Tag Archives: mental hospital

Art created at the Torture Chamber called the Institute of Living at Hartford Hospital

February 13, 2013 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 15 Comments

I was a prisoner at Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living’s Donnelly 2 South from January 10th until February 7th, 2013, the day before the east coast blizzard, and I only “escaped” because the torturing doctor went on a four day vacation and the substitute decided that I was not actually psychotic any longer and did not need seclusion or restraints after all…and opted to let me go the very day I was freed from both.

Good thing too, because it was a Thursday and all travel stopped the very next day and for several days after that. The picture above is one that Shedana, RN liked very much. She said it captured her “physique” and while the flooring is imaginary, the unit was structured much as it is pictured. At least while I had a bed on the unit, with my door facing the med room and another bedroom opposite. Shedana was a “good egg” but of course it didn’t help when they decided to attack me in force and secluded me for two weeks and worse…But more on that later.

The first doctor I had merely convinced me to take, semi-voluntarily, a fairly stiff dose of Zyprexa. which I tried to do with regularity. I soon found, however, that far from being the miracle drug it had once been, mixed with Abilify and Geodon it induced a state of apathy and boredom. As if the Intake and Feeding drug, the drug on which I used to feel enthusiasm to learn and read, Zyprexa, simply mixed very badly with the Output drugs of Geodon and Abilify, such that I neither could read and learn, nor do art or write. In any event, this abysmal lethargy pushed me out of desperation to paint this, in oil pastels.

After that, I simply started refusing to take the Zyprexa, and refusing a lot of other things…A great deal of abuse happened. But I did this picture before all my art supplies were confiscated for no reason other than punishment (you cannot damage yourself or others with soft oil pastels)

Before I tell you some of what happened, without naming names, lest a legal case be made against them, as there might possibly be a chance to do, let me show you most of the rest of the art I did there, though one of them is unfinished and may never end up being finished, since it was hospital art and may stay that way.

This one is an oil pastel, me with a dung beetle pushing a ball of shit around on my cheek…Says enough just that, doesn’t it.

This one can be turned any which way to see all sorts of things buried in the picture. It was the one I started first and never did get to finish. What I can point you towards is the central object at the very bottom, which you can trace up to the blue figure and see what is happening. It should tell you something…The hand on the upper left is pointing at this process. Also, the exploding biohazard ball is part of it all, representing me, the all-polluting biohazard…But you have to look at the picture carefully. There is a Boat To Nowhere, and there are a couple of turtles, why, I don’t know…yadda yadda.

Finally, the very last time I had access to any art supplies, and I do not recall whether it was my last morning or some other time, I painted this one with oil pastels. I believe it speaks for itself.

What happened was that they were routinely, literally routinely restraining me “for not following directions” as they would quite openly state. Four-point restraints, in a tight no movement position, for many many hours at a time, with absolutely no indication of how, just how, I might “earn” my freedom. Of course they wouldn’t tell me what I could do to “be good” because I hadn’t done anything to ‘deserve” restraints to begin with as they knew perfectly well. For example,. and this was typical, but it was one of the few opportunities I managed to document because they ha removed all my writing materials, illegally, but I forgot that I had a right to a crayon and paper until Feb 6th. That afternoon, I simply walked away from my seclusion room. I had had enough of them saying it was “merely a side room” not a seclusion room, then preventing me bodily from leaving it. So when I could do so without someone actually wanting to fight me, I walked away, and proceeded to enter the unit and walk down the hall to the end and look out the window, I took a deep breath, heard THEM behind me, and sauntered back to the proper end of the hall, the “lost end” where they kept anyone from seeing me or knowing what they were doing to me. Once I got there, they descended on me, the horde of the goon squad, some staff I knew, but most I did not. I did not bother to look at who was doing what to me. I simply lay passively on the bed, and put my arms out so they could do what I knew they would do. Tightly, they shackled my wrists out past my hips so there was no play in the restraints and I could not turn on my side or do anything but lie stiffly on my back. At the same time, others jerked my feet apart and just as tightly shackled my ankles to the lower corners of bed. Then came the coup de grace. They pinioned me on my side somehow, pulled down my pants, and injected me with three drugs: Haldol 5mg, Ativan 2mg, and Benadryl 50mg. Why, except as punishment I do not know. because I had, just a half hour before, been doped up on involuntary Zyprexa 10mg.

But of course it was punishment. The very fact that they told me it was “not punishment” but “what your behavior brings on every time, Pamela” only proves my point. At first and usually they only said, it was because I “didn’t follow directions” so if they were not punishing me, what were they doing? They most certainly were not following Centers for Medicare and Medicaid regulations for the use of Restraints and Seclusion only in cases where a person is in imminent danger or harming self or others! Indeed, the best they could do, when I protested, passively, saying just those words, was to respond, “You are not safe” as if that proved somehow that I was in danger or posed any imminent threat to the safety of anyone.

No, I did not. I didn’t threaten or harm anyone. I merely walked the length of the hall and looked out the window and then went back to my solitary confinement. But it was enough to trigger their retaliation, and that started at 1pm. I was not released, not even to use the bathroom or eat supper, no never even was a single hand freed to permit me to eat supper — until 7pm.

THEN, at 8:30pm, I became upset and frustrated because — well, I do not know now why, but I “threw a half a graham cracker at the wall” as I recorded later. And the goon squad descended on this dangerous patient again, not only with the strait jacket of four point restraints, but with the same 3 drug IM-in-the-ass cocktail.

This time, however, passive as I was as they trussed me up — and I said only, “For shame, for shame. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, doing this to me…” — passive as I was, allowing them to seize my limbs and tightly shackle me yet again in truth I dared not resist, as that would only have justified their violence, and i already had my share of bruises. Bur I had come to my limit of the abuse i would silently tolerate. They could restrain and seclude me but they had up till now only silenced me in restraints because iu wanted to earn my way free quickly. THis time I didn’t give a damn. It was nearly nine o clock and no one knew what they had done to me. Everyone was getting their bedtime meds and going to bed without any understanding of what was going on. I was a stranger to most people on the unit, who had no idea I even existed. THAT was a situation that had to change. NOW.

After they trooped out of the room, stationing a 1:1 sitter at the door as usual, I stopped my merely silent and passive resistance and started to scream. I wanted to be heard. I wanted to scare people. I wanted them to wonder, Who is that person,. and what in god’s name are they doing to her? Are they torturing her? And I wanted them to ask questions of the staff that the staff could not answer. I screamed and I screams in desolation and despair, feeling like my life was at an end. The plan they had set up for me was impossible for me to live up to. In nearly 10 days I had not even earned my way to a pencil and my journal. Only to restraints and more restraints. I saw no way out of the hospital. So I screamed, long blood-curdling, heart-wrenching screams that I assume did the job of scaring all, as eventually they closed my door, much to the disgruntlement of the sitter who was forced to come inside with me and was no longer free to socialize. But not for a while. I kept on screaming until my voice gave out and I felt asleep.

The next day the substitute doctor freed me, I dunno why or how, but she did. and I thank my lucky stars as the staff doctor was a sadist and never would have. I have a lot more to say, but for now I am hoping to hear from a sympathetic lawyer who will take on my case for some reason for some purpose…Unlikely to happen. despite my bruised body and joints that are so out of whack I cannot sit indian fashion or cross my legs. Why won’t they help me or respond? I didn’t die, so they won’t earn a lot of money from my case, nobody gives a damn about mental patient abuse…

You really know when you are a third class citizen when you only MIGHT be worth more to them dead than alive.

Abuse, Health, Hospital

Body Bagged, 4-pointed, Secluded and Tortured — All in the name of Treatment?

February 8, 2013 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 17 Comments

The above is are just some bruises of many I received during my month-long course of “psychiatric treatment” at the Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living, on the unit called Donnelly 2 South. In Connecticut, the Institute of Living, first known as the Retreat, and once quite famous as a posh sanatarium for the rich and famous though this is no longer true, was first made famous by Clifford Beers, I believe, who wrote about similiar torture he underwent there just a hundred years ago in the book, A Mind That Found itself.

After burning my face with cigars and cigarettes, I spent the last month in Connecticut’s well-known Institute of Living (yeah the dangerous 6th month was JANUARY not February but nobody thought to check my math) being beaten up and trussed like a pig in four-point restraints almost daily for many many hours. Why did they deal me this sort of treatment? Why? Because “You do not follow directions”.

I DID NOT FOLLOW DIRECTIONS so they beat me up and tied me, shackled me with leather and metal cuffs to a bed for dozens upon dozens of hours.! Get that? I was disobedient, so they shackled me to a bed as an excuse for treatment!

After this experience, I LOST ALL FAITH in the ability of any institution to do anyone any good who has a mental illness or sickness of the mind, or any emotional disorder or whatever you wish to call it. I GIVE UP! I will kill myself if anyone ever tries to send me back to such a cesspit of a place. I do not care if it is appointed like the Taj Mahal. NO ONE who works there is uncontaminated by the evil infecting such places and they are ALL EVIL EVERY SINGLE ONE. I have NEVER been to a hospital where the people are kind and well meaning and where the treatment is actually kind and decent. Once in a while a single person, such as the Middlesex Hospital occupational therapist Christobelle Payne, may stand out in memory as being a rare human being of warmth and dignity and caring, but otherwise, they all to a one fail the test of being decent human specimens and all fail royally to be even normally humanly responsive to suffering persons. They are in it for the money and a cushy job, and don’t you forget it if you go into a psycho hospital, DO not expect to get well there. Expect PILLS, and directions (ie ORDERS) that you HAVE To follow or ELSE.

Get out of there as quickly as possible, because your life depends on it. I am serious. DO NOT LINGER expecting care and treatment or to feel better no matter how helpful it might want to seem.

Furthermore. if you are a young person, do not listen to the sweet seductive advice that some may give you that you woul do well to go for “disability” and social security payments. THAT Is a load of total crapola and the worst thing anyone could tell anyone under the age of 50. I am so angry and broken at the moment that I cannot speak more. But if I can later on, I will say more to explain. At the moment, I have to attend to too many PHYSICAL bruises and to find a way back to sanity on my own, havin been driven to the brink of near extinction by one of the best known hospitals in this state. At the moment I am both rigid with rage and so confused and broken that I scarcely know how to continue, or whether I even want to. Why bother? Why bother? How can people be such monsters, and in such monstrously powerful places and ways. I hurt so deeply and feel I will never trust an single person ever again when they say, Come let us help you. You need our help. YOUR help? Like being raped, I need your F—ing help!

GO jump in a lake of snot is what I should say to all of you so called helpers. I’d rather die. Go F— yourself.

Health, Life, Schizophrenia

“Lady Quixote” on Recovery from Hearing Voices

January 8, 2013 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 2 Comments

Today I have a guest poster, someone who has been contributing a lot of comments to my blog and who wrote one that I thought deserved a post of its own. Without a lot of introduction, since she tells it pretty much as it is, I offer the following: one brave woman’s unique and amazing recovery story.

From “LADY QUIXOTE”:

I believe it is a normal part of grief to have moments of hearing and seeing those close to us who have died. This is true of our pets, as well as the people in our lives, who have recently passed on. I’ve experienced it, as have many people I know, most of whom have never been diagnosed with any kind of mental illness.

What I don’t know, of course, is whether these experiences are “real,” meaning do they exist independently of our own grieving mind? I believe that at least some of these ghostly grief visitations may be real. The reason I think this, is because on two separate occasions, with two different deceased loved ones, my paranormal experience was witnessed and experienced simultaneously by other people who were with me at the time.

Life is a mystery. Death, even more so.

When I feel that someone who has recently died may be trying to communicate with me in some way, I tell them that I appreciate their caring enough to contact me, and that I miss them and hope they are in a wonderful place where I will join them someday – but to please refrain from contacting me again, because it is a “trigger” for the schizophrenia I was diagnosed with in 1967. I have not been bothered with continual voices since 1969, and I don’t ever want to go back to that miserable real-life-nightmare, again.

In most cases, when I make this request, the “visitation” immediately and permanently stops. On the rare occasion when it has not stopped, I prayed to my Creator for help and protection, and I also studiously ignore the voice or vision, and in every case it soon stopped.

My voices started when I was 14, shortly after my paternal grandfather died. His spirit seemed to visit me twice, the first time immediately after his death, when I was sitting at my desk in school and had no idea that my grandfather was about to die. Suddenly, I “knew” he was dead. It was so real, that I started to cry, right there in the classroom. When I got home from school that day, my mother met me at the door and said, “I have some bad news…” I stopped her and said, “I already know what it is, my Grandfather ‘R’ died today.” She asked me how I knew, and I said I “just did.”

A few months later a friend of mine introduced me to her Ouija Board. She said it was a tool for contacting the spirits of the dead. I had never heard of such a thing and was eager to try to contact my grandfather through her Ouija Board. We seemed to have success in contacting some kind of spirit, but whatever it was, it wasn’t my loving grandfather

My friend who owned the Ouija Board then decided to hold seances with me and some of our other friends, but nothing much came out of those, except that one girl starting screaming at the top of her lungs during one of the seances, saying that she saw a horrible vision. But no one else could see whatever it was that had her so terrified.

Around that time another school friend told me he had heard about the seances I was involved in, and he loaned me a book which he said gave excellent instructions on how to contact the dead. I don’t remember the name of that book, but it should have been entitled “Spiritism for Dummies,” or better yet: “How To Become A Schizophrenic in 5 Easy Steps!”

That book gave point by point instructions for things like “autonomic” (spirit) handwriting, and also on how to become a medium, so that spirits could use your body and your mouth to speak through. Good grief, what was I thinking when I went ahead and followed those instructions? I really must not have been very bright, when I was 14.

So, naive me, I carefully followed the book’s instructions and put myself into a trance, then I called forth the spirits, and – lo and behold – suddenly my hand was writing words all by itself, and the next thing I knew, I had a head full of loud voices that would not shut up even for a second. My only escape from the nonstop circus in my head, happened when I was asleep. During my waking hours, every moment was a real-life NIGHTMARE.

I begged the voices to PLEASE go away, go back to where they had come from. But they just laughed, cursed, and mocked me. Sometimes they told me to kill myself if I didn’t like my life anymore. They even told me to pray to Satan, since praying to God didn’t seem to help. Truly, I was in a living hell!

In desperation I went to my mother and told her about the Ouija Board, the seances, the How-to-be-a-Medium book, my “success” with autonomic spirit handwriting, and the visions and the voices that would not leave me alone. I desperately wanted help to get rid of those maddening voices, because I couldn’t even go to the bathroom without a crowd watching, mocking, and commenting! I couldn’t have a private thought without a multitude listening to it, and commenting and mocking me for the silly 14-year-old things I thought about! I asked my mother if she knew what I could do to make the horrible spirits go away?

My mother responded by making ME go away. Although I had never tried nor threatened to harm anyone, myself included, she immediately put me into a mental institution. The year was 1967, during that era when the answer to mental illness was to drug you up, lock you up, and throw away the key. My mother assured me that I would only be in the institution for a few weeks, until they made me well. But right after taking me there, as I later learned, she went home and took every item I owned to the town dump. I was never supposed to come out of the insane asylum, you see, because the schizophrenia I had been diagnosed with was “incurable.”

One of the other young teenagers involved in our seances, also ended up hearing voices, seeing visions, diagnosed schizophrenic, and committed to the same insane asylum. He had been trying to contact his mother, who died when he was six.

After nearly 2 years in the asylum, a social worker who saw me periodically because of my young age, asked me why I was there, when I always “seemed” so normal? (I was asked that question a lot, because I was not one of those who went around behaving oddly. I never talked aloud to my voices; I had no need to, since they could hear my thoughts, anyway.)

I told the social worker that I heard voices, and she asked me how the voices had gotten started. So I told her all about the Ouija Board, the seances, and the book on spiritism that had taught me step-by-step how to put myself into an hypnotic trance and contact the dead.

