I don’t remember much in the weeks after getting the forcible injection. It’s all a bit of a blur. My first memories are about a month later and people coming to visit me. I was still psychotic but it was slowly receding. I was on a heavy dose of olanzipine (an anti-psychotic medication). I was being hostile to some of my friends and family and just withdrawn with others. The ward I was in was a mixed gender ward and had beds for 12 “inmates”. This in reality meant usually 10 males and 2 females (including myself) but at one point there were 3 of us. In my opinion it is wrong to mix females and males when they are as ill and vulnerable as this. Most medical wards (although not all) are separated so why not psychiatric wards? I reckon it’s to do with money rather than the welfare of the patients. There were supposed to be separate toilets, showers and baths for each gender but this was not the case, the male shower room and toilet was broken and the female bath room was broken so there was only one of each so they were shared, which meant pee all over the floor in the bath room. The enamel on the bath had all worn away. The shower was in a state of disrepair and was more of a trickle than a shower with a disgusting floor. It could take a whole day of waiting to get a wash in either room.
The ward consisted of a day area, with an area for eating which was also used for art therapy which was for one hour a week. There was an area for watching TV and two very small “quiet rooms” (one was the designated smoking room) with glass walls so the nurses could see from their station what was going on. There were two corridors to each side where the bedrooms and and bathroom down one corridor and the shower room down the other. There was a very small garden but one was only allowed out once you were deemed safe and with a nurse maybe two. I found this very difficult as I wasn’t allowed outside for a long time and became very claustrophbic being contained in such a small space with so many people and no fresh air.
There were some very unwell people in the ward (obviously) some were quite improved and lucid but others were in various stages of psychosis. One in particular was very manic and was pronouncing his delusions and these fed my delusions. He was very helpful in that when I said I had a bit of a sore tooth he insisted that I say to the nurses and get taken to the dentist. I did this and it turned out I had two impacted wisdom teeth which may have been what had been causing my “sinusitis” headaches before I was admitted. I had to go under general anaesthetic to have these out.
The food was atrocious so I ate very little, especially because I now had delicate gums. But because I was on anti-psychotics I gained weight anyway. I usually missed breakfast because I was unable to get up in time because I was so sedated. I would have a small amount of soup and a yoghurt for lunch, something vile which I would poke at for tea and at pill time I would have some toast to try and soak up the medication a bit.
Pill time was an unpleasant affair. Two nurses would wheel out the medicine cabinet. Sometimes it was one of the few nice nurses, those times I would be ok. But there were several who thought it was ok to dispense the tablets into their hands instead of the little cups provided. I was very paranoid about germs and refused to take the tablets if they had done this and this made them very grumpy indeed. Even now I don’t think anyone would want to take tablets out of a relative strangers grubby hands, but maybe that’s just me?
Once a week everyone would see the consultant psychiatrist. I don’t really remember much of our short conversations but inevitibly I would leave crying. I don’t know why. She was unpleasant and patronizing and I found out later that I wasn’t very communicative, oh well.
The new consultant psychiatrist from my home area came to visit me at some point and she was very polite and understanding. I still didn’t really know what was going on at that point but it turns out she wanted me moved to a ward closer to home and where she was the consultant. Unfortunately the ward psychiatrist managed to stall this for a good six weeks.
In that time I was changed to a different drug rispiradone I think because the olanzipine wasn’t doing the trick. Once I was on this drug, every morning I would wake with a very sharp spasm in my calf muscles, it felt like they were going to snap it was very painful. It did however work for the psychosis. I became very depressed and anxious. My hands were raw from constanly washing them.
Then a new patient was admitted. He was probably about 50ish. He had long grey hair and a grey beard. He cornered me and said that he was going to kill me. I was terrified. He then said it again but this time in front of others. One of the other patients told the nurses. They did nothing about it. They managed to wheedle out of me that it had happened and said I should tell them if it happened again, I was terrified to say anything. I did tell my sister who came to visit , she was my named person (the person who is supposed to stand up for your wishes while you are not well). I eventually persuaded her to say something to the nurses and they said I was perfectly safe and that they would watch him 24 hours a day. That lasted about 12 hours and he cornered me again saying he was going to crucify me. I told the nurses and said I wanted a transfer to a different ward immediately because I didn’t feel safe. I was moved 3 terrifying days and nights later. He urinated in my room, luckily when I wasn’t there. So much for 24 hour observation and so much for locking our rooms when we weren’t there. I couldn’t go for meals because he would threaten me. It’s pretty hard to avoid someone in such a small ward.
Finally I was moved to the ward near my home and I was so relieved.
