide awake with a head ache and obviously, by the noose making - suicidal feelings. I wish I had access to a gun or a shitload of seroquel, they're the best two exit methods in my opinion. My seroquel overdose wasn't quite big enough to kill me but came close and the falling asleep part was fine, just waking wasn't too nice and that wouldn't be a problem with a big enough dose.

The head of nursing just came to talk to me. I now have to spend the night in the lounge which is just in front of the nurses station, thankfully there are no beds in ICU. I would refuse to go back there if there were.

My New Room Smells

I’m writing and it’s not 4am, let’s see how this goes…

I had 23 hours in ICU, ending at 10pm last night, thankfully my doctor didn’t think I needed to be in there. There’s a bit of self sabotage going on, I was given unescorted leave and told home time was approaching in about a week, so what do I do? Buy razor blades of course and then instead of using them inform a nurse that I have them and want to slit my throat. I do this a lot, get suicidal make some gestures and then call for help. I could/should have jumped off that building but instead I called my nurse and help arrived shortly after. Every time I’ve taken an overdose I’ve taken myself to hospital and I’ve never made any really deep cuts, I’ve only hit a vein once. I see progress and then ruin things. Maybe I don’t want to go home; I get constant attention in hospital, I see my doctor every second day, nurses enquire about my wellbeing twice a day and I’m surrounded by people who ‘get me’ – not that I talk to that many of them. Doctor and I came up with a plan to conquer this cycle. Home on Sunday regardless of what I do (within reason) and leave from tomorrow also regardless of what I do.

I think I’m going to live until I’m 80 and be miserable for the whole time.

5:21

I forgot I'd written the last post, so some of this you already know. Sorry.

I write this at 2:55am Sunday 24^th March from Melbourne’s finest psychiatric hospital. I have been here 17 nights, although my total hospitalisation has been 26 days in five different hospitals!

It would appear that I am not cut out for teaching; the stress surrounding starting the course, finding my way around a humungous campus; meeting new people and not to mention the impending work brought my psychiatric health to the lowest point it had been at in many months. My coping mechanism – cutting of course! The aftermath of a little self-harm I can cope with at home, but the increasing suicidal urges I thought warranted a late night GP visit. There is a clinic near my Mum’s home which is open until midnight; I arrived around 10:30pm and left in an ambulance at 12:30am. The GP didn’t feel comfortable letting a suicidal girl who had just been slicing up her thighs go on her merry way. I then got to wait for an hour in emergency, where I was the only person wearing shoes, sure there were only five of us in there, but still, when did shoes become unnecessary?

When I was finally seen to at the hospital I was given a tetanus shot, had my wounds dressed, was assessed by a psych nurse and sent on my merry way with instructions to contact my usual hospital in the morning. Morning came and still feeling keen to end it all I was admitted later in the day. It would seem that my doctor didn’t quite understand the severity of the situation as he granted me unescorted leave from the following day. This means coffee! Great! There’s a magnificent café about a four-minute walk from the hospital, so off for coffee I went. Coffee was followed by some errands and impulse shopping, a lovely jumper and a beautiful, yet practical pair of shoes which I thought would be suitable for teaching rounds; as someone who has trouble finding nice, yet comfortable shoes I confess to buying the beige ones and putting the black on lay-by, a little too expensive to buy them both at once. Somewhere between buying the jumper and the shoes my mood dropped and I thought maybe throwing my-self in front of a tram would be a great idea. No. Trams don’t move very fast, it would probably cause serious injury, maybe life long disability and trauma for the driver and witnesses, best to leave that idea alone. Go for a walk. Mood drops a little more. How else could I die on a street packed with shoppers, business people and the occasional beggar? I can’t; let’s just go back to the hospital; my leave time is almost up anyway.

There are flats across the road from the hospital, some of them very new and rather high but access must be restricted to residents and buzzed up guests, a random K surely couldn’t get to the top floor balcony with the press of a lift button, it must require a swipe card, key, password. No. K who is terrified of lifts summoned it to the ground, entered, pressed “9” and up up up she went. Not a nice view, but these are council flats, not somewhere you live if you can afford luxurious scenery. How strange, the lift opens onto a balcony, not a hallway lined with doors, just a ledge with doors on one side and a 9 level drop on the other. Relief. A little fear. A little confusion. Determination, I can end it all now with no room for error. But maybe there’s another solution that doesn’t mean dying right now; I don’t know what it is, maybe my nurse will know. Call the clinic “Can I please talk to the nurse appointed to me (K) today?” to the nurse “I don’t know what to do. I’m on a 9^th floor balcony ready to jump but I’m not sure if I should… No I don’t want to come down, I just don’t know what to do, yes you can see me from the hospital, I’m only across the road. No I don’t want to come down.” Hang up. I look over the edge some more, it really isn’t that high, would it definitely kill me? What if it just paralyzed me and left me mentally impaired too, no, surely 9 stories is high enough for death. I can see a few nurses gathering across the road to look at me so I move to the other end of the balcony, there’s a smaller ledge there, one out of their line of sight. A woman exits one of the flats and asks what I’m doing, “Just came up to admire the view” I lie in my most polite tone. I walk back to the bigger ledge, sure the nurses can see me, but it’s further away from the woman. My phone rings “K, come down” I hang up. A police officer appears at the bottom of the building just to watch. I grab my shopping bag filled with shoes and a jumper and decide to see how long it would take to hit the ground. “Don’t drop that” shouts the officer. I drop it and watch in amazement as it drifts slightly to the left as it falls. I think weighing much more than a pair of shoes and a jumper I may fall faster and straighter.