Then this brilliant social worker said, “Well, it seems to me that all you did was hypnotize yourself into hearing voices! You’ve seen hypnotists on TV, haven’t you? How they can hypnotize a person into believing something ridiculous, such as that they are a dog, and the next thing you know that person is barking and behaving like a dog? Then the hypnotist gives them the suggestion that they are no longer a dog, that they are themselves again, and they instantly revert to their normal human behavior. Why don’t you try hypnotizing yourself once more, and while you are under hypnosis, tell yourself that the voices are not real, and that when you wake up, you will not hear those voices, ever again.”

I went back to the ward, got into my bed, and did what she said. I highly doubted it would work, because the voices seemed as real to me as anything – how could I make myself believe via hypnosis that they were not real, when I “knew” better? But, I went ahead and tried the self-hypnosis-reverse-suggestion like my social worker had advised me to do, and…. IT WORKED! When I woke myself out of my self-hypnotic trance, the voices were GONE! There were only a few, very distant, occasional “echoes” of “little voices” now and then, for a brief period of time, but they were so quiet and intermittent that they were very easy for me to ignore, and soon even that stopped.

In this manner I have been free of voices, 99% of the time, since 1969 when I was 16 years old. I have also not taken any anti-psychotic medication since that time. The only exception to my not hearing voices is, like I said at the beginning of this long-winded post, when someone close to me dies. But in every case, I handle it by telling them to please leave me alone, with a brief explanation of why I need for them to leave me, and most do so immediately. Those that do not comply with my request, quickly go away after I pray to the Lord for help, and then I tell the voices to “get behind me,” and after that I ignore them until they get bored enough, I suppose, to go bother someone else. 😉

Today, my residual “mental problems” have to do with my chronic PTSD, general anxiety, and an occasional dark depression. I am in therapy for those things, and I also take a low dose of an antidepressant and an anti-anxiety medication. But I have no schizophrenia, and no psychosis of any kind, not in over 40 years, YAY!

I shared my story here in the hopes that it may help you in some way. You are someone I feel very privileged to call a friend, and I feel sad when you are having a rough time.

Art, Family, Health, Writing

iPad Art, also Portrait and Poem: In Memoriam Howard M Spiro, MD

January 6, 2013 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 1 Comment

The first three pieces here were done with my finger using the app, Art Set, on an iPad 2. I had never used any digital means to do art before, and in fact had just started drawing a few months before. So when I did the window curtains drawing, it was really among my earliest drawings anyway. The “hand with pencil” was just for fun, because I had nothing else in front of me to draw, and I used my right hand to draw my left, I think, though I could have reversed it. Not sure, as I was doing either one in those days. Now I tend to strictly draw with my right hand and write with my left hand… Anyhow, I must have drawn my feet in flip flops last summer, since it is more sophisticated than the other two and I don’t think I would have been able to do that sort of thing until last year.

The pencil sketch, which I took from a movie of Athol Fugard’s play “Boesman and Lena” (staring Danny Glover and Angela Bassett), I drew off the television, stopping and starting it until I couldn’t bear to not know what was going to happen any longer, and gave up and simply watched the movie…It was a terrific if also very dark play. I watched it twice in a row, one night and then again the next night. Then I even went so far as to look for the text of it, which is apparently difficult to find…I did get a study guide though, which may have the text embedded in it. At any rate I hope so. Anyhow, I had planned to do other studies from that movie but I got so engrossed in the actual play, that I failed to stop the action long enough to do so. I guess that speaks volumes for how good a playwright Fugard is (was?). In fact, I watched yet another of his plays/movies and even sent for a third, “Tsotsi,” that was unavailable any other way the following night. “Master Harold and the Boys” was incredibly difficult, yes painful, to watch, and should not have been easy anyway, not for anyone with a light skin in this country and any conscience. We are ALL implicated, we are ALL guilty…

Finally, the picture, at the bottom, is of my father. Oddly, my first title of this post (edited out) called him “my dad”; I usually refer to him as my father, but always, always, always called him Daddy..When I did this portrait a couple of days ago, it scared me: the eyes began to move and the mouth made sounds, as if he were trying to tell me something, and I was afraid, so terribly afraid he wanted to say that he didn’t want to be “there,” wherever he is…I was so scared in fact that I left the painting room and said I wouldn’t listen to him. But then my cat, Eemie, who died not too long after he did, also came around. Literally, or as literal as a dead cat can be. Visual and audible! I dunno how that can be, because she was NOT a ghost, but a real cat, really Eemie..which only adds to my consternation. Finally I decided to take a teensy bit of Zyprexa to stave off any potential disaster. This is a bad time of year for me, 5-6 months along after “the last time” and after last summer I know I have nowhere I can trust to turn to, no place that is safe for me (Natchaug Hospital is too dangerous, and they wouldn’t even take me back if I needed it, if I even agreed to go should I need to). I frankly dunno that such a tiny dose of Zyprexa makes any difference, but I had to do something…

Oh, I have a lot to say about Natchaug still, but that would take another post, and a lot of thinking. I just might post it as another open letter to Natchaug’s CMO…Because she is the one to whom I wish to speak, and who really needs to hear what I have to say. But we will see. In the meantime, I want finally to post the poem that I wrote for my father after he died. A lot of people have asked me for it. I read it at the memorial service at the Unitarian Church in Hamden, CT. Alas, I see that it won’t paste in single spaced lines nor will it preserve the proper large blank spacing where it belongs, so you should know that it ought to look a bit different on the page than it does. The only other words of explanation you might want are these: when Martha, my younger sister, read her own eulogy, her major metaphor was water and the ocean and waves, because our father, was so very fond of swimming, especially the breast stroke, or a weird kind of what seemed to me a modified-dogpaddle-cum-crawl, his head more out of the water than in. We were shocked to discover that water and swimming were the governing metaphors in my poem as well.

(You might not need this information, but in case you do, Tir Na N’Og is a mythical Irish “Land of Youth.” Island of the Seven Moons is meant to stand for much the same thing…)

This is for you, Dad.

BUOYANT

The dead cross the river, swimming.

Past drowning now,

some crawl,

some leisurely sidestroke,

some float on their backs,

toes pointing toward the sky.

Who knows what lies ahead:

Tír na nÓg, Valhalla,

Island of the Seven Moons?

No one can say for sure

if there’s any shore, far or near.

Some have cracked their teeth

on bitterness, believing

that to die is to lose all.

Others say there is only light

shining on the best of what used to be.

We dream, we dream and wake,

we wake and hope our dreams

mean something,

that the dead know more

than just the river

and that they must swim.

Daddy, keep your head up,

kick your feet, push the water

away.

Abuse, Health, Mental Illness, Psychiatry

Where Have All the Multiples Gone?

December 3, 2012 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 5 Comments

One of the terrible consequences of the APA’s DSM is the Multiple Personality Mayhem that resulted from that fad diagnosis of the late 80s and 90s. I was hospitalized many times in those years, and I was appalled even then at how this once extraordinarily rare diagnosis was suddenly “popping out of the woodworks.” Somehow, multiples, with their putative history of extreme childhood sexual torture, were everywhere. At any time on a psychiatric unit of 18-20 beds, you might see 4 people supposedly suffering from MPD. It was absurd, but try and point that out to the professionals! No, they were much too busy creating very sick individuals out of the whole cloth of their own — the psychiatrists’– minds!

Even at the time I felt very frightened by what was happening, as I understood how difficult it was going to be, when it was all over, for such patients to come to grips with the fact that their disorders were invented for them by the doctors who wanted to have their time in the limelight. Now that the fad is over, where have all the multiples gone? Have all of them been converted to DID — that is, are they still being lied to? or has anyone decided to be honest with them and admit that the Dx was bogus all along, that they never did have MPD or any other such disorder. That their so called multiple personalities were suggested to them by the therapists and invented for them ditto.

It was a horrendous situation, and one that I do not believe anyone has dealt with completely honestly or fully to this day…Of course not. When did you ever meet a doctor, much less a psychiatrist willing to admit he or she made a terrible mistake, or say, I am sorry, I will make amends. Hah. That’ll be the day.

Health, Poetry

SISTERS OF NO MERCY

November 7, 2012 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 4 Comments

POEM IN WHICH I SPEAK FRANKLY, FORGIVE ME

GOMER: ER-speak for a troublesome, unwanted person in the emergency department, acronym for Get Out of My Emergency Room

So many times gurneyed in by ambulance and police escort
“dangerous to self or others,” and too psychotic
to cooperate or scribble consent, you suspect by now
you are just a GOMER to the snickering scrubs in the ER
who whisk you in back with the other disruptives
lying in beds, waiting for “beds.”

One time you dip paranoid into the inkwell of your purse
extracting a paring knife more amulet than effective protection,
they strip-search you, then, unblinking, eyeball you all night
through a bulletproof plexiglass window.
In the morning, 15-day-papered so you can’t leave,
they send you ominously upstairs.

Later, at home, the voices decree your left leg
should go up in flames to atone for the evil within,
and you listen, and you do it, you do it:
the searing flare of cobalt actually crackles.
This time you tell no one, the char too deep for pain,
until fear of worse trumps your fear of being taken away.

This is not the story of your life.
It’s not the story of your life–
but every time a hulking goon squad clamps restraints
around your flailing wrists and ankles, threatening
to prosecute you for biting those hands that shackle you,
you wonder if there will be any other…

© Pamela Spiro Wagner. All rights reserved (Please note that I request that you do not reblog, reprint this poem or save this poem for anything but personal use. The rest of this blog post may be used if you credit Wagblog properly.)

________________________________________________________

A new reader, Rachel, has had training as a nurse, and is not reluctant to share her insights from the other side of the gurney, so to speak. Her comments have been enormously illuminating to me and contain so much helpful information that I have asked her if I might post them on Wagblog itself so others might have the opportunity to read them “first hand.” I have collected all of the ones here at Wagblog (there are others on my http://www.aboutschizophreni.blogspot.com site) and will try to provide some context for each one so they make sense, if they do not by themselves.

This first comment was in response to my post, AM I CRAZY…Nov 4, 2012 — when I doubted the veracity, of fact if not experientially, of what happened to me at the ED last summer.

Here is what Rachel wrote:

“OH….. Pam. I completely relate to this post…

Is anything more traumatizing than not being able to trust your own perceptions? I don’t think so.

I have so much swirling around in my head that I could say about all this, it’s hard for me to sort it all out, but I will try.

15 years ago I went through nursing school. One of the things that was greatly impressed upon us in our training was the fact that medical charts are Legal Documents – therefore, you must be ultra-careful about what you write in the charts! Also, there is so much charting and other paperwork required, to meet the legal demands of insurance, etc., that it is truly impossible to do the charts “right,” and still find time to do the actual job of patient care. So… just because important happenings are not recorded in your medical chart, that should by no means be taken as proof that it did not in fact happen, in some fashion.

As for that security guard…. sigh… I’ve led a strange life… about 20 years ago, for part of one year, I worked as a security guard in a bank. The security guard who trained me was one very scary dude. All he did was talk about his wonderful collection of guns, and his beloved hobby of shooting those guns, and bragging that he would have made a satisfying career out of being a hit man, if it weren’t for these pesky laws against being paid big money to commit murder! I became so alarmed by this fellow’s homicidal rants and ramblings that I told our boss all about it. The male boss, a retired U.S. Marine, dismissed my concerns out of hand. “People who talk about killing never do it,” he said.

A few months after I left that job, the hit man wannabe shot his fiancée. It was an accident, of course, he having so little experience with guns….

I am so sorry for this latest cruel trauma you have endured, Pam. Just being treated so roughly is enough to put any person at risk of losing touch with reality. As the late Viktor Frankl, MD, PhD, survivor of nearly 3 years in Nazi concentration camps, said in his life-changing book, Man’s Search for Meaning: “An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”

I believe that is probably what happened with you this past July. You were thrust against your will into an abnormal, traumatizing, soul-annihilating situation, which undoubtedly unleashed multiple memories of similar traumatic indignities in the past. You were being treated, not with the kindness and compassion that you needed and deserved, but with palpable disdain. Harsh thoughts and hateful emotions are communicated, far more than with words, via body language, facial expressions, the eyes, the tone of voice, the “vibes” – even a so-called dumb animal instinctively knows when it is not safe, when the people in charge are not to be trusted.

A nurse, concentrating on giving injections in the proper way and in the proper amount, is not going to be paying any attention to what exactly a security guard is doing, or saying. Also, if she realizes after the fact that she gave an injection for which the order had already been cancelled, I am sorry to say that too many nurses, AND nurse instructors, are NOT going to admit that in the chart. I know this, for I’ve witnessed it firsthand. It’s sad, it’s illegal, immoral, and potentially deadly dangerous , yet it is true.

As for having a run-in with a security guard who has a homicidal attitude? I’m sorry to say that they are not at all uncommon, either.

Did your terrified, traumatized mind fill in the blanks with words he did not actually say, as a way to make some kind of sense from what he had done to you? Maybe. But the fact remains that your autonomy, your power, your rights as a human being, were taken away from you, and you were thrust into a terrifying, traumatizing, abnormal situation. For you to be put into such an extremely abnormal situation, particularly in light of all the old trauma memories it undoubtedly evoked in your mind, an abnormal reaction on your part in such an abnormal situation is, really, truly, Normal Behavior.

Rachel

My response to her comment:

All I can say to these things, Rachel, is WOW! I may have to rethink my blog post. Maybe some of what I thought was not delusional but did in fact happen. For instance, I wrote so often that I got those 3 shots. Now I am thinking, maybe i did indeed get them, because why would I pass out so immediately from a mere 20mg of Geodon and 1 mg of Ativan. But with 5 mg of Haldol added it would make more sense.

As for the guard (I refuse to call them security guards as they provide NO security and are in my opinion out of control thugs) I think he may indeed have compressed my neck, if only by holding me down in such a way as to restrain me roughly. Whether or not he intended to strangle or kill me, I dunno. And I have no idea whether or not he said those words, only that they do echo precisely what those nurses said or I hallucinated they said over the hospital PA system about my phone call, which they claimed to have recorded and were also replaying over the same PA system…So if those were the same words, perhaps it was only a hallucination. But perhaps only the words, not the rest of it. Thank you SO very much for validating as much as you have. I truly appreciate your contribution to this site and hope you will continue to offer what you know and have experienced. It is so welcome!

Pam

Rachel’s next comment was in response to my two new artworks: first the Killer Nurse collage, and then the Monet “take-off” of Argenteuil boats at evening…:

…Killer Nurse, HAHAHAHA! When I was in nursing school, a group of my fellow students dubbed themselves (oh you are going to love this): “Sisters of No Mercy.”

They were, too! By the way, I was elected class president by my fellow nurse students, an honor I did not seek out. When I realized by the end of the first semester that I am not cut out to be a nurse, I thought I could not let down my much-younger classmates who had honored me so, by dropping out! Thus I kept slogging doggedly away, and made it through to the bitter end, making all A’s or 4.0s, I’ve forgotten now how we were graded. Then I took the final big test that determined one’s eligibility to get a license, shocked myself by scoring in the top 1% in the entire nation, gave the big Class President year-end speech at graduation, got my diploma, obtained my license, and…. I worked 3 or 4 days as a nurse, hoping to get my money’s worth out of my costly education, but I still wasn’t emotionally cut out to do the hard job of a nurse and I knew it, so I abruptly quit, and let my license expire.

If you have to be a “Sister of No Mercy” to make it in that profession, you can count me out!

Rachel

Then her latest comment is again in response to my blog entry titled AM I CRAZY? and my response to her first comment.

You are most welcome, Pam, I’m so glad my words could help.

I just want to add this, though: most of the security guards I worked with so long ago were very good people. There was only a small percentage of guards who had that scary macho-swagger itching-for-trouble attitude. You find people like that in every segment of the population, as I’m sure you know. But it truly did seem to me that a higher-than-average percentage of such types are drawn to work that allows them to wear a uniform and carry a weapon and push people around. These types are more like children playing at cops-and-robbers, than adults doing a serious job.

