Whelp. One thing led to another and here I am, back in the psych hospital. I’m disappointed in myself, since my last admission was in September and I thought I was past this. In retrospect, I may have been overconfident. In my defense, I knew for weeks that I was headed toward crisis, and there honestly was not much I could do about it.
Not getting out of the house is triggering for me. Nobody likes being stuck in the house, but I would say I have a heightened response to it. By which I mean, I go completely batshit crazy and end up in the loony bin. (And if you’re wondering if it was really that bad, yes indeed it was, and I will get to that.)
So, I was in extreme pain for like a month and could barely ambulate between rooms. There was absolutely no help available, because everyone kept saying I just had to wait for my scheduled procedure. The procedure was a long way off, and I also was unconvinced that it would actually happen, because it had already been postponed once. Bedsides, I had called and messaged Urology so many times trying to find out what the procedure was actually going to consist of, and they always said someone would call me back and no one ever did. All I knew was that on the patient app, it said “laser lithotripsy cystoscopy ureteroscopy retrograde stent placement.” And apparently Urology was 100% unavailable to tell me what that meant, so my backup plan was r/kidneystones. My new friends on Reddit said they were going to put in another stent. As far as I knew, I was less than halfway through this personal hell.
When anesthesia called to screen me, I did tell them that I hadn’t weighed myself in a month. They never let me use their scale, so I always put the most recent weight that I have, which in this case was from a PCP appointment in June. But, on the day of the procedure, we all forgot. It later turned out that I had lost like seven pounds in that month, probably because my daily calorie intake was hovering around 0. So I personally suspect I may have gotten too much of their general anesthesia. But the procedure was successful, and apparently even exceeded their wildest dreams and I didn’t get a new stent. The pain went away immediately and I was just so relieved. I got to hang out watching Shark Week and wait for the anesthesia to wear off.
At some point, both the nurses and I knew that the anesthesia was taking a little longer than expected to wear off. I got to stay the night for observation because I didn’t have a ride, which was probably a good thing. I always was the type to get sick over Christmas break when I was in college, because I pushed myself so hard that as soon as my body figured out that it could fall apart, it did so. So, between the general anesthesia (potentially in excess), and extremely severe exacerbation of C-PTSD symptoms, the shit hit the fan at some point. I remember the very kind urology nurses trying to explain that I was in a hospital, and I was repeating back and trying to wrap my brain around the situation. I also kept insisting that it felt like there was an earthquake and my bed was jerking around in every direction. I was so tired that it was physically excruciating to keep my eyes open for any length of time at all. Oh yeah, and I had been suicidal for like a week at that point and that certainly hadn’t gone away.
Psychiatry came in and they were so nice. I was completely flipping terrified and they were calm and confident, but concerned for me. The procedure was last week on Thursday (July 20) and last Sunday (July 23) I got transferred here.
My first order of business was to walk the line between being honest about the severity of the situation so they could help me, and somehow convincing them that it wasn’t that bad and it’s not like I needed to go to another group home or anything and I would definitely be cured in a week or so, tops. In good news, I somehow ended up at the bougie psych hospital affiliated with the Ivy Leage university in the big city about 45 minutes from my house. They have a special unit dedicated to PTSD and dissociation, both of which there is substantial evidence that I might currently be experiencing. If you’re reading this and you know me IRL, feel free to drop by. But yeah, I’m actually very thankful that the hospital seems to be living up to its reputation. They keep reassuring me that coming here was a much better idea than harming myself. It’s definitely easier for me to receive this now that my baseline level of SI has been zero for over a year. So I’m hopeful that this will be a quick tune-up and I will be on my way.
Meanwhile, my boss seems to be planning to give me my job back. All she knows is that I’m here for complications from my kidney stone, which I feel like is 100% true given that every single precipitating event was a direct result of the kidney stone.
I’m telling myself that it will be okay. I’m also quite concerned because I’m sleeping at least 15 hours a day and I’m under the gun to get that under control. Other than that, I’m basically fine.
And yeah, if you work here and you know me, maybe you’ll happen to have an errand to run in my unit. Hopefully I won’t be asleep!