I lean over the edge and just stare at the ground; can I do it? I want to die, there’s nothing in my life coaxing me to continue. I was a little excited about starting this new course and having a real job at the end of it, but the course administrators did a grand job of scaring the shit out of me two days prior; “you’re not education students, you’re pre-service teachers” WTF!!! And really do I want to teach a class where 90% of the kids don’t want to be there, 10% do and only 5% are any good? That’s my experience of high school drama and what if I can’t get a drama position and I have to teach English. This 9 story plunge looks pretty good.

“Hello Mr. police officer, come to keep me company have you? No, I will not come down with you, but thanks for telling that nosey woman to go inside.” We stand admiring the view/drop for a while, he tries to talk me down, he’s quite nice about it. His colleague joins us. “Step away from the edge.” “No.” This conversation continues for quite some time, eventually I decide to obey, I still don’t want to live but something in me must want to, I did after all call my nurse and surely I didn’t think she’d ignore the situation. Down we go, but not off the edge of the balcony, just in the lift – my shopping got all the thrills. I pick up the bag and surprisingly my shoes are unharmed, the box is a little worse for wear.

Apparently trying to jump off a building doesn’t get you walked across the road to your minimal security private psychiatric hospital; it gets you a police car ride to the nearest public hospital with a psych ward. The police hang around for a little while – paper work I assume – while I sit on a bed with a fluorescent pink blanket in an empty grey room with a security guard at the door. Four hours pass, thankfully I have my phone and can speak to a couple of friends, they are very helpful. Psych assessment performed in this cell–like room. Time to move me up to the psych ward, it stinks of urine, the whole ward. Here I spend the next six nights, no unaccompanied leave allowed, which I suppose is reasonable given what happened last time I was allowed out alone. Time passes quite fast, I have two laptops (I need to buy a portable hard drive so I can stop using the old laptop, the new one is nearly full) so I watch episode after episode of Six Feet Under – I’ve seen them all before but thanks to ECT I remember nothing at all. I think my friends realise I’m in quite a bad situation, as more of them than usual come to visit me, some even come more than once. As well as bringing books and their lovely selves they allow me to escape the urine stinking ward for a little while. We go for walks, get coffee, even dinner on one occasion. Unlike any other hospital I’ve been in the nurses are also willing to escort me down the road for a coffee on days I’m not expecting visitors and am desperate for some air. For the duration of my stay I ask every day if I can return to the hospital I came from or its sister hospital which has an ICU ward I could go in if they didn’t feel comfortable with me on an open ward. The hospital I came from is a little uneasy about taking me back, plus they’re full. The other hospital is massive and my doctor can treat patients there too (though I don’t think he appreciates the extra driving it means for him) so after six days inhaling urine fumes I am moved to a private room in the nicest ward in the nicest hospital I’ve been in. Sometimes the food here is even good, most of the time it’s okay, but sometimes it’s actually good!

All was going swimmingly until I decided to hang myself and then decided no that’s a bad idea, I’ll ask a nurse for help instead. Oh ICU is full, that’s a shame, sedatives aren’t working so you’re sending me to an emergency department; great! Third ambulance ride in 10(ish) days night spent in a very noisy short stay unit of a local (not psych) hospital, thankfully I brought ear plugs. The following day I returned here after multiple psych assessments declaring me safe enough to be in a psych hospital and not stuck in a medical hospital. Fourth ambulance ride in 11(ish) days. I return to the same ward only to be placed in a shared room as the toilet in my room isn’t flushing properly. I can put up with that for a night until the following day when the plumber is coming. The plumber comes and I’m not given my room back because I’m too high risk and will be safer sharing. Fuck that! I was told I’d have it back, I’m getting it back! So to the nursing manager I go and the room is mine again… For a few days; suicidal urges return and this time there is a bed in ICU so off I go leaving most of my stuff behind, as it isn’t expected to be a long stay. ICU is boring, it’s a small, locked ward, you can’t even go to the dining room, meals come to you. Two nights pass and my doctor deems me well enough to return to the open ward but my room has been taken and I’m put in a shared room, not such a terrible thing as there’s no one in the other half of it, for one night. On Thursday I am joined by R; a lovely girl who I really like -except for her snoring and her refusal to flush the toilet; thankfully she always puts the lid down so I just flush before use and I don’t have to look at her waste.