On a typical day, standing around in a security guard’s uniform watching the world go by is the most boring job on the planet. When finally “something happens,” these “Make My Day” gung-ho types come alive, and in the worst way.

As for the job of nursing… that’s a very different thing. I worked for a couple of years as a nurse’s assistant, before I finally went to nursing school. Nursing is HARD. Really, it’s an almost impossible job. There are never enough nurses, meaning most hospitals and nursing homes are chronically understaffed, and therefore there is never enough time to get everything done that needs doing. The work is absolutely overwhelming at times. You can work your entire shift at a flat-out RUN and STILL not be able to do it all, and do it “right.” You need 6 hands, you need a stomach made of cast iron, you need a backbone made of steel, and you need feet that can take an unbelievable pounding.

A person can go into nursing with a heart of pure gold, caring and compassionate and empathetic to the max, and the day-in-day-out unrelenting MISERY you see all around you will either kill you, or make you harden your heart in self-defense. As a nurse in a busy hospital, a nursing home, and most especially in an emergency room, the world is one big gaping aching wound, a bottomless pit of sorrow and need, and nothing you do is ever nearly enough. You need to be in 10 places at once, doing 10 different things, and almost everyone demands and criticizes, if not the patients, then very often their family does the complaining.

Stay in nursing long enough, and it is almost impossible to hang on to both your sanity, and your heart. This is why I could not do it! I only worked one week in an emergency room, this was as part of my nurse’s training, and that one week of non-stop, often life and death emergencies, almost did me in!

As I read your vivid, beautifully written description of what you endured last July, I could SEE it in my mind. In the eyes of the nurses, you were not a suffering human being with worth and dignity and rights no less important than their own, you were merely an unwelcome interruption, a problem to be dealt with, quickly and firmly and with a minimum of fuss and paperwork. This was not YOUR fault, it was the fault of the system, for want of a better word.

But knowing how HARD nursing is, does not in any way excuse the harsh, hateful, disrespectful attitude you were shown.. yet it does, in my mind at least, explain it. I have seen and experienced it myself, from BOTH sides of the medical charts, this harsh, disdainful attitude.

I have witnessed this, both as a nurse-in-training, and as a patient. When you’ve been called from the bedside of a child whose body was crushed less than an hour ago in an automobile accident, and his mother is dead, his father is hanging by a thread, and if the child survives, he will most likely never walk again… and here is a patient who has nothing visible wrong with her, only she is “inexplicably” freaking out – the disdainful, put-upon attitude from the medical personnel who simply do not “get” the first thing about the very real horror of psychological distress, is very real. It’s not your imagination, and it’s not your fault, either. It’s just that they don’t get it, and they are overworked and exhausted and stressed and overwhelmed with the horrors of life in the trenches.

I hope you know what I am trying to say here? To you, in your time of extreme duress and suffering, the snappy bitchiness and cold-heartedness of the medical personnel, coupled with the terrifying physical roughness of the guard, must have felt so very personal. But YOU were not the real target, in my opinion. The nurse was probably (inexcusably!) bitchy because she was already behind in her duties when you were brought in with your immediate pressing needs, and the guard was probably an overgrown boy playing macho-cop-wannabe, who finally got to see some adrenalin-pumping ACTION.

Someday, if they live long enough, that guard, and the nurses, will become old and infirm, and they will most likely experience, in some fashion, what it is like to be the one who is disempowered, hurting, fearful, and in need of compassionate help, while being treated like they are nothing more than an unwelcome interruption, a pain in the ass, an unimportant, non-person. Someday, I believe, it all comes back around. At least, that’s my hope!

Rachel

Finally, the following comment concerns my post “Open Letter to Dr Deborah Weidner (Sept. 9, 2012)”

The memories this post brings back…. I was shaking inside as I read it. It was hard enough going through this kind of mistreatment as a powerless teenage girl in a state mental institution, I can’t imagine going through this now, at the age of almost-60. I’m so sorry you were put through this. Until I read this just now, I thought your emergency room mistreatment of last July was the worst you had gone through recently. But this…. I don’t know how you came through it. I think if this had been done to me, I would have permanently checked out of reality.

Your feistiness is what’s keeping you alive. The very thing in you that the “wardens” of the mentally ill want to drug and shame and torture out of you, that undying spirit of yours is why you are still here, still breathing, still functioning, and still able to coherently tell your story. You are amazing.

Rachel

Art, Health, Uncategorized

Art: Killer Nurse and Placid Seascape

November 5, 2012 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 7 Comments

: Boats at Evening, after Monet, 11 by 14″ © Pamela Spiro Wagner All rights reserved.

I do not have a lot to say tonight after yesterday’s marathon writing session, but I wanted simply to share my latest artwork. The first one, the collage, is going to be part of a talk I give to a group in December…I won’t say to whom or where just yet. All I will say is that this is how most psychiatric nurses deal with patients: “You do what I say, or else…”

The seascape on the other hand was simply a doodle I did one day while looking through an art book. I saw this Monet of boats at Argenteuil and thought I would sort of copy it, though not really. I just didn’t have any boats or water nearby to paint, so I figured I would use his painting as a model, a close one, though I clearly did my own thing with it…(And I am no Monet!).

Health, Health Care Reform, Hospital, Natchaug Hospital, Uncategorized

A Mental Health Meeting of the Minds: Natchaug Hospital Administrators Get Gold Stars

September 22, 2012 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 3 Comments

Entrance to Natchaug Hospital — This is the front entrance to Natchaug Hospital, a photo I cribbed from their Facebook page. I am trying to paint it, but that will take a while so for now, this will have to do…Hope I am not infringing a copyright. However, as this post is all about Natchaug it is good publicity too!

After I wrote my early September post “Open Letter to Deborah Weidner MD”https://wagblog.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/open-letter-to…chaug-hospital/ ‎about my stay at Natchaug Hospital in August, I received a phone message one Saturday afternoon not long afterwards from none other than Dr Weidner herself. She left her cell phone number and asked me to call her back. Her voice was neither angry nor upset, quite the contrary, she sounded very pleasant. So, despite my heart’s clangor in my ears at the same time as it drove nearly into my esophagus with its nervous pounding, I sat down and decided to make the call “without further ado.”

“May I speak to Deborah Weidner?” I asked the voice who answered, intentionally using her first name, so she would not think I was calling on unequal terms, i.e. as a patient.

She responded, and addressed me as “Ms Wagner,” which made me feel better at once. Then, before I said a word, and believe you me, I was not going to be the first to speak in any event, she said (and I quote from a less than perfect memory here, so this is not verbatim), “I read your blog post. You are such a gifted writer. It was really a wonderful piece…” Or words to that effect.

I was both stunned and amazed. Certainly I was amazed this was the self-same “head honcho” who had essentially, so I’d felt in August, been against me at the hospital along with so many others in charge, the MD who had – I felt – given up on me, called me “a borderline”*** and gotten rid of me at the earliest possible opportunity. She could, back in August, so easily have tried to help, tried to find out what had gone wrong and make things better. But it seemed to me at the time that she had simply gone along with the general ill-will towards me and dumped me, no matter how troubled I still was.

Note that when I say, “general ill will” I mean exclusively “the management” — the doctors and social workers and APRNs…those who did the diagnosing and disposing. From the nurses and mental health workers I felt nothing but great support and goodwill, almost to a one (minus, of course, my abusers). Even of the nursing supervisors I found only that single really awful one…at least to my face.

But as for Dr Weidner, I’d felt that she too had decided to “blame the victim” instead of taking responsibility for the very real traumas, which certain “bad egg” hospital staff had inflicted on me…

However, be that as it may, it is all water that has sluiced beneath the bridge, and so as I said, I was stunned to receive Weidner’s phone call. I was even more astonished to perceive such humanity and even warmth from this woman against whom I had conceived such animosity and from whom I had felt the same.

Here she was not only praising my writing skills but speaking approvingly of a blog post that concerned my very negative month-long stay in “her” hospital.

We talked for a while. She may not have known it but I was trembling, both with anger and with anxiety. It took me some time to calm myself, to feel safe enough to answer any of her questions. Finally, she said what she evidently had called about to begin with. “I wonder if you would consider coming back to talk with me and a few other interested people here at Natchaug. I would really love to speak with you.”

I was dumbfounded for a minute. But only for a minute. Then I found my voice, and as soon as I did, I responded with enthusiasm. “Yes, absolutely. I would love to do that. Thank you. I would be more than happy to speak to you and anyone else who would listen to me.”

“Thank you, Ms Wagner. We really want your input, we want to make Natchaug a better place and I think your insights can help us to do that.”

After we hung up, I was beaming. I felt so filled with light that my smile must have been big and bright as a beneficent Halloween pumpkin. I immediately went downstairs to the 7^th floor to share the news with my friend of 30 years, a friend who had been appalled when I came home in August in such terrible shape.

_________________________________________________

Well, that meeting took place yeseterday, Friday, at 9am. Brityn, my case manager drove me out to Natchaug, and I brought with me the oil pastel painting I’d done while there, the view of the nurses station from my room. I am donating it to the adult unit mental health workers’ breakroom, after Brian, the patient relations advocate, who is both intelligent and caring and an extraordinary listener, displays it somewhere publicly for a time.

When we got there, we were met by the director of nursing, John O, APRN. Shortly thereafter Dr Kline came along and we went into a little room off the lobby. I was a taken aback at first when, while waiting for Dr W, John and Dr Kline started talking with Brityn, as if she were the only person in the room, as if, “professional to professional,” they could ignore me, a mere patient once again.

This was unconscionable. I was the person with whom they ought to have been concerned, and instead they directed themselves wholly to Brityn. It also felt infantilizing. Why didn’t they even greet me or ask how I was doing since I’d left Natchaug? They could have at the very least made small talk with me. Instead, they chatted with Brityn, someone who is not only my junior by about 30 years, but with whom they’d had no prior interactions whatsoever and whom they didn’t even know. It was insulting.

I dunno. Maybe I was too sensitive. Maybe they just wanted to include Brityn…But it didn’t feel that way to me. It felt like they were talking to her as a way to avoid talking to me, a way to simply bypass chatting with me.

To their credit, however, when I mentioned it – “You know, I am here and I am a person too. You could at least include me in the conversation…” — they apologized. But even now I do not believe they understood the problem. They thought it was perfectly acceptable — since Brityn had driven me (I wonder how they would have behaved had I simply been able to drive myself!) — to treat me as merely a patient, a “charge,” and to treat Brityn as their equal, the other professional, the only one on equal standing with them. Well fork them…It cost me a lot to go up there, not even to talk about what they did to me. Do they really think I am OVER it? They ought to be ashamed of themselves.

But I will let that go as well.

Soooo, down to tin tacks, which turned out to be the golden glue of the meeting itself.

Dr Weidner, small and blond and –somehow I want to call her “open-faced” — she seemed not to hide a lot, had what looked like a genuinely interested and caring face, though naturally psychiatrists are trained to achieve this appearance. Nevertheless, I did trust her sincerity.

This time I cannot recall if she called me Pam, or nothing at all. I do not think she called me Ms Wagner, though. I pointed out that since I understood that the post I’d written, the “Open Letter” had essentially “gone viral” in terms of the Natchaug Hospital staff itself, I didn’t feel I needed to talk much about what had happened in August. I had written all about it in detail. Or most of it…Mostly what I thought I should talk about was “How to make Natchaug a better place.”

I did that, and in fairly great detail. I will write a separate blog about all those suggested changes, and changes which would apply in spades to other hospitals. But for now, I just want to report on the meeting itself.

Dr Weidner seemed to take careful notes and when I had finished I was simply “blown away” when she said, “Pam you have so much to tell us, and are such a good teacher, but there are only the three of us here today. How would you feel about coming back and talking to the entire medical staff? Your experience as a patient and your ability to articulate it would be just invaluable for many more of us to hear.”

Well, I almost laughed in sheer belief and pleasure. “Of course. I would love to. I do public speaking and would have no problem with that. Anything at all that I could do to make Natchaug a better place would be fine with me.”

Dr Weidner also wanted to know what they could have done to make my own stay less traumatic “from the start,” especially how they could have relieved or prevented my becoming mute for so long.

I told her that from the instant that the first episode started, when that nurse or whomever said to me, “Take your hands out from under the blankets!” I felt so betrayed, felt indeed that I was back at Hallbrooke being tortured by those two abusive staff members (who were actually reprimanded for their behavior) that I became mute at that very instant.

Would I have taken Ativan despite my psychiatric advance directive’s proscription against its use? Yes, had someone gently explained its use and suggested I take it to help my mutism, just a small dose, I would have at least considered it.

But no one presented Ativan as an option…I do not believe anyone even knew about it. Except of course to force it on me against my will during the Seclusion event I described in the earlier post. Not until Dr Cappiello insisted that I ask Dr Pentz to prescribe it, and that was only after I had been unable to talk for 8 days.

As for the mutism itself? They — Dr Pentz and some of the other docs and APRNs — insisted that I deliberately chose not to speak, that I could have if I wanted to. But in point of fact, I could not get myself to speak, I woke every morning with no “inclination” to speak and no felt ability to break that barrier…and therefore I truly could not speak at all. In fact, it took hours, and maybe two doses of Ativan before I was able to speak at all even when I did take it.

After a few more words of conversation, the meeting broke up and Brityn and I headed towards the car, with the expectation that we would come back again so I could speak to a larger group of Natchaug personnel.

So that was my reconciliation with Natchaug and I left feeling like a million dollars. Even Brityn told me it was the best appointment she had taken anyone to that week.

You know, my sole worry — and I felt a frisson even as we talked about it and my worries were not immediately allayed — was when I asked if I could ever be readmitted, ie as a patient. I know, I know, why would I even want to? Dr Weidner said she didn’t think I’d ever want to come back. According to her, that’s what I’d written in my blog post. But in fact, what I said was that I didn’t think I would ever be taken back. I was considered such a PITA, why would they want me? And also because I could not see anyone for a doctor but Dr Andrei, and it seems dubious that she would see me. Why I do not know. But so be it. I liked her, never had any problems with her. But I must have done something wrong. This is twice that they have refused to assign me to her.

In truth though, 1) I have NO WHERE ELSE TO GO, no where else I could possibly begin to trust or feel safe, nowhere do I have even a history of feeling and being safe and 2) say that they do change, where else would I want to go?

In any event, since I can work with neithe Pentz nor the other doctor on the unit, because of “conflicts of interest” (i.e. he still has “feelings for me” from our days in med school together) that leaves only Dr Andrei, and I dunno if she would accept me onto her service. So, even if theoretically they would take me back – which didn’t seem at all certain, not from the vibes I got from Dr Weidner — I don’t have any idea who could see me if I were admitted.

(What the fork! I would be stuck in a snake pit like Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living only to be brutalized again. When push comes to shove and I might need or want to be re-admitted, frankly I wouldn’t expect the admitting MD Natchaug to give a damn, no matter how many times I’d spoken to people there and how much I might have taught them. As soon as I need their help as a patient, frankly, I expect I’d simply to be abandoned to my fate somewhere else.)

Well, of course I will still help Natchaug,. How could I not want to help them? I want to help EVERY hospital in the state become as good as Natchaug and even better. But it sucks all the same.

———————————————————————————

*** Finally I want to make a brief comment about the specific words “a borderline” used early in this post, because every time I hear this phrase it makes my blood sizzle. Not only is very insulting, it stigmaties. I may not have borderline personality disorder, but I know what is meant when someone calls a person “a borderline,” and it is invariably takes the place of PITA, Pain in The Ass.

There is a difference, a huge difference between understanding the very real travails that a person with such a personality disorder undergoes daily, the emotional suffering that afflicts that person, and simply calling them names because you find them troublesome.

