I write this at 2:55am Sunday 24th
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 9th 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.
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