Somewhere in all this I’ve had four sessions of ECT, after the third I forgot why I was in hospital; the building / police saga, the whole lot but it came back with a little prompting. My doctor thinks the ECT has lifted my mood and I think he’s right, but I’m still getting strong urges to self-harm, not so much to suicide, though it does cross my mind a few times most nights. I’m writing this now (at 5:04am) because I was lying in bed thinking about pouring boiling water all over my arm but I really don’t want to tonight, it’s my lovely friend’s baby shower tomorrow (well today) and I’ve been given extra leave so I can go, I don’t want to either lose my leave or rock up to the party with a bright red arm. I should be out of hospital by next weekend, probably sooner – Dr doesn’t think keeping me here just for self-harm risk is worth it, the worst of the suicidal-ideation is over (I think) so maybe home time it is.

It has taken me over two hours to write and proof read this, do excuse the errors. I don’t proof read well at 5am.

Today is two months since my dad died. Wow, I don't know how that happened.

9

Day five in the worst public psych ward I’ve encountered; everywhere smells of urine, even the bedroom. The people are mostly scary and I only have escorted leave, which makes the beautiful park with big, old trees across the road inaccessible. Since Friday attempts have been made at getting me into a private hospital, but they have no beds. The hospital I usually go to were unwilling to take me back, but my doctor might have talked them round, I’ll find out this afternoon.

A little backstory:

On Tuesday night, following the tradition of the previous two nights I cut my leg – a lot. I went to see random GP #873 incase I needed sutures and because I was feeling quite suicidal. She was reluctant to let me go home so sent for an ambulance to take me to the local emergency department. There I had my wounds dresses, received a tetanus shot and spoke with the psych triage nurse for a while. At 4am I caught a taxi home with the instructions to arrange a private admission in the morning.

Admission organized, bed available same day, arrived at 5pm. I saw my doctor around 8 and we planned how we would settle me down and prepare me for starting uni on Monday – which I was terrified of. We decided I’d bring my car to the hospital and when Monday came I would go to uni from the hospital and return after my classes. Good plan; until I destroyed it. Thursday came and, having been granted leave I went out for coffee and some shopping, I was very proud to have purchased a medium sized jumper and I bought two pairs of the same shoes for teaching rounds – one in beige, the other black. I can’t find shoes I both like and find comfortable, so leave me alone! As I was out and about my mood slowly dropped dropped dropped until I thought the approaching tram looked like a good end to my pain. I decided the tram was too slow and would seriously injure, but not kill me. I looked at the skyline, noticing plenty of tall buildings I could leap from, none of them accessible. Some flats have recently been built opposite the hospital and I was pretty sure they had balconies. I made my way back to the hospital on the wrong side of the road from what should have been my destination. Timidly I entered the estate and assessed which of the buildings would best meet my needs. I chose one of the new ones towards the back of the estate. Surely though I wouldn’t be able to get up there, there would be a swipe card system or pin so only residents and guests could get up there – no. The lift comes, overcoming my fear of lifts I enter and push “9”, the top level. The doors open onto a windy passage with doors on one side and a drop on the other. I stand leaning on the railing assessing the drop. I am not afraid; I can jump. Something in me thinks there’s a better option that I don’t have to jump. So I call the hospital and ask to speak to my contact nurse, hoping she can tell me what this better option is. She tells me to come down. No. She calls the police. I continue to assess the drop, throwing my new shoes and jumper over the edge just to watch them fall, acknowledging that I would fall much faster but still just wanting to see something go over the edge. They drift to the left and land with a thud. It is very quiet, there is no one around for them to land on.

A police man exits the lift and starts to talk to me. I just look over the rail, I could jump, I’m not afraid I’m not angry I’m not upset. I am nothing. The police man’s partner joins us. After a while we all go down in the lift, I pick up my shoes, which are fine, and we go for a ride in a police car to an interesting hospital. I am put in a grey room with nothing but a bed. A security guard sits by the door with my possessions, I’m allowed my phone, not that there is any reception but the games help pass the five hours. I talk to two friends on a phone given to me by a nurse. Psychiatric assessment by someone. Sent up to the psych ward where I remain.