Empathy goes a long way, especially with someone who suffers from BPD. The idea of calling someone “a borderline” is tantamount to saying, “I suffer from YOU.” A disgusting statement if ever I heard one, one most often made by mental health professionals. Doctors who use the words, “a borderline” need 1) re-education in language and its nuances, but 2) and much more important, a re-education in COMPASSION.

Of course, that’s just IMHO…and who am I?

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
by Emily Dickinson

I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there's a pair of us! Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know! How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one's name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog!

Art, colored pencils, Drawing, Hospital, Natchaug Hospital, Surrealism

Artist Trading Cards: Egg, Goose, Frog and more…

September 5, 2012 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner Leave a comment

Flying Goose, Eye in Eggshell, Blue-spotted Frog, and Face/Eye Abstract

All of these “trading cards”, 2.5 inches by 3.5 inches. Many were done at Natchaug Hospital and are original one of a kind art. They are for sale. Tell me which one(s) you would like. We can work it out. (Payment is always in art supplies equivalences, by the way. No “cash” or other monetary payments accepted.)

Purple Cone flowers, Best in Show, No Exit from the Bin, and Mighty Manfred Makes an Entrance

Biohard Balloons; Blue Flipflops; cartoon nude; vivid abstract

Blue cup and Saucer; Man in Flower; Woman in ruffles with earrings

Abuse, Health, Hospital, Life, Mental Health, Psychiatric Unit, Psychiatry, Schizophrenia, Trauma, Uncategorized

Mental Hospital: Psychiatric “Treatment” and Abuse II (Continued)

July 23, 2012 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner Leave a comment

I was admitted last Tuesday night, the 17th of July I believe it was, to the Institute of Living, the psychiatric division of Hartford Hospital in central Connecticut. I do not remember this. The fact that I have amnesia for it and for most of the Wednesday following only occurred to me on Thursday, a day and a half later, when I wondered — the train of thought must have had to do with the seclusion episode that took place Wednesday evening and which I described in yesterday’s blog post — why they had been so violent with me, why they had so quickly secluded and threatened me with restraints in a situation that didn’t come within miles of “requiring” them. Surely, I thought, the staff member who admitted me, whoever that had been, had asked me a critical question, which is on every admissions questionnaire upon entering a psych unit or hospital these days: have you ever experienced trauma or sexual assault? (or words to that effect). I could not, and still cannot, for the life of my body or soul remember anything asked or answered at that time. There’s little left in my memory beyond a vague “snapshot” of being wheeled into The Institute of Living (hence forward to be called by its nickname The Toot or by its initials, The IOL) and my understanding that I had been transferred out of the ER. Then the memory goes blank until many hours later. Understanding only as late as Thursday that I had this gap, and pained by the violence dealt me the night before, I went up to my “contact person” and asked about my admission. Could I find out whether this question was ever asked me, and what my answers were? At first, naturally and as a matter of course, she refused. That was SOP. Refuse, refuse, and refuse. So as I stood there, earnest in my request, she seemed about to summarily dismiss it as just another bothersome demand from a too-demanding patient already much disliked by all. What did I expect, cooperation? But to my surprise, her misgivings and the flicker of irritation that had crossed her face at first changed to a flattened look of resignation. She agreed to read my answers to the questions to me. But that was all she would do, so don’t go expecting more than that.

As she read from the top, a few memories stirred and woke, but only temporarily. I fear they soon faded again into the all-white-out of oblivion. Only the trauma memories remain, for they apparently are stronger than thieving Ativan. Can I push myself to remember what her reading my answers back to me recalled to mind? She told me…what? She said that I told the admitting staff member, whom I do not remember a thing about, do not even recall if that person was male or female, doctor or nurse or what…I told that person I was not homicidal, not suicidal, not hearing voices, and that I didn’t need to be in the hospital. Three answers were true, or true enough by then. After having been nearly killed in the ER the people in my head/outside of it, who tell me to do things to myself were not so relentlessly horrible in their demands…so I was indeed no longer suicidal, homicidal or in need of hospitalization. I just wanted to get out of there and go on my upcoming writing-retreat vacation.

As I recall the little I recall now, this nurse, my “contact person” read to herself a lot of the paperwork and relatively little aloud, despite her promises. I kept asking what she had read, and prompting her to read out loud, but she let forth only a few phrases. I still do not know why… though I can guess that pretty bad things are written there about me. That would not surprise me one iota. I do not really care. They will largely be lies or descriptions of that awful scene in the ER from one very biassed point of view. No one will tell MY side of the story, that’s for damn sure. Whatever is said there will be based on what the ER personnel and the guard-thugs did to me, but if my contact person believed them reading them, and never bothered to find out the half of it, then who knows what they all thought about me, or believed…Anyhow, I do not care, because they too were thuggish, professionally and psychologically.

But the big question was yet unanswered. Had I ever in fact been asked about past experience of trauma or sexual assault? Contact Person, whom I won’t name as she was at least marginally decent to me, now seemed interested in this too, having paged through the lengthy document and not found it. She seemed puzzled, said she knew it was a standard question. She started perusing the thing again from the beginning. A minute or two later, she poked a page.

“Ah, here it is. And your answer is blank.”

“So the person just skipped over it. They just skipped it!”

“It appears so. Do you want to answer it now?” She took out her pen.

“Yes, and yes. I have experienced sexual assault three times. And severe trauma due to seclusion and restraints in many hospitals.” I looked at her. She was writing. “Tell me what you wrote.

“Experienced sexual assault. Has issues with seclusion and restraint.”

“NO! I said, it was severe trauma. I have PTSD, ask my doctor. Ask, I dunno, give me a test. I cry just talking about it. My heart rate goes up just thinking about it, even though it happened more than two years ago. It was trauma, and you cannot do it to me again!” She wrote something on the paper but didn’t read it to me. She just clicked her pen off and stood.

“Now you have your answer. I have things to do. Let’s go.” With that, and no discussion of what had taken place on Wednesday night, let alone in the ER, she hurried me out of the side office so she could go back to the nursing station to do some “real work.”

——————————

I suppose there must have been some incidents of relative kindness at the Toot. There must have been exceptions to the Hartford Hospital IOL “coal dust standard.” But only Albert, a tech, stands out. Because they injected me with too much Ativan on Wednesday pm and I was discharged Friday noon, I had very little time between the ER’s monster dose and D3South’s equally large dose of Ativan-it-Away to retain much of anything but what stood out enough to stick, and really stick tight. Their puny kindnesses mostly did not, except for Albert.

On the other hand, the sheer meanness of the staff was astounding. I had a semi-meaningful interaction — though unpleasant – in all that time with only one individual who was not programmed to speak with me. And even that started out with nastiness, though I admit it was sparked by something that was “my fault,” as you will see.

Friday morning I needed migraine meds and my 8am pills. I went to desk at 7:55 and asked for them. A nurse or tech or someone –I never knew and no one ever bothered to tell me who or what they were — lingering at the desk said that the med nurse somewhere in the back would get them. I wandered off, figuring it would take some time and she would bring them to me, which is what they did at every single place I have ever been. But no, by the time I thought about it again, realizing that she had never brought them, it was 8:45 and people were lined up for their 9:00am meds already. I signaled above them to the nurse at the med window that I had not gotten mine for 8:00am yet. She told me that of course not: I left the med station; why should she go after me? Then she indicated that I should get in line to be next…even though that meant stepping in front of someone else. Okay, so I got in line, and – oh, I do not remember all that happened except that I became angrier and angrier with her, resenting her attitude. As a consequence, I did everything I could do to irritate her. She poured the meds at the computer, where I couldn’t see them, saying their names softly to herself so I asked to see the packaging. I didn’t trust her not to withhold or add something I didn’t want. Because I had asked for Imitex an hour before I sensed she would not include it. Well, lo and behold: No Imitrex! So I took the pills, but asked her for the Imitrex as well.

Ah, revenge time! “I will get the Imitrex at 9:00 am sharp, when it is due. That is 10 minutes from now. You can come back and wait in line then.” I just stood there, not budging. I would never stoop so low as to impugn a person’s person, but I probably let loose a few curses and most certainly raised my already angry voice a few decibels. Finally, speaking in a calm, respectful voice, a man whose name I learned was Albert came up to me asking in such a polite manner that I even looked him in the eye, to “please just lower your voice” so he could hear me tell him what the problem was.” Well, treated in such a fashion I understood he would wait for me to calm and not get angry back so I was able to take a few breaths and then make him understand what she was doing…He said, with the med nurse standing well within earshot, though I do not think he intended any manipulation, “It’s okay, don’t worry. It’s nearly nine, and I’m sure the med nurse will get your medication for you.” (I was sure of quite the opposite but harrumph! Well, what could that SOB, excuse me, DOS — daughter of a stud (med-nurse) do but give me the Imitrex now?) I might have crowed, but instead, thanks to Albert and in respect for him, I took it without a fuss and thanked him again.

This sort of treatment gives the lie to what so many providers – both individuals and insitutions — say about the goal of “empowering patients.” What bloviated BS! What they really want are not empowered patients but cowering patients, people too scared and drugged up to object or make trouble in the first place and then who continue to cower before the establishment MD’s power structures all the way to the last place.

My butt hurts from sitting slouched on a bed all day. I need a break. So I am going to post this and go outside in the cooling darkness of the Litchfield hills and drink the air. Since I have nothing I have to do here but write, I will post tomorrow about that single meaningful encounter I had while imprisoned at The Institute of Living. If I still feel it is worth writing about, which as I think about it, it may not be.

Oh, what the heck: Basically, it concerned an encounter with this female tech, a woman who in passing me in the hallway, the first time she had spoken to me so far as I knew, accused me of moral turpitude (not in those words), made a statement shaming me for my behavior on Friday morning at the medication window. What had I done? By talking too loudly, I had made “the poor man behind [me]” cover his ears and point at his skull to communicate his displeasure. PLUS, I had made everyone wait a good 30 minutes…I knew the 30 minutes was an exaggeration, so I didn’t even touch that, but the shaming tactic got to me. I went back a few minutes later and said I wanted to speak with her. We went to a couple of lounge chairs in the hall and sat down.

“What precisely did I do that was morally wrong this morning?”

“Do you know you talked so loudly this morning that the poor little man behind you was covering his ears and pointing at his head?”

“So I should have talked more softly, but I do not have eyes in the back of my head to see him. I could not know he was communicating by pointing at his head. It is not morally wrong not to have eyes in the back of your head, nor is it morally wrong to speak in a loud voice.”

She reiterated the case of “the poor little man behind you pointing at his head.” But I continued to press her on what was morally wrong because I didn’t have eyes to see behind me. Finally she granted that I could not help not seeing him and that it wasn’t actually a morally wrong thing to do, to yell or talk too loudly. At this point I said to her, nearly in tears because just having a calm conversation had taken such effort on my part, “Be careful what you say to someone on this unit you know nothing about. Words have power and you should use that power with care. You have NO idea how those words you spoke affected me, no possible idea…”

She gave me an intent look, almost a fearful one, as if afraid that — well, no, I don’t think she gave a damn whether or not she caused me any emotional harm. She no doubt despised me along with the rest of the nursing staff. But perhaps she suddenly appreciated how even her words were important and powerful, and carried weight and could do some good but could also do just as much psychological damage and maybe more sometimes than the loud voice that damaged mostly ear drums.

Abuse, Health, Mental Illness, Psychiatry, Trauma, Uncategorized

More Psychiatric Abuse in Mental Hospital and Emergency Room

July 21, 2012 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 5 Comments

IOL_walking-map — Donnelly Building is #11. But we faced Maple Ave and couldn’t see the magnolia, or the oaks or copper beech that Olmstead planted…

Yes, this is hospital restraint and seclusion – it really happened like this at Middlesex Hospital in 2010 (I am just reprinting it here to reprise it for edification’s sake and because it is relevant.) In fact there were many more personnel and guards involved and more men…I just didn’t know how to draw a crowded scene at the time, so I made it simple!

Hospital Restraint and Seclusion Image — Donnelly Building is #11. But we faced Maple Ave and couldn’t see the magnolia, or the oaks or copper beech that Olmstead planted…

Yes, this is hospital restraint and seclusion – it really happened like this at Middlesex Hospital in 2010 (I am just reprinting it here to reprise it for edification’s sake and because it is relevant.) In fact there were many more personnel and guards involved and more men…I just didn’t know how to draw a crowded scene at the time, so I made it simple!

I admit I was angry. I admit I was loud and irritable. I admit that I may have been perceived as “difficult.” But never once did I make a verbal or gestural threat or even so much as stand on the floor or approach anyone face to face. In fact, for three hours I did nothing but lie on a gurney, quietly, and try to sleep and remain calm, hoping to…But wait. You don’t know the half of it.

Well, if my energy holds out, let me start at the beginning. Except that I do not really recall the beginning, largely I suspect, due to our good friend, Ativan. However, this much I do know: my case manager came to my apartment five days ago after I called her in extremis, just wanting to talk. She offered to come over to see me, which she has done before and left me in better shape than I was when she came. I assented, though I had some doubts about it because she seemed a bit too concerned for my good. I knew I had a writer’s week planned up at Wisdom House again in the NW corner of the state starting this weekend and didn’t want her to push the panic button.

To make that part of the story shorter, push that bright purple button she and an associate did, once they came and found me in a mess, unable to assure them properly that I was not hearing voices telling me to burn myself. Now, my plans were in fact to burn myself somehow, depending on what the voices told me. They had already instructed me to burn my leg that evening. That was partly why I had called the case manager, because I knew I would follow through. I also knew that I could not keep it a secret if I did follow their instructions, which would have ended my vacation plans prontissimo.

But when that other LCSW went out into the hall to use her phone, I knew it was under false pretenses — she said she had to cancel an appointment of hers because she was visiting me but she was clearly lying, I just couldn’t do anything about it. Just as I suspected, she called 911 to summon the police and EMTs. When they came, I objected to going to the ER, but you know of course it was “Pamela, it’s the easy way or the hard way. You are going to the hospital no matter what…” Argh, the usual story.

Worst of all — since I still don’t know whether legally they really had a right to force me — once in the ambulance, when I stated quite clearly that I did not want to go to Hartford Hospital, and this was clearly and prominently stated in my Psychiatric Advance Directive (PAD) of which I had made sure they had a copy, they dispatched me there anyway. When I screamed my objections from the back of the ambulance van they told me that the police had instructed that they could take away all of my rights with impunity. Oooh, I did not know what to do about this, but it put me in an evaporative fury. I simply had no power. Disaster nearly followed, and new trauma most certainly did.

Once in the ER, I was taken directly to the so called “purple pod” — the psychiatric section, and shifted onto a gurney in a curtained-off cubicle, told to change into hospital garb, which I did under duress but before I was forcibly changed by the guards, as was the threat, and was told to lie down and be quiet. I did. I submitted to a physical by an APRN that took 15-30 seconds, after which she pronounced me physically sound, ready for a psychiatric interview. Then I waited. And waited. And waited. The room — the purple pod — began to fill, and doctors and MSWs came and went and talked to people and passed by my cubicle, but none stopped or said a word. I remained silent, still hoping my semi-comatose behavior would bolster my case, earn me a ticket out of the ER without being hospitalized.

Then another woman, middle-edged, bent over from back pain, loudly asked to talk with a doctor, complaining, “I’m tired of waiting! My back hurts!” The response was that she would not get to see Dr So and So until she was sober and the alcohol was out of her system. She returned to her gurney for a time and then again was at the nurses’ station complaining of fatigue and wanting to have her interview so she could get on her way. Once again the same reply.

This jarred me out of my complacency. I grew irritated. Why were they making me wait? I had been there hours already and had not come in drunk or on drugs or anything like it. I had been quiet, submissive, and they just ignored me. Well, I dunno what happened next precisely, but I exploded (but in some sense in a controlled fashion, because I only got down off the gurney once, in order to use the restroom…) Some cropped-haired woman with an official look and a clipboard came by and I started rationally to ask her why I had not been seen yet, and she began an answer. Unfortunately I just barreled on about how I had been waiting hours and was not drunk and not high and, and, and…And well, it snowballed from there because of course nobody at the ER is professionally trained or for that matter paid well enough to care to learn or know how to calm an agitated person down without brutalizing them….This forever surprises me, since surely they must watch TV where such situations are frequently featured.

