Vignettes Part II

Another excerpt from from hospital travels. Names and such have been changed. 

Gerald

Gerald laughed again, his perfect brown skin sliding easily over chiseled cheekbones. His laugh and winning Hollywood smile were infectious, and all packaged in a dapper frame. His entire demeanor spoke of a cool fall day in 1952, a radio softly playing jazz with a fedora lying on a nearby chair. 

Gerald's personality literally filled a room. The room just happened to be in my mind. 

I found myself seeking Gerald out. Maybe his mania was exciting, a perfect dance partner to my sluggish depression. The fluidity of speech that only made sense to him was like a Miles Davis riff. I wanted to lean back against my chair and let it wash back and forth, a breeze blowing through the window on that afternoon in '52.

I think Gerald is good for me. I think Gerald is my escape. 

The Snake

When I was 4 years old, I went to pre-school at the YMCA in town. I wore paisley dresses and cried when Momma and Dad came to take me home. I wanted to stay there with the books and toys and children all day. 

I don't remember a whole lot about pre-school. I remember that we went for walks sometimes. We'd get in a big line and a jump rope would be strung among us with rings attached. Each one of us would grab a ring and hold on. Off we'd go, parading down the street attached to a plastic ring that was attached to a jump rope, connecting the lot of us like a short, stout, brightly-colored snake. 

We were a snake of criers and complainers and stumblers and runners and a few laughing teachers. We were a snake of lives just beginning. We were a snake who will forever shed its skin, with new teachers laughing, and new children holding on. 

I eventually let go, and some new pre-schooler took my place, and on, and on...

I am attached to a new jump rope now. The plastic ring I hold onto is the promise of help from a hospital. My fellow walkers stumble and cry and laugh and complain. We pray that the walk ends successfully, and that we can pass the rings of a jump rope onto a new class of those who seek help. 

We are a snake that is just as stout and short and brightly-colored. We have the potential of a group of pre-schoolers, off to make our lives anew. 

Silent Screams

I've been thinking a lot about the recent shootings in our country. When things like this happen, the conversation almost always stumbles right into the gun control issue. Who should have them? Who shouldn't? Should we ban them? Should there be stricter laws? Should the second amendment be obliterated?

I find myself shaking my head and pointing, usually while silently screaming,  to the mental health issue in our country. People with mental illness are all silently, or not-so-silently, screaming for help. For understanding. For acknowledgement and treatment. 

If you walk into an ER with your leg hanging off, they put it back on. If you are diagnosed with a horrific growth somewhere in your body, you get chemo and radiation and other treatments to try and shrink or eliminate it. If you walk into an ER saying you are depressed, anxious, or suicidal, you wait. 

You wait hours to see a nurse. You wait a few more to see a medical doctor who listens to your heart and lungs, then walks away without a word. Then you wait a few more hours for a social worker to give you the third degree about "just how bad things are". You wait another few hours for them to call around and find a mental hospital that has space for you. Oh, and if you're not "bad enough", they send you home again. 

Now if you don't think you need hospital care, there are outpatient options. You can go to a day program where 3 social workers are trying to teach workshops and care for 30 patients, all while fighting with insurance companies for more time, fielding med questions they can't answer because the one prescriber that treats the entire program's worth of patients is at another facility 2 days a week; that facility doesn't have anyone, and it's the best we can do. 

You can go to a therapist, and you can go to a prescriber. Just remember that if a crisis arises or another clinician is sick, you'll get cancelled on or ignored if "you're not feeling too horrible" that day. 

I decided to really take the bull by the horns. My body doesn't respond at all to medication; they call it "paradoxical" or "treatment-resistant" mental illness. So off I trotted to a naturopathic nurse practioner. Don't worry, she's just as confounded as everyone else. This is my supplement regiment from 2 months ago:

This is last month's:

This is what I need to try this month:

And I'm lucky. I have Medicare because I'm on Disability, and they don't cover naturopathic care. So I have to self-pay. I'm lucky because I have a husband who says "Damn the cost; we have to get you better." I stopped counting the expense at $5000 out of pocket in the last 6 months. 

This is what my arm looks like today: 

I am one of "the lucky ones". I have people to help me, people who love me, and I have never been homicidal. 

If I am one of the lucky ones in the psych system, how dare we be surprised at what happens when people aren't getting   treatment?