I didn’t think this will be a long one, but
it grew. I just wanted to explain how things are at the moment.
I’m in hospital at the moment; I’m on day
15. I was due for an admission next week but I had to come in early because I
was extremely depressed, not suicidal, but considering another overdose for the
purpose of being unconscious for a while. Sometimes it’s just so unbearable
that it seems like a perfectly logical “treatment”. At the same time I was
experiencing a kind of delusion (not technically a delusion because I knew it
wasn’t true) that my skin wasn’t my own and it needed to be removed. I wanted
to take a vegetable peeler and peel off all my skin; I could never actually do
that because my pain tolerance is quite low. Along with the skin thing my blood
felt wrong, I didn’t feel hot but the best way I could describe it to my doctor
was that my blood was on the verge of boiling, again I knew this wasn’t true, it
was just the best way I could describe how I was feeling.
So these are the reasons my admission was
brought forward, but I’ve also started a new medication, Dexamphetamine. The
scheduled admission was to introduce me to that drug, so we’ve brought that forward.
At the moment I’m on 7.5mg daily, but tomorrow that will be increased to 10mg.
Dex is an ADHD drug, but there is some evidence of it lifting the mood
somewhat.
Throughout the admission I’ve had the
feelings I was admitted with, along with random, usually short lived suicidal
urges and very low mood, which comes in waves. Today was bad, which is why I’m
writing. I woke with minor low mood but it worsened very quickly after
breakfast. By late morning I was feeling urges to purge (vomit) as a means of
self-harm and I asked my nurse for an emesis bag, which she kindly gave me. I
don’t think I have ever vomited in a toilet. I dislike the idea of holding my
head above somewhere people have defecated and the sinks in these bathrooms
would be clogged by vomit. Psych nurses are quite manipulative, she talked me
out of using it right then and got me distracted but I kept the bag. I couldn’t
eat much lunch but my new friend convinced me to get half a sandwich made and
take it to my room incase I got hungry later – I ate it around 4. I then went
into a depressive state in which I couldn’t move much and just lay in my bed
listening to Triple J. By 5:30 I had binged on confectionary, was feeling
suicidal and felt the only way I could get rid of the feeling was by purging,
just to kind of remove something from my body. I’m in a shared room and didn’t
want my roommate hear me from our bathroom, so I used one of the bathrooms in
the hall. I hate the act of purging but I feel so much better afterward. It was
close to dinner time and I felt I couldn’t put anything in my body so soon
after ridding it but I talked to my nurse about it because I was worried about
taking my mountain of medication on a very empty stomach, she convinced me to
eat a little, little enough that I still feel empty, but enough that my meds
shouldn’t cause any harm.
Right now writing this and having had a
little chat to my roommate have helped. It’s also been nice to have a new
friend in here. I don’t usually talk to people in hospitals beyond general
greetings but we hit it off over breakfast and in art, and it kinda grew from
there.