I take it back, or partly back. They claim to be professionals. They also, get this, several staff members of the ER claimed to have read my PAD, front to back, all 17 pages of it. They volunteered this information. Yet when push came to shove, when I became agitated, which has a PAD page all its own, what happened? Abuse par excellence. First they ganged up on me, a real no-no. Then they screamed back at me. Then they threatened me. One security guard (?nurse or ?aide) actually threatened to “4-point me” just for disturbing his purple pod. As if doing so would quiet me!

“Oh, you dare put me in restraints,” I threatened, “and I will have your ass so fast you won’t know what hit you. Middlesex Hospital tried that and now they are facing JCAHO and the DOJ so just you watch your step!!!!!” He said nothing more about four-point restraints, I can tell you that. BUT, BUT, BUT… they had other retaliatory measures in store for me, because soon thereafter a whole panoply of guards and nurses came barreling into my cubicle and rolled my gurney headlong into a secure room (soundproof and with a door that locked, a guard assured me). There while a female nurse attempted to inject my upper left arm with three drugs, two of which were on my PAD’s “forbidden drugs” list, and others restrained me, two guards viciously compressed my neck. They squeezed down hard especially on the right side, cutting off the blood supply to my jugular and carotid arteries. I knew this, I felt my eyes pop, felt blackness in my head approach. I tried to alert the nurse injecting me, could barely burble through hard-compressed lips, “I can’t breathe!” which was the only thing at the time I could think of that she would pay attention to. That they were choking me was a concept that simply didn’t form in my brain…Tough luck. She just ignored them and me and said, “You’re all right…”

I jerked away from her then, trying to get free from the guards. The nurse yelled at me because I dislodged her needle and started bleeding. But the guards only squeezed down harder, tightening their strangulation grip. I felt certain they really were going to kill me. Then the guard closest to my right ear said something along the lines of, “That will teach you about suing a hospital and getting JCAHO involved…” I feel like I have his words verbatim, but maybe I only recall the gist of them. Whatever he actually said, he clearly harbored enormous resentment about my complaint against Middlesex Hospital and the involvement of the Joint Commission and possibly the DOJ.

When they were through brutalizing me, the guard finally unclenched his fingers from my neck and despite my accusations, they all rushed out of the room, closing the door behind them so no one could hear me. I lay back, stunned, understanding then just how people die during restraint episodes. How close I came to being one of those statistics I can’t venture to guess. “Unfortunate ‘accidents’ happen and nobody is to blame, really, it just happens…” I imagined them saying to my family and friends. At the time it felt like an extremely close call. I knew one thing: what those guards intended, and they intended to hurt me. Perhaps in their angry zeal they would have killed me. They were thugs. They were coarse, vulgar men who had likely been judged unfit for the police academy but still wanted to wear a uniform, have authority and to carry weapons and beat people up. Understanding this and understanding just how much danger I was in was extraordinarily frightening. I do not recall anything else. I must have fallen asleep despite my terror, subdued by the cocktail of drugs I had been given.

The next thing I knew, they were wheeling me onto a psych floor at the Institute of Living, the psychiatric hospital associated with Hartford Hospital. This Once World-Renowned Retreat for the Rich and Famous closed its doors years ago, re-opening with the same name but as part of the city hospital. It now caters largely to Medicare and Medicaid patients like me, which is a 180° reversal. Clearly the staff, at least on the floor where they placed me, care about as much about their patients as their meager salaries/wages pay them to. Which from my fairly minimal (I have been there three times, for brief and uniformly miserable stays) but horrendous experience on Donnelly 3 South at any rate tells me cannot be more than a pittance. Either they are paid too little to give a damn about their jobs, or they are mostly all of them jaded, burned out, control freaks. At a minimum it seems they just want a cushy job and a quiet unit with untroubling patients, drugged to the hilt so they will have no problems to deal with, nothing that a seclusion room and IM meds in the butt cannot handle.

They were not prepared for me, not prepared for someone who had nearly been killed in the ER, one, and two, who really did not want to be in the hospital, let alone in their hospital. I was ornery, bitchy, and, to the maximum possible, was not ready to obey their pissant commands. No I was not. I was a human being, a very intelligent human being whatever else was going on, and they were not treating me with dignity or respect, so I would treat them much the same, or worse…Well, that won me a lot of friends, I can tell you, NOT.

They hated me at Donnelly 3 South, they really did. They despised me and made these feelings very clear, very clear indeed, retaliating and punishing me at every opportunity. It would have been, might could have been funny to watch these so-called professional nurses and psychiatric staff behaving so badly, so much like children run-amuck, they were that out-of-control, had I not been so vulnerable and so very much in their power.

But when it came time to force me into a “side room” and try to keep me from leaving it, you better believe they didn’t have an easy target in me. After my experiences in Middlesex and Manchester Hospitals, I have schooled myself on my rights, all my rights vis a vis restraints and seclusion. And you know that I let them know in no uncertain terms what the Connecticut statutes are, how seclusion is defined and when a restraint is taking place. How they hated me for this, and hated, oh, they –you know, I really have no word strong enough for the look of razorblades in their eyes when I pointed out that they were not following the most recent Standards of Nursing Care, or worse, how Natchaug Hospital nurses do things better, or how they were using seclusion and restraint when they had no “statutory right” to do so. I think the words “statutory right” both meant nothing – “what the heck is a statute anyway?” I could feel some thinking — and everything to them, and was impressive and frightening because of this. In any event, that look of utter negativity went right through me, as if they wanted to stab my eyeballs with an ice-pick.

Needless to say, however, they managed to use seclusion and restraint on me despite my protests. When I got too noisy for them instead of trying de-escalation techniques of any sort, they proceeded first to lead me into and then to push me back to a so-called “side-room.” When I got out, they forced me bodily pushed me back inside, and closed the door against my protests and verbal preferences, vocalized clearly, to go to the “least restrictive environment” of my bedroom to calm down. That constituted a restraint, and when they would not let me leave that room, it became, as many of my readers will know, by definition a seclusion. Then, when they forcibly held me down for an injection of the three drugs that interact badly in me, and which I had requested specifically not be given to me (alternatives were suggested in my PAD), they abrogated every right I asserted. That in itself constituted a restraint without legal justification, especially since I was nearly sleeping by the time they managed to get the injection ready and no longer even agitated. They had to physically attack me in order to RE-agitate me, to justify giving me a stat dose at all. They kept me in that “side room” guarded by someone all night.

As I freely admit, I was horrible to them, a witch, a bitch, a harridan, but they never once behaved with any professionalism, or tried any of the calming, de-escalation strategies that I suggested in my Psychiatric Advance Directive. Oh, they had a wonderful comfort room, pretty much perfect, but for the lack of a padded floor and muralled wall. But I myself had to ask to use it; it isn’t as if they offered the use of it or suggested that I return to it when agitated. In fact, they seemed pretty cagey about it, acted as if I might possibly want to “over use it” and said I could stay for a “little while.” And when the radio broke down, who gave a damn enough to find one that worked when I returned the broken one, or to get me a weighted blanket when I wanted one. I sat in the comfort room’s therapy chair — arranged backwards so you couldn’t use it to rock yourself by pressing your feet against the wall the way it is supposed to be used! Because it was cold in there (yeah, the other big problem) I asked for a blanket, the aide/tech who found me one walked partially into the room and then threw it at me! Not casually for me to catch, mind you, but at me. As if I weren’t worth the time, trouble, or effort for him to hand it to me. I don’t know what he was thinking, or not thinking, but it seemed clear that at least at that moment he didn’t give a damn about his job. Or perhaps he was sending me a message about personal dislike, which would have been incredibly unprofessional, but what can I say? It has happened before…What a soulless bastard.

If anyone out there reading this is a psych tech or nurse or employee at a psych unit or institution, you should know or must learn that matters like the blanket business, however puny they seem, do matter, they matter a lot. Never at Natchaug Hospital would anyone, tech or nurse or even attentive housekeeper dream of throwing a blanket at a patient, not in bed or in a chair or a therapy chair. No one would throw anything at a patient, not even a tissue, and most certainly not in anger or a fit of pique. Not even in momentary thoughtlessness. No, if a patient needed or wanted a blanket at Natchaug Hospital, it would be gotten, often warm from the drier, opened up and carefully draped just so over the patient’s body.

This has a huge effect and makes a massive difference largely because it is indicative of the fact that Natchaug actually has a philosophy they work with and behave according to, not one of words they just push through their teeth and get lipstick stains on. Almost always at Natchaug the staff member would cover the patient and only leave the room after making sure that same patient was comfortable. The blanket-bringer would know or have been carefully tutored that the job description included an attitude of wanting patients to be happy and to get well because Natchaug believes a troubled person can only get well when well taken care of.

You’d think, and certainly would want each and every psychiatric hospital to operate on such humane and compassionate principles, wouldn’t you? Alas, at least in Connecticut, Natchaug Hospital in Willimantic is definitely the Hope Diamond exception to what remains very much a charcoal rule. Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living? I wouldn’t rate it much above coal dust.

To be continued…

Health, Mental Health, Psychiatric Unit, Seclusion and Restraints, Trauma

Psychiatric Crisis Intervention: How to Avoid Restraints and Violence

June 16, 2012 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner Leave a comment

*Note that when I write of a psychiatric crisis, I mean a patient who is not actively on street drugs. I cannot speak to any situation where someone has been taking unknown quantities of unknown chemicals. In such a situation I have absolutely no experience.

That said, I would like to tell you a few simple things about dealing with an unarmed, undrugged person who seems agitated and paranoid. It is true that I speak of myself, but I believe that the only difference between me and a two hundred fifty pound man, is only size and the fear factor. I think that there is no reason on earth why he would not respond to the following interactions just as well as I know I would.

First all of, remember that the person you are dealing with is indeed agitated, and is if paranoid by definition terrified. Keep that uppermost in your mind, because everything you do will be evaluated by her in terms of what threat it poses. If you frighten her or threaten her, she will become much more unpredictable, and the probability of violence increases enormously.

Never approach such a person with a show of force.Not even if she is being “loud” and disruptive. You gain nothing by such brute force methods, and you lose a great deal…Ganging up on a patient who is paranoid only puts her in the “fight” mode. After all, she is already frightened and you have cut off her only perceived avenue of “flight.” Why escalate a crisis situation, making it worse, upping the potential for a violent response. If the situation has already devolved into accusations, yelling and swearing — all three signs of increasing anger and desperation — that is a signal that whatever you are doing is making the paranoia worse; at such a time the best thing to do is NOT to worsen the situation by pushing back, responding with equal anger, and making demands and ultimatums. No, instead back off and WAIT. The person most likely has not had access to a weapon or anything to hurt herself or others, so patience is a virtue and can be put to good use here.

Usually a patient who is paranoid will not do anything of her own accord but try to escape the situation. But if you force the issue, if you prevent her from escaping to a comforting place or from her own feelings of fear by permitting her what she needs to calm herself, or worse, attempt to do something to her that she could perceive as an attack – for instance, if you try to force medication, or grab her or simply threaten her with a group of staff or guards approaching en masse, you may very well provoke her to respond as anyone would when attacked, i.e. with self defensive maneuvers.

Why be surprised, when several people try to rush her and grab her to hold her down for IM medication, or simply gang up on her in some misguided attempt “to calm her down,” if she then responds with apparent aggression? After all, it is several of you against the one of her and it is surely understandable that she feels threatened. Her life feels in danger and in such a situation all bets are off as to what she thinks she must do to preserve her safety.

If you really want the situation to end well, refrain from threatening or attacking her, no matter how impatient you may feel. Instead, choose one calm, unthreatened and unthreatening person, preferably of the same sex or somehow compatible with the paranoid patient’s personality, and have that person approach to a safe distance (safe for the paranoid patient, not just “safe” for the staff person or for lack of a better term, “negotiator.” The negotiator is safe so long as he or she does not threaten or attack the patient, who is much more frightened than the negotiator.

Approach to a safe distance and possibly sit down, calmly and in a relaxed position, so that she understands that you are not scared of her but also not angry or threatening. If necessary, you might indicate that the patient is speaking too loudly for you to hear her, or too rapidly, but that you are there to listen and talk, when she can lower her voice or slow down. Do not speak loudly or angrily yourself. Talk about anything at first. Don’t talk about the patient or what is going on and do not argue or demand. order or talk about your expectations of or for her. Try to talk about calming external things. Does she like nature, art, sports, reading? Is she cold? Hungry? Can she take some deep breaths? Maybe she would like to sit down now, too? Finally, when she can, would she like to tell you what is going on? There is plenty of time, no hurry. It is important to find out what the problem is…

It may be you fear that she will attempt to self-harm or hurt someone impulsively. If the latter, keep everyone a safe distance away. And emphasize the possibility of violence so that they will stay away until the all-clear. Then talk to the person in a soft voice and gently remind her that you know she doesn’t want to hurt anyone, not even herself, that she is already in enough pain…What does she need, right at this very moment, to help her feel better? Then negotiate a way to get it for her, or something that will do as a substitute or an approximation.

It isn’t that hard to negotiate a calm solution to this sort of crisis, without violence or retribution, when you don’t threaten the person and are truly on her side. But you must never lie to her or to swoop down upon her immediately afterwards to put her in restraints. The point is to bring the crisis to a peaceful resolution. It is not a contest you must somehow win, and then punish her because you were scared and got angry. Exacting retribution is unconscionable and if that is your impulse you need to have a talk with your supervisor. Negotiators and other employees who do such things need to be reassigned to other areas or other jobs. They do not belong in crisis intervention settings.

Now I am certain that you can think of other scenarios where four point restraints are absolutely essential. If so, I would like to have you describe one. We can discuss this because I am becoming more and more convinced that Seclusion and Restraints CAUSE more mental illness and suffering than they relieve. How would you feel if you found out that by putting a patient in four point restraints even once, you may have caused enough trauma to induce more self-injurious behavior, plus PTSD? I believe this happens. I also believe that it is terribly dangerous for the sense of self and the self–esteem and the relationship between the patient and ANY health care provider of any sort at all. I see nothing good to come from restraints. NOTHING. I do not even see them as providing safety, not in the long run and scarcely in the short run since those who are restrained tend to become more violent not less. Why will people not learn that the “catch more flies with honey than vinegar” works with people in every instance?

But talk to me. Let me know what you think. A confession: I once wrote an Op-Ed for the biggest state paper around her that suggested that restraints could be an okay form of treatment if patients were taught to ask for them voluntarily! (I cring just thinking how I toed my sister’s “party line” about the helpfulness of restraints. She learned that sort of thinking from being the attending psychiatrist at Y__ Psychiatric Institute where they taught patients to ask for wet packs or to have their wrists chained to their belts all day long… The difference between us is that she still believes in that sort of brutality.)

Art, Art and artwork, Health, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Middlesex Hospital, Seclusion and Restraints, Trauma, Uncategorized, Zyprexa

“The Scream” plus an update…

June 6, 2012 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 2 Comments


: In the midst of re-experiencing trauma, sometimes all you can do is scream, even if it is silently and only in paint…I hope this speaks to some of you who may feel as I do, often or even just once in a while. It took a lot to get this out, but I felt I did convey what I felt.

