A lot has happened since I last posted. They found me a bed in a group home, and they say I should be discharging “in a few weeks.” They’ve been saying this for a few weeks now, which does not inspire confidence, but it does seem that I’m approaching the end of my time as an inpatient in the psych hospital. I will definitely miss my attending doctor, who has been with me through thick and thin over the past 13 months, and I will also miss all the wonderful people who work here.
BUT I haven’t seen my turtle in 13 months and I miss him deeply. Besides, my social worker here left her job and now the hospital is almost a sad empty shell where she used to be. Dr. X tries to be cool to make up for it, but it’s just not the same.
I have been anxious. Usually my anxiety shows up when I’m minding my own business and not thinking about my upcoming discharge at all. I’ve just had really annoying shortness of breath constantly which apparently means I’m anxious. So people try to help by telling me that maybe the group home will be great. I point out that I have not ruled out that possibility myself. But talking to me about positive things does not help because the cause of the anxiety is not me thinking negative thoughts. Another thing that doesn’t help us when people try to normalize my situation.
“You’re facing a big transition,” they say.
It’s kind of like that, except I have absolutely no control over any of it, nor do I have any information about what’s going to happen. It’s unusual for a 32-year-old to have to move into a house that she has never seen a picture of (except on Google Street View), into a room of unspecified dimensions, with an unspecified number of anonymous roommates. It pisses me off when people act like being in your 30s and having no control over the most important things in your life OR the most trivial things in your life is just “an adjustment.”
So I try to not talk about my fears regarding the group home because I will just be reminded that it could be great, or at least livable, which I am already aware of. And when I think about it, I think about it going well. It’s just that some part of my brain knows that it might be a total disaster, and that part of my brain is making up for not producing thoughts by making it extremely difficult to breathe. Imagine your oncologist says, “Don’t worry! Your test results MIGHT come back completely fine!” When facing an uncertain short-term future, it’s impossible to not be affected at all by the possibility that things could tank.
But aside from shortness of breath, chest pain, nausea, and jaw issues, I’m pretty much fine. I just want to speed things up and get out of here instead of having this looming thing ahead of me, with only the most vague information about it available to me.