I am reposting the next one, a very painful if a not very skilled drawing, because I made some changes. I put a very mean smirk on the face of the woman in the front, who is meant to be facing us and pointing over her shoulder, though it was hard to get this in, given how little space I’d left myself… Also, I wanted to change the face of the man kneeling on me, and strength the look of the grip of the hands on me. If you compare the old version to this one, you will also note that I am purely naked here where as in the other, I have underpants on. This is the accurate one, but I didn’t understand that at the time I started the drawing. Alas, or perhaps this is good, I am rapidly recalling things I had not for two years about my experience at Middlesex. At least I remember stuff that happened BEFORE April 28th. For the other two restraints incidents, I still have no recall whatsoever or what I suspect is mostly confabulation drawn from what I read in my chart, though of course I cannot be certain. In any event, what I am remembering is not good at all, and I cry a lot…it is very difficult, and I feel so very very alone, because NO ONE understands and can talk to me, or more to the point can even stand to listen to me talk or cry about it. But it is difficult even to keep it under wraps all the time. If you have survived trauma, I think you know how it is. And that is why I avoid people when I think I cannot be “good enough company.” I don’t want to bring my friends down, but I cannot control the tears and shakes when they start…But the picture forthwith. Although it is disturbing as is, be aware that in the real incident, there was a great deal more violence, and more guards and staff members involved…these are just a paltry few. I simply didn’t know how to draw a crowd or a crowded room yet!

Takedown at N-7 — This is the incident before they used 4 point restraints on me that I so obsessively describe in Wagblog…Of course I take some poetic license with drawing the bed there and at the ready, as it was not there or ready or even in that room and I was quite calm and certainly no danger to anyone by the time they decided to punish me

Takedown on N-7 Prone Restraint Detail: Me, naked — and this is a hospital?

This next picture I did as an attempt to express the guilt and shame I feel over having been traumatized at all. But I do not think I succeeded at all. Why? Because it became too intellectualized, with symbols like the Scarlet A and the guilt-crucifix, and even the hands wringing in shame, rather than pure expression…I want to do it over again if I get inspired to do so.

Shame, Guilt and Ghosts — Shame Guilt and Ghosts is my attempt to portray my feelings of guilt at even having felt traumatized by so small an injury…but this doesn’t do it successfully, not so it seems to me at any rate.

The next three drawings were just “fun” or for practice ones. The first two are presents for Tim, simply because he likes cars and is so wonderful to me. The third was an exercise in drawing two people together, and was copied from an “old master”, the name of whom I simply cannot recall at the moment. It might have been — nope I don’t dare guess! I would have to get up and search for the book, and I ain’t gonna do that at the moment — too danged lazy. Anyhow, here are 1) two 1973 Volvo Sportswagon ES 1800 2) jaguar XJS and 3) the sketch taken from the old master’s painting.

: 1973 Volvo ES 1800 with British Racing Green “colour” in the background to represent the color of Tim’s car.

Jag XJS — My third car drawing for Tim, a Jaguar XJS (I forget the date but I believe it is the mid 80s (if I am not mistaken).

Herr Goose new incarnation — Herr Goose after revisitation for repairs…Click on the photo to make a close up and you will notice neck “feathers and the difference it makes with old fully decorated version.

: I sketched this detail from an old master’s painting found in an art book. Wanted to capture the two women together, and the angle of their heads (I actually didn’t do a very good job but there you are!)

____________________________________

NOTE: As I wrote this, “dream” talk, that is to say, nonsensical writings seemed to keep appearing in the middle of what I wrote. I seemed to find myself in another world every few minutes. I would write about that world, then “come to” and start writing about the subject below again as if nothing had happened. But when I reread the paragraph it made no earthly sense whatsoever, being an amalgam of two entirely different trains of thought. So a caveat: if some of what follows devolves into gibberish at any time, forgive me, and be patient. You can email me to alert me, if you wish, that would help. But otherwise, know that I will eventually come back more able to proofread and catch such idiocies…and fix them. For now though, you are on your own. (The reason for these brain blips, I think, may be, but may not, the fact that I took a very small amount of Zyprexa today in order to be able to read and concentrate. 2.5 mg 2X a week should not make me gain weight, according to Dr C, But we thought it might do some good, without doing the usual harm. So I agreed to try it out once more, just at the minimal level as a PRN. Well, I find that I am very sleepy, have been ever since I took the pill, except for when I took a walk and for about 1/2 hour afterwards…and I do think that I slip into dreamworld while awake, and literally dream while writing this. Hence the gibberish.

*********

I have put the statement I read to the CEO and various administrators etc of Middlesex hospital on Youtube if anyone is interested in hearing it read outloud. Do a search for “Psychiatric restraints and seclusion abuse” and you should be able to find it if this link doesn’t work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhZybDwMbzA (I realize that I read it without much feeling, but it is hard to do so accurately and also look up at camera, and read without losing my place. Anyhow, it might be worthwhile to check it out.

The newest sorta development in the “case” this week was that a lawyer from the hospital, or someone who told my advocate he was a Middlesex Hospital lawyer, asked Wiley R (who is behind me 100%) “what does Pam want, what can we do to have her drop the complaint or withdraw her complaint to the DOJ and Joint Commission?”

Now everyone I told this to almost to a one, and immediately said this meant, “We are willing to pay handsomely in order to buy a gag order from her” I had trouble digesting such crassness, but to a one, those to whom I related the words of this inquiry told me the lawyer was insinuating something about paying me off. I mean: money. I felt slimed, completely slimed. For a few days this was the sole topic of my conversation, but to make a long story short, after I had decided to ask for several sessions with the hospital psych unit staff, educational sessions with me, to teach them how better to deal with patients, and have them experience forced restraints themselves…and so forth, my brother and I met with WR my advocate from the Protection and Advocacy (for persons with disabilities and mental illness) Office, and he informed us that the lawyer really was offering nothing, not even an official apology. Clearly, if so, then my real desire, to do hands on, face to face work with the staff that had so tortured me, was going to be out of the question, utterly forbidden. So we just decided in practically the same words, to let them “swing” in the wind.

In point of fact, when WR said that the DOJ might bring them up “on charges” if it was warranted, I asked him why I didn’t do that myself. He looked at me, and then narrowed his vision looking at a point beyond me. “Hmm, let me ask around and I’ll see what we can do.” I hastened to assure him that it wasn’t malpractice I was after. I knew that I had no real case, even if the statute of limitations hadn’t just run out a week or a few weeks ago. After all, what lawyer is going to take me on one a contingency basis, and what jury would find for me in any event, seeing as how I did not die in their “care” nor suffer “grievous BODILY injury” which of course is all that counts…as usual. I am not sure what sort of case I would have in any sense of the word now at all…But as I told him, that is in his hands, and certainly is his bailiwick (and if not his than that of my lawyer-friend, Sharon Pope’s. If there are other “cases” to be made of any sort, I am more than game, I am ready and on alert to go and do whatever is needed in the pursuit of justice and reform of the Middlesex Hospital psychiatric system. It was really shameful, and despite the Public Health Department’s so called investigation, it was such a shameful joke, that despite WR’s impassioned plea to investigate MY case, and the psych unit in particular, they did no such thing. All they did was go back to spring 2011 (ie looked at the records of the entire hospital, or one of two representative records from most of the units, except for Psych so far as I could determine…) and do a random case study to look for general evidence of irregularities. Sure, they found some, and one case even involved the ER use of unnecessary or at least excessive use of restraints in a dually diagnosed young man…

But NOTHING was even looked at that had anything to do with what they did to me, or even the psych unit in particular. NOTHING was specific to my complaint, so I don’t know how they expected this evaluation to give them any sort of reasonable results. They may or may not have censured or sanctioned the hospital. I did not read the entire huge file of support the bill got over the years. But I got the drift and the worst punishment meted out for repeated violations seemed to me to be a whipping on the wrist with a flimp ramen. Period.

Yet I was punished by the psych unit staff time and time again.

I know, I know! I was loud, I was angry, I was impossible to “handle” — I know this. Partly this was par for the course for a Lyme disease flare up for me. But I think Lyme wasn’t all of it. Why else was I so irascible (aside from them giving me Abilify without the requisite Geodon…) if not in response to perceived and real threats from them? I am not generally irritable and snappy at Natchaug, and never was at Hartford Hospital in the 80s and 90s. ONLY at hospitals where the standards of care are coercion and control and abuse is the name of the game do I react with anger and hostility…I wonder why.

More to tell, more to say, but as I wrote in the first paragraph above, sleep is overwhelming my desire to do just about anything. I will try to get back to this asap.

Acceptance, Art and artwork, Brain, colored pencils, Eating, Hospital, Medication, Natchaug Hospital, Psychiatric Unit, Wisdom House

Hospital Artwork

March 26, 2012 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 5 Comments

Ogre Ate City — Me as the Ogre that Ate Manhattan

I did the last two of these at Natchaug Hospital this past winter, both of which may be obvious. The first, Under Attack from All Sides, was meant to express how I felt at the time, with the fingers pointing at me literally showing what the voices do, and the red high heel with a hand, strong, hefting that lethal looking spike — well those both belong to a certain someone I cannot name who wants me deader than dead and will do anything in her power to achieve it.

The second of the hospital pieces (I did others, but alas I gave them away and so never did have a photo of them to share…) is the last one posted here, the Ogre that Ate Manhattan, which is written partly in Spanish and partly in acronym. The message is KILL the Orgre that Ate Manhattan, but I figure you don’t need to understand that to enjoy the artwork…Not quite finished yet, but there is not a huge amount left to go…

Finally at the top is In her Hands, which is not done, though it may look it. This is a partly 3-D high relief piece, and partly a flat piece of acrylic painting. In truth a lot of it is optical illusion but not as a joke. The detail shows how her hands are painted onto the globe, not actually three dimentional at all; they just look 3-D because of how I painted them. I need to write more about more “important” things in my life, but for now this will have to do. (Addendum: I realized, days later, that I must have written the text of this very late at night, and possibly after I’d taken my Xyrem, the narcolepsy night time med. Why? Because a great deal of it was so badly spelled and some of it made no or little sense at all. I mostly do that sort of thing, dream talk, if you will, when I make the mistake of trying to write after I have taken my medication and get busy and forget that I am not “with it” entirely…so I am not aware when sense devolves into gibberish! Forgive me, anyway, if I seemed somehow sloppy if not wholly out of it!)

Pam W

Blog, Health, Mental Illness, Psychiatry, Reflection, Schizophrenia, Writing

Shock Treatment (ECT) in 2004

November 25, 2011 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 2 Comments

(Edited in 3/2012 . Note that all names have been changed back to their originals except for names of the people involved. Although in Divided Minds, we were forced by the publishers to disguise everyone, including the hospitals, here descriptions of people once changed to “protect them” have been undisguised. I write nothing but the truth as I remember it — I wrote a fair amount in my journals at the time and I referred back to my notes there in writing this — and I intend no libel in any event. In fact, I want to be as fair as possible and to bend over backwards in giving as much credit where it is due as possible.

Note, because many may have read this before, I want to

I hope this will be a chapter in BLACKLIGHT, my second memoir and a possible sequel as it were to DIVIDED MINDS.

The Ogre Has ECT: 2004

I am delivered like a piece of mail to the Hospital of St Raphael’s, on a stretcher, bound up in brown wool blankets like a padded envelope. It’s the only way the ambulance will transfer me between Norwalk Hospital and this one. The attendants disgorge me into a single room where de-cocooned, I climb down and sit on the bed. All my bags have been left at the nurses’ station for searching; this is standard procedure but I hope they don’t confiscate too much. An aide follows me in to take my BP and pulse, and bustles out, telling me someone will be back shortly. I sit quietly for a half an hour, listening to the constant complaint of the voices, which never leave me, sometimes entertaining me, most of the time ranting and carping and demanding. A thin, 30-something woman with curly blonde hair, residual acne scars that give her a kind of “I’ve suffered too” look of understanding, and rimless glasses knocks on the door-frame..

“May I come in?” she asks politely.

“I can’t stop you.” My usual. Don’t want to seem too obliging or cooperative at first.

“Well, I do need to take a history, but I can come back when you’re feeling more disposed…”

“Nah, might as well get it over with.” Then, nicer, I explain, “I was just being ornery on principle.”

“What principle is that?”

“If you’re ornery they won’t see you sweat.”

“Aah…”

“And they won’t expect you to be medication-compliant right off the bat.” I shrug my shoulders but grin, I want to think, devilishly.

“I see you have a sense of humor.”

“You should see me…”

“I’m sure we all will. A sense of humor is very healthy. But it worries me that you already plan not to take your meds.”

“I’ll only refuse the antipsychotic. Look at the blimp it’s turned me into.” I haul my extra-large tee-shirt away from my chest to demonstrate. Fatso, Lardass! Someone snipes. She doesn’t know it but you really believe you’re thin. Ha ha, you’re a house! Look at yourself! LOOK at yourself! Ha ha ha ha! The voices are telling the truth: I know the number of pounds I weigh is high, outrageously high for me, having been thin all my life, but I haven’t lost my self-image as a skinny shrimp, so I can’t get used to being what others see. The voices love to remind me how fat I really am. Only the mirror, or better, a photograph, reminds me of the honest to god truth, and I avoid those. I avert my eyes, or search the concrete for fossils, when approaching a glass door. Anything not to be shocked by what I’ve become. Pig! Glutton! It seems they don’t want to stop tonight…

I realize suddenly that I’ve lost track of the conversation.

“I don’t think they’ll allow you to do that for long.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t you remember what we were talking about? Were your voices distracting you?”

“Just thoughts, you know, plus some added insults.”

“You’ll have to take all your meds eventually.”

“Then they’ll have to switch me to a different pill, even if it’s less effective.”

She sucks the top of her pen and looked down at her clipboard. “So,” she starts the formal intake. “What brings you here to St Raphael’s?”

The voices break in there, again, confusing me. When I can get my bearings I tell her what made me transfer from Norwalk Hospital and why I opted for shock treatments. She takes a closer look at the mark of Cain I’ve burned into my forehead, writes something, then corrects me.

“We like to refer to them as ECT here. ‘Shock treatments’ brings to mind the terrible procedures of the past. These days you feel nothing, you just go to sleep and wake up gently. I know. I assist at the ECT clinic.

“Oh, I know, I know. I’ve had ECT before. I know what it’s like and it’s a snap. I asked for this transfer because I hope it will help again.”

We talk some more about why I’m here and what I’ve been through and the voices keep to a minimum so there’s not too much interference. She says she’s going to be my primary nurse and that she thinks we’ll work well together. I nod, thinking she’s pretty okay, for a nurse.

I’ve arrived after lunch, which is served at 11:30am so someone brings me a tray and I pick at it in my room. People come in and out of my room but only speak to me a second or two before they leave, a doctor does a cursory physical, someone takes me down the hall to weigh and measure me. I return to my room, too scared to do otherwise, constrained by the Rules of the voices. The first break in the afternoon is medications in the late afternoon, when someone tells me to line up in front of a little window near the nurse’s station. When it’s my turn, I look at the pills in my cup. Ugh, 20mg of Zyprexa, an increase, plus a host of other pills I can’t remember the names of. I hand the pill back to the med nurse. I’m not taking this, it makes me fat, I say. Give me Geodon. at least I don’t put on weight with Geodon.

“Sorry, Dr Corner has ordered this one. We can’t just go around changing doctor’s orders. You either take it or you refuse.”

I was in a quandary. I hadn’t even met the doctor and already I was fighting with her? Should I take it and argue with her later? But then I’ll eat my whole dinner tray and more. Better to start off with my principles intact, so she knows what I’ll take and what I won’t take. I hand the pill back. ”Sorry, I won’t take it.”

“If you decompensate further we will have to give you a shot, you know that, don’t you?”

“I’ll be fine.” I do a little dance step.

“Yeah, and look what you’ve done to your face. Come closer.”

Wondering what she wants, I lean in gingerly, fearing her touch, but she only takes a tongue depressor and smears some ointment on the big oozing sore.

“You’re done.Go eat some supper.”

At 4:30? That’s pretty early. I can’t cross the threshold of the dining room, the Rules the voices make forbid it. I cannot enter the milling crowd, suffering little electric shocks every time my body makes contact with another’s. Instead I retreat to my room. Sitting on the edge of my bed again, I wonder what to do. How can I get supper, or any meal, if the voices won’t let me go into the dining room?

Just then, the thin blonde nurse with the glasses, what’s her name, leans into my room. “Aren’t you hungry? There’s a tray for you waiting outside the dining room.”

“They made a rule I can’t eat with other people, and I can’t get in the dining room…So I can’t eat.” I read her name tag. “Prisca.”

She smiles and glances down at the tag on her chest. ”Oh, just call me Prissy, everyone else does. I hate it, but what can you do? What are you talking about? There’s no such rule. For now, I guess I’ll let you eat in your room, but that is against the rules and we’ll have to get you into the dining room eventually, whatever the voices tell you.

She brings in the tray: white bread with two slices of bologna and a slice of cheese tossed on top, a packet of mayonnaise, a small green salad in a separate bowl, with a plastic slip of French dressing, and a packaged Hostess brownie for dessert. I didn’t eat lunch, though they brought it in, so even this impoverished repast looks good to me and I eat everything, despite not having taking the hated Zyprexa. I curse myself for it, of course, and do some leg lifts and crunches for exercise afterwards. Ever since I’ve been refusing the drug, I have lost weight. Now I am down to 155 lbs from 170 the last time I weighed myself and I intend to get much thinner, since I started at 95 before medications over the years slowly put weight on me.

After supper the voices start in again, louder and louder, telling me how fat I am, how disgusting and terrible I am. I notice the clock hanging on the wall, which ticks audibly punctuating each sentence. The voices were carping, now they are threatening, and demanding…Finally, their all too familiar sequence segues into telling me I’m the most evil thing, and they don’t say person, on the planet. I’m the Ogre that ate Manhattan, I’m Satan, I’m a mass murderer, I killed Kennedy and deserve to die, die, die!

I’m wearing a heavy pair of clogs with wooden soles and almost before I can think about it, I know what to do. I heave one up at the clock, hitting it dead center. It crashes to the floor. Scrambling to grab a shard of the clear plastic cover before the staff comes running in, I lunge towards where I saw the largest piece fall, one with a long jagged point. I have my hand closed around it when someone tackles me from behind. He’s not very big and I can feel him struggling to keep me pinned. I almost succeed in stabbing myself, but he manages to engulf my hand with his two and press them closed against the flat sides of the shard.

Other people crowd into the room now and they pry the shard from me and grab my arms and legs so I’m completely immobilized. Then at a word murmured by one of the male aides who have materialized out of nowhere, they swing me up onto the bed, like pitching a sand bag onto a levee. I scream but they ignore me and strap my ankles and wrists into leather cuffs which have been rapidly attached to the bed frame: four point restraints.

I continue to scream and scream, but nobody pays attention. A nurse comes at me with a needle, saying it is Haldol and Ativan and proceeds to inject me. Although I am still crying that I want to die, that I’m Satan, the Ogre that ate Manhattan, that I killed Kennedy, I’m the evil one, the room then empties, except for a heavy-set café-au-lait sitter, who hollers louder than I do that her name is Caledonia. She pulls up a chair in the doorway, pulls out a cosmetics bag and proceeds to do her nails in spite of me.

I am told by Prissy that I scream most of the evening and keep the whole unit awake until given a sleeping pill and another shot. All I remember is restless twilight sleep coming at last, broken when a short sandy-haired woman, dressed in a sweater set and skirt, comes in and takes my pulse. I’m groggy with medication but she speaks to me nonetheless.

“I’m , Dr Corner, your doctor. You’ve had a bad night I see. Well, perhaps tomorrow we’ll get a chance to talk.”

“Get me out of these things!” I mumble angrily. I can’t sleep like this!”

“”Not yet. You’re not ready. But try your best to sleep now. We’ll re-evaluate things in the morning.”

Then she turns and is gone.

As I get to know her, I will like Dr Corner for her kindness, toughness and honesty, but I will hate her too for opposite reasons and it will be a long time before I know whether the liking or the hating or something else entirely wins out.

The first thing that makes me know ECT is going to be different at St Raphael’s than the to the ECT suite in wheelchairs, the way I’ve known since childhood all hospital patients must travel. We walk there, all of us, down interminable corridors, around several corners, through doors to more of the same. In short by the time we get there I have no idea where we are. I said it was a snap when I had it before, but now I feel like a prisoner going to the hangman, a “dead man walking.” Something about our going there in a group, under our own steam, makes it feel like punishment, like having to cut your own switch, not a medical procedure at all. This sets my nerves on edge. Then, when we finally get to the rooms clearly marked “ECT Suite,” instead of the doctor being ready for us so there’s no time to anticipate or fear what is ahead, we have to wait and wait and wait: we’re told the outpatients have to be “finished up” first. My apprehension grows. I’m used to getting to the ECT rooms and immediately climbing up on the table and getting it over with. Waiting and having time to think about it brings me close to tears.

Finally four in-patients are to be taken. I think the nurse calling us in senses I am too anxious to wait any longer, for she makes sure I’m with the first group. I clamber up on the table, and see Dr Corner looking down at me, smiling. I notice how white her teeth are and the little gap in her shirt across her chest as she bends over me, strapping something over my forehead as Prissy puts a needle into the heplock already in my arm. I feel my arms and legs quickly cuffed down by others in the team, a mask clamps down over my face and I’m told to breathe, breathe in deeply and I breathe and breathe and a chasm in hell opens and the demons reach out and scream as I plummet past into a terrible inky blackness…

I wake up a second later and immediately vomit into a kidney basin hastily held out by a nurse. “Why didn’t you do it?” I cry out, confused. “Why didn’t you do it, why did you made me wait? I can’t go through this again!”

Strangely, Dr Corner has disappeared, and so have Prissy and the nurses that had surrounded me just an instant before. Instead a plump, baby-faced older nurse smiles as she takes away the kidney basin and says, kindly, “You’ve been sleeping soundly for an hour. They did the treatment already and you’re waking up. How about trying to sit up now?” Slowly, I push myself to a sitting position and swing my legs over the edge of the table. No dizziness, no more nausea. I feel okay, except for a slight headache. So I slide off the table and ask where to go. Surely they won’t make me stay a long while this time. The nurse leads me to a wheelchair and asks an aide to take me back to the unit. Ah, a chair at last. At least I’m not expected to walk on my own after that ordeal.

ECT Takes place on Monday, Wednesday and Friday each week and though I vomit many times upon waking up, that is the least of it. What I dread most is the anesthesia, how I plunge from perfect alertness into the dark pit and feel like I wake a second later, sick and confused. I grow more and more afraid until, at the end of a series of 8 sessions, I refuse to go on to a second, even though my symptoms are still severe and Caledonia comes to sit with me one to one more often than not. Dr Corner tries to persuade me, but I am adamant, No more ECT. Then she threatens to have the next series court-ordered and to add insult to injury, she says she will force me to take Zyprexa as well, the drug I so hate. I explode.

“What! You f—ing can’t do that! I’m a free citizen, I’m not a danger to myself or anyone else.”

“In fact, I can do it, and I am going to do it, whether you like it or not. You need more ECT and unfortunately you refuse the only drug that is effective for you. Pam, look, how can you say you’re not a danger to yourself? Look at your forehead! That’s not the mark of I it’s just self-mutilation. Look at where you carved that mark into your hand when we weren’t watching you carefully enough. Isn’t that danger enough?”

“But I’m NOT going to kill myself. I don’t want to die. I just want to be disfigured so no one will want to be around me and they’ll stay safe and uncontaminated.”

Dr Corner’s eyes suddenly glitter and she has to blink a couple of times. “Well, I’m not going to let you continue to do what you want. Period.”

She was standing at the foot of my bed, one foot on a lower rung, casually holding a clipboard. But she moves closer to me, standing to one side, the clipboard clasped business-like across her chest. Gazing intently at me, she shakes her head in what appears to be sadness. I’m not sad, I know what I have to do. I don’t understand why she feels this is so terrible, but I know enough to remain quiet. Finally, she turns and quietly slips out of the room.

This alarms me; it shocks me. I know she means what she says. Dr Corner never lies. Worst of all, Dr O’Hayley, my outpatient psychiatrist, has signed off on it well, agreeing it is the only thing left to do, that already I’ve been in the hospital two months and little has changed, that the situation is desperate. The problem is that to get a court order I have to have a conservator who will agree to it. They appoint my twin sister and they discuss with her whether or not she’ll agree to forcing more ECT on me, in addition to Zyprexa. Despite fearing that I’ll hate her, she too is convinced there are no other options.

So Dr Corner wins and I endure eight more ECT sessions. Finally I’m discharged, much improved, so everyone says, a month later, promising, as a condition of my release, that I’ll continue to take Zyprexa. I do promise, even though my history clearly suggests that I will not. I’m also supposed to return once every two weeks for maintenance ECT treatments and Dr Corner threatens me with a police escort if I don’t comply. But this time I thumb my nose at her. So, she’s going to get both the Hartford and the New Haven police involved? She thinks they are going to bother to arrest me just to drive me down to the hospital for ECT, something they themselves probably consider barbaric? J’en doute fort. I doubt that big time! In fact, after a call to the Legal Rights Project, I learn that any conservatorship was dissolved the moment I was discharged from St Raphaels and that the doctor has no power over me at all now, zilch. So I write Dr Corner a nice apologetic letter, but sorry, doc, no more ECT for me. Ever.

Several months later I pour lighter fluid over my left leg and set it on fire. So much for the restorative powers of electroshock treatments.

Art and artwork, Drawing, Hospital, Psychiatric Unit, Trauma

Trauma: Exposure Therapy or Salt on Wound?

November 24, 2011 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 4 Comments

Caveat Lector or Warning to the Reader:

Although it is only 10:30pm, I seem to be falling into dreamtalk as I write this…I must be sleepier than I know, and half asleep or falling asleep every so often as I write. I say this because I came to a couple of times already, only to find a paragraph of weird gobbledygook on my post. If this happens again, and I do not recognize it until tomorrow, forgive me for sleeping and writing this with the consciousness of a bad dream only. I plan to proofread this entire thing tomorrow, just to vet what I did write.

The subject of this post says it all. I have been exposing myself to “the problem” ruthlessly for months now, and to no avail. I still suffer from the same symptoms of what would be PTSD (had not the good doctors redefined the word “trauma”) and I cannot in truth say that they are any better. Yes, I do remember a little bit of what happened, more than I did before (for those who do not understand the reference, see my Oct 7, 2011 post titled “Psychiatry and Authority: Restraints Update”). At least it can be recalled to me by other means and I can assent to it with some sense of Yes, I do remember that happening…But as to the tears and trembling and heart racing etc I see no improvement, and if no- improvement after these many months of self-treatment is less than to be expected, then I would say that not only has exposure therapy not helped me, it has made things worse. Rather than being literally therapy, it has only added “insult to injury” or as I put it, laid salt on the wound.

I do not know what to do about this. I find myself irritable, even irascible, especially with family members who I believe did not care enough to rescue me from the clutches of malignancy when they knew it was going on. Indeed, they in fact did not either care or do so. But that is the same old story and I can beat myself over the head with their inadequacies as family members, or I can simply wave them away as inadequate in such matters and go on…Ah, but how to go on? How do I continue to live despite these horrendous feelings and constant on-the-verge tears? Even Dr C seems at a loss, though I am not sure why. Surely she must have dealt with trauma — or “trauma-like situations” (since this wasn’t Katrina or the tsunami, so by definition it wasn’t trauma…) before now. Surely she ought to know what to do about this situation. Why then does she seem so helplessly unable to tell me what to do or to help me get over this? Why won’t she give me any advice or help? I can barely go on some days and yet she never offers anything but a mirror to myself, to what I might think or feel. I tell you, I can hear the professional technique in her voice sometimes, even as I fall for it.

Yet I really like her and I don’t know why. Is it because she does NOT order me around the way Dr O did? Is it because she is NOT authoritarian and directive the way Mary was? I dunno I just know that she listens to me and takes me seriously, does not consign every idea I have to the dustbin of delusion as Dr O (Mary) did.

Nevertheless, I still do not know what to do or how to get over this problem, and even though the OPA has decided in my favor and is sending my case on to the the Dept of Public Health for further action, even that doesn’t relieve me or help my anxiety and anguish abate. Why should it? What is done is done, and the consequences are as they are. My problem is how to go on, how to survive, how to deal with the result and get on with life. But so far I have not figured out how. Despite my talk of forgiveness and acceptance, I have not reached that state yet, not perfectly, not even adequately. If I had I would not be so torn apart. I believe in forgiveness as the healer of all, but when push comes to shove, I cannot seem to take my own advice any more than most other people can.

Yet I see that I resent so very much and it does not all have to do with the restraints issue. Some of it is much larger and concerns a general anger or resentment towards how certain people and family members have treated me over these past decades, issues that have not even yet been resolved. This — my anger — doesn’t endear me to anyone, and it solves nothing to go there, to decide and then rage against whoever did “this” to me.

I do go there, of course, or I wouldn’t be complaining of how they tortured me. I torture myself with these things. And I get irate and start sobbing and write angry emails that likely no one understands the genesis of, though I make the assumptions that they will be obvious to the person on the receiving end. Yet the grievances are real. It is just that it is useless to bring them up, not so much with others as for me. What good does it do to cry over what happened twenty or thirty years ago, even if it continues to happen now with the same person? I ought to have learned something over those intervening years and that is that the person is not going to change and that their injurious nature, their manner of hurting me is going to continue no matter what I do or say to them. Either they do not care or they simply have no idea or understanding of the impact of what they do or say (or do not do or say) has on me. But in the end it is I who must continue, must soldier on, and I should have learned to do so without their support or confidence.

I have, I have. It is just that a little improvement in things fooled me yet again into expecting real change, a real difference, a genuine affection and positive behavior towards me. Instead, in both cases, I get the same old, same old, just dressed up in affability and pretend benevolence until I cross them. In one case, it is egregious, and the reaction is fury, the greater the truth I point out, the more massive the indignation and rage. In the other case, the sheer oblivion to the hurt caused is cause for massive hurt itself. And both people continue to pang me today, either on purpose or because they cannot help it. In the one case, I believe it is in fact deliberate. In the other, perhaps not so, but from personal weakness. I can try to forgive the latter, but the former is just too galling and it behooves me to stay the hell away from that person…as that is the best I seem to be able to do to protect myself at this point.

Well, without respect to the above discussion, which was vague in the extreme because I do not believe I have real privacy here and you never know who might linger around to read, despite all that, I want to show you a new piece of art I did over the last two days. As art it is nothing, though it is the first time I have attempted a scene with multiple “characters” actively engaged in physical activity, so in that sense it was st least personally challenging. But the scene itself may be instructive, if horrifying to some people.

I am only going to post the initial sketch and the final version, plus some details from the drawing as it is good to get a closer look at parts of it that a monitor-size photo cannot give you. The original is at least 24″ by 17″ so it is reasonably large and has room for more details than my usual 11″ by 14″ drawings.

Just had to erase a paragraph of complete “dreamtalk” here, and fearing that I may descend to such incomprehensible language again, I will hereby cease and desist in the verbal production department and just upload the two photos. First the sketch and then the final colored pencil product. Both are very closely connected with the trauma that I wrote of at the outset and the drawing was part of my next attempt to “expose” it out of me. Whether it did or did not, I will find out on Jan 6 -9, 2012, when i go back to Wisdom House to write for the weekend. If I cannot do more than continue in this vein, then I will have an idea of how little I managed to help myself. But I am hopeful that this will finally prove to be a working solution — to draw what happened on paper but then to write about dealing with my anger and resentment and other feelings, which is really what is important at this point, not with the “mere” facts of what happened. If it is, I will be very proud of resolving at least part of the problem on my own.

First of all, I’ll post the sketch, as it will print out above the text as follows.

Restraints sketch — Who is Smiling at this Image of Torture?

A picture in graphite and later in colored pencil depicting with absolutely accuracy the sort of thing that a “take-down” by a hospital goon squad can entail before they force a person into four-point restraints. The nearly naked person in this depiction is, of course, me at a certain hospital…I am afraid that as I look at this version (correctable) the smile has turned into a grimace on the face of the white woman in the foreground. THat needs to be tweaked a bit…I also note that there are NO SHADOWS… But this is almost more of an illustration than a real drawing, so I will forgive that lapse. Next to come I hope will be a painting.

Here are some photos of details:

I realize that it looks like “I” am lying both on my back and on my stomach, but that is an illusion of the photo. In reality those are the backs of the legs, not the front.

Enough for now. I need to wake up and then I want to discuss the book, ANATOMY OF AN EPIDEMIC. Perhaps in my next post.

Acceptance, Art and artwork, Collage, Forgiveness, Health, Mental Illness, Psychiatric Unit, Recovery, Seclusion and Restraints

Photos from “Reflections on a Psychiatric Seclusion Room”

October 22, 2011 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 1 Comment

Reflections on Psychiatric Seclusion and Restraint Room — Reflection of Seclusion and Restraint : There is hope and freedom somewhere.

NOTE: this is a link to the finished collage, sans border of which I have no photo: https://wagblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/reflection-on-room-101-in-ward-d/

I now call this Reflections on Room 101 in The Ministry of Love, as a reference to Room 101 in the book “1984” by George Orwell. The place where recalcitrant prisoners faced torture with the things they feared most in the world.

I want to post today some photos from the progress I have made on my large collage of the restraint room (seclusion room) in a psychiatric unit. I must say that it gives me the shakes whenever I work on it, or at least whenever I look at it afterwards, and certainly when I photograph it. But I think that the fear and heart-racing palpitations are slightly diminished compared to this time a month ago. Possibly. That is what I am hoping for at any rate. The process of doing this is my attempt at “exposure therapy” I suppose, because I cannot live with what feels like PTSD any longer. (I know, I know, according to the New Rules, you cannot, by definition, have PTSD unless your life was mortally threatened; unless you experienced a tsunami or earthquake, mass murderer, or Hurricane Katrina, it does not count as “real trauma,” so say the doctors, and they should know, right? After all, they are the ones who defined the illness, and keep redefining it, and who made it up! Well, since they have the initials MD after their names, standing for Missed Diagnoses, I dunno if we can trust them on anything as important as deciding for us what it is that counts as traumatic. It seems to me that WE ought to be the ones telling THEM, no?) Be that as it may, let me change paragraphs and resume the discussion I left off so abruptly above.

Whatever the case, I do suffer with heart-racing fear and sweats and tremors that make it difficult even to take a clear photo of the collage after working on it but whether it is PTSD, I care not. All I care about is 1) communicating the experience, or at least what the rooms look like, and 2) purging myself of the residual fear.

I don’t want to go on any further with that. It truly does cause me great anxiety. And I prefer to work on the collage and on forgiving the specific people who did those things to me. It is likely that they had grown to hate me, forgetting that I was a troubled and profoundly ill person because I was also loud and frustrating and violent…(treated with violence didn’t make me any more docile, I might add). So things only escalated and escalated, when from the start their goal was to have a quiet unit that ran smoothly and had everyone get discharged in a matter of days, no questions asked. They did this by helping no one, by talking to no one, and by questioning no one. All they cared about was making sure that everyone stayed “safe” for as long as they were in their clutches. And that they would say so until they left. BUT I said I was working on forgiving them, and trying to see them as tired human beings, flawed but human. It does me no good to get all riled up again.

so I will leave it here, with the photos of the art. I will add only that I plan to redo the curtains, since as it is the blue competes with the sky. Also there will be a curtain rod, and such…But as you can see, it is still a work in progress!

Now you can get a better idea... — You see the mirror now, and the bed with the restraints? The garden below the window?

What the mirror outside sees in this room, locked from outside the inside... — No those are not “banjos” on the bed…Look closer. This is a psychiatric unit…

Mirror is real... — But so is everything it sees and reflects…

There is Freedom Out There — Behind the mirror, beyond the window, an open garden gate…

Hospital, Mental Health, Poetry, Psychiatric Unit, Seclusion and Restraints, Uncategorized

Video of Poem: “How to Read a Poem” plus Update

October 9, 2011 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 4 Comments

I am not sure what to think of this video. I certainly did not give permission for it to be used, nor did I approve of the final product. But I would welcome all opinions, should anyone wish to share. Please do not click on Like or Dislike buttons to give opinions. That only tells me you dislike my posting it, not the video itself…But maybe I am too sensitive.

I see that it will not insert directly here so I am placing the link to it here instead.

HOW TO READ A POEM: BEGINNER’S MANUAL

First, forget everything you have learned,

that poetry is difficult,

that it cannot be appreciated by the likes of you,

with your high school equivalency diploma

and steel-tipped boots,

your white collar misunderstandings.

Do not assume meanings hidden from you:

the best poems mean what they say and say it.

To read poetry requires only courage

enough to leap from the edge

and trust.

Treat a poem like dirt,

humus rich and heavy from the garden.

Later on it will become the fat tomatoes

and golden squash piled high upon your kitchen table.

Poetry demands surrender,

language saying what is true

doing holy things to the ordinary.

Read just one poem a day.

Someday a book of poems may open in your hands

like a daffodil offering its cup

to the sun.

When you can name five poets

without including Bob Dylan,

when you exceed your quota

and don’t even notice,

close this manual.

Congratulations.

You can now read poetry.

https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1759323499617

_______________________________________________________

As for the update, well, I sent most of the important material from which I derived the last blog post about the restraints episode to the Office of Protection and Advocacy and by the afternoon of that very same day, I got a call from them telling me that they were going to do an investigation! Not maybe, but yes. This was quite a surprise. I did not expect to hear from them so soon, much less so definitively. They do not take every case after all, but pick and choose from the many complaints that come their way. I have run into so many roadblocks that I was afraid that there too I would be shoved aside for other more important matters. But no, I think they too found this matter outrageous.

So I will keep you posted as to what happens. They want access to my chart, which I will give them, but I will also fax them the pages from my journal too, as I want them to have contradictory accounts to counter what the “official” record says. Though that says enough that is not quite legal by itself.

I have been cleaning my apartment for 2 days and it is still a wreck, but I need to frame all my artwork for a show I will be doing in early November, at OpenStudio Hartford and I cannot do anything until I have space in my apartment. It is getting better, at least there are “paths” to walk through! But there is still a lot to be done, and I am already very tired of cleaning. How on earth do I make such an atomic mess of things so often? So needless to say I cannot write much today, but I did want to let you know of this latest development.

TTFN or TaTa For Now

Amnesia, Art and artwork, Book, Collage, Memory, Natchaug Hospital, Psychiatric Unit, Seclusion and Restraints, Surrealism, Willimantic Connecticut

Artwork from Hospital

September 27, 2011 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 1 Comment

Open Window and Outside Mirror — If the window is open, what does the mirror outside see inside the room?

As may be obvious from the brown paper at the sides, this collage is very much unfinished, both as to content and as to medium. What I mean is, this is a kind of painting with paper, so I am so far dissatisfied with, say, the blue curtain with yellow lining, because it still looks rough and is not clearly a curtain blowing in the air coming through the open window. Ditto, the open window, which is not clearly even a window, except by virtue of my titling it such. But when I finish with it, I hope all these mysteries will be clearer, including the surreal placement of a hand mirror outside an upper story window! (I said it was surreal, didn’t I?) But what I cannot help is whether or not the viewer recognizes what it is that is on the bed. Some people simply do not know what restraints look like, and have variously interpreted them as guitars or snakes or what have you. To me, it is obvious. But I guess most people have not been in such a situation, and have no conception of what they might be looking at. Perhaps a more suggestive title would help?

Another important feature of the “painting” is the frosted glass window, with the mysterious something going on behind it, again left up to the interpretation of the viewer. If you understand that this is a restraints bed, and that the window is open…what could be going on outside the seclusion room? And why is the window open? Should the bed be empty? If you could see this very large collage – 5 feet by 5 feet — up close, you would see that the mirror overhangs a very detailed garden, with all the trappings of well designed backyard floribundance, so to speak. There is a little table and benches and other accoutrements, but also a path leading up to — a garden gate, which opens onto a field and freedom.

As I worked on this collage, I was in a state of acute anxiety — with tremors and shaking and palpitations I did not understand. And every night I would weep with bodily but not conscious memories of the recent brutalities I experienced at Manchester and Middlesex Hospitals. At Natchaug they understood how degrading and traumatizing such treatment had been, and indeed how re-traumatizing. Because indeed, I had already been traumatized many times before in the 80s and 90s and early to mid 2000’s by what I thought was SOP use of such measures. Instead, when those recent hospitals used them, cruelly and inappropriately, at a time when I knew their use was frowned upon and had been severely curtailed, it not only re-awakened the original trauma, but in a very real sense put me in emotional touch with it, the pain, the terror, the horrendous humiliation for the very first time.

I am not by any means over it. As I work on my memoir sequel, BLACKLIGHT, I am also slowly going over my hospital records with Dr Angela, aka Dr C, and it is a gut-wrenching task that leaves me drained and tremulous. But if it succeeds in returning my memories to me, all of them, I shall consider it worthwhile.

Abilify, Art and artwork, Geodon, Natchaug Hospital, Psychiatric Unit, Seclusion and Restraints, Willimantic Connecticut

Natchaug Hospital Stay #2 and Update with Picture

September 25, 2011 Phoebe Sparrow Wagner 3 Comments

Just wanted to update you on where I have been and how I am: I spent 6 weeks at Natchaug Hospital in Willimantic, Connecticut this past July and August and though I was discharged as much improved, I am still having a difficult time, both readjusting and well, simply having a hard time of it. Although in the hospital they did a little adjusting of meds, increasing both the Geodon and the Zoloft, I am not convinced that either one made much of a difference nor that it did less harm and more good on balance. In any event, Dr C and I (at my request) soon eliminated the 25mg increase in Zoloft, and are now dropping the 80mg increase in Geodon. She is concerned that the 240mg is making me very irritable and more upset and frantic rather than providing enough relief to make it worthwhile. Yes, the voices are much improved, but that could be the passage of time and perhaps due to a general decrease in paranoia, who knows? All I can say is that I cannot take this general state of overwrought irascibility, a tendency to snap at anyone who “looks at me crosseyed,” as my mother used to say.

Natchaug Hospital remains a very good place, the best I know, and just as I remembered, not least because they have a philosophy of kindness and compassion towards patients. In fact, they are excellent because they have a philosophy and are not simply flying by the seat of their pants, hiring whoever comes along needing a job, burned out or not. Not only is their philosophy based on compassion and not on controlling the patient, but they see no point in rules for the sake of rules. It is clear that if there is something in the unit set-up that doesn’t serve a particular patient, the Natchaug staff will bend it as far as they can and try to accommodate each patient’s particular needs. As I was frequently told, why make someone miserable when you can make them happy? It is difficult to be happy in a psychiatric unit, and many patients are miserable because of their illnesses, but not once did I ever see a staff member add to that misery willfully and certainly not to mine. (I frankly could not say this of two Connecticut area hospitals, one in Manchester and the other in Middletown.)

One thing that makes many patients happy at Natchaug, by the way, is that caffeinated coffee is provided at breakfast, a rare blessing in in-patient psychiatric settings. And since everything is served cafeteria style, so you can have all you want.

They used to provide hot decaf coffee on the unit itself, which was a treat. Because one very ill patient tossed a cup of coffee at a staff member, however, and she was injured, and because for some reason they decided that that patient could not be restricted individually from having hot coffee, now no one is permitted hot drinks on the unit at all. Yet, I suspect that even he would have not thought it unfair to be kept from the coffee pot! I know that in other hospitals I have had restrictions placed on me that others have not, and no one thought it wrong or unfair to me…Anyhow, I dunno what to think, but it was their policy, a misguided one, perhaps, but who am I to say? I know everyone went nuts for a while about having to drink lukewarm “swill.” Finally, though, the patients simply gave up on the “coffee” machine and did without. Anyhow, I have to admit that when I first saw the hot coffee machine, I couldn’t believe it, not because I was thrilled — though I was — but because I saw an “accident”or worse already in the making…

Note: one of the few hard and fast rules at Natchaug is one they cannot change because they will lose accreditation: no smoking. Smoking is simply not allowed, not even on hospital grounds. While certain patients have tantrums about this and might cause an uproar from time to time in order to try to force the staff to allow them to use the courtyard to smoke “just one cigarette, just this once, please, I am absolutely desperate!” it is simply not possible. But people are allowed the patch and gum and every effort is made to help smokers quit. Even though some staff acknowledge that the policy is unfortunate, even unfair, nothing can be done about it.

I was not, however, comfortable for most of my stay there, and was paranoid a great deal of the time. Of course, I did not understand that the staff was aware of this, so when I began to come out of my delusions of persecution, it surprised me mightily to discover that they knew that paranoia was the reason for my hostility all along. Nevertheless, up to the very day I was discharged, I was hearing people talk about me up and down the hall and at the nurses’ station.

Well, that is all I am going to write for today because I am, as of a week ago, in the middle of writing my new memoir, and as the days progress I plan to put parts of it up here, for comments and for suggestions. Feel free to do both!

I will finish here with one of my latest drawings, which represents how I felt when I was restrained at Middlesex Hospital, both the time I described in a recent blog post, and the other(s) (for which I have amnesia) when Josephine told me I was more or less “out of control”…to which I can only respond: Violence begets violence, and perhaps if they had not perpetrated on me what they did, things might not have gotten out of hand, But then, that hospital is one that is guided by the Control for Control’s Sake philosophy and the nurses were bitter and angry people…Needlesstosay, they hated me if only because I refused to roll over and play dead, if not die.

Forthwith the picture.

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WAGblog: Dum Spiro Spero

Tag Archives: mental hospital

Art created at the Torture Chamber called the Institute of Living at Hartford Hospital

Body Bagged, 4-pointed, Secluded and Tortured — All in the name of Treatment?

“Lady Quixote” on Recovery from Hearing Voices

iPad Art, also Portrait and Poem: In Memoriam Howard M Spiro, MD

BUOYANT

Where Have All the Multiples Gone?

SISTERS OF NO MERCY

POEM IN WHICH I SPEAK FRANKLY, FORGIVE ME

GOMER: ER-speak for a troublesome, unwanted person in the emergency department, acronym for Get Out of My Emergency Room

Rachel

Art: Killer Nurse and Placid Seascape

A Mental Health Meeting of the Minds: Natchaug Hospital Administrators Get Gold Stars

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

by Emily Dickinson

Artist Trading Cards: Egg, Goose, Frog and more…

Mental Hospital: Psychiatric “Treatment” and Abuse II (Continued)

More Psychiatric Abuse in Mental Hospital and Emergency Room

Psychiatric Crisis Intervention: How to Avoid Restraints and Violence

“The Scream” plus an update…

Hospital Artwork

Shock Treatment (ECT) in 2004

The Ogre Has ECT: 2004

Trauma: Exposure Therapy or Salt on Wound?

Photos from “Reflections on a Psychiatric Seclusion Room”

Video of Poem: “How to Read a Poem” plus Update

HOW TO READ A POEM: BEGINNER’S MANUAL

Artwork from Hospital

Natchaug Hospital Stay #2 and Update with Picture

"While I breathe, I hope"

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BUOYANT

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POEM IN WHICH I SPEAK FRANKLY, FORGIVE ME

GOMER: ER-speak for a troublesome, unwanted person in the emergency department, acronym for Get Out of My Emergency Room

Rachel

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I’m Nobody! Who are you?

by Emily Dickinson

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The Ogre Has ECT: 2004

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HOW TO READ A POEM: BEGINNER’S MANUAL

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"While I breathe, I hope"