It’s been a little over a year since the string of incidents happened that led to me being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. When I look back at the day that reality, as I knew it, began to unravel it seems normal enough for what my life had turned into.
I was feeling trapped in what had become my life. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t sit still and I couldn’t seem to get through a day without some sort of drama. Jeff and I had been arguing for months over nothing and over everything big, small and non-existent. I could sense that my life was spiraling out of control and I felt I had no ability or desire to stop it.
The death of my precious grandson in 2004 seemed to be the beginning of this terrible time. Sweet Baby Isaiah chose July 19 of 2004 to make his entrance into the world. He was an incredibly beautiful baby. His face was angelic with perfectly shaped little lips and his head was covered with a halo of black curls.
As we would soon learn he was only given to us for a short time. Isaiah had become very sick shortly after his arrival. He had contracted herpes after birth. Herpes can be deadly to babies. After feeding tubes, anti-virals and continual tears, Isaiah died in the arms of his family the day he turned 3 months old.
His little white coffin was filled with letters, tiny trinkets and stuffed animals. They surrounded the small emaciated body of our Isaiah, our angel. I think that I realized the finality of his passing into the arms of his Creator as I stood and watched my husband scoop shovel-full after shovel-full of freshly turned earth into the infant sized open gravesite. He didn’t stop until the soil was returned to its original place and our Isaiah was one with the earth.
Isaiah’s death was just the beginning. Two years later Josiah was born three months early. He was tiny, weighing only 3 pounds. He was 15 inches long and not expected to live. Two weeks after Josiah was born my mom was killed by the doctor that my father had taken her to for what should have been a simple procedure.
I got that phone call at 4 A.M. July 3, 2006. Within hours I was on a plane to be with my dad, help arrange my mother’s final goodbye, and help my dad as he continued to build the home that my parents had broken ground on the week mom died. For the next 14 months I was In Texas almost every month for at least a week at a time. I needed to be with my dad and he needed to be with me. We had work to do. We had to finish my mother’s house.
Then in September of 2007 , fourteen months after my mom’s death, my dad died. Within three years there had been three deaths and the possibility of another. It seemed that there was no time to grieve, no time to come to terms with each of these devastating situations. One hit right after another and there was more to come.
In April 2008 Baby Diva, Anna-Grace, was born at 2 lbs and was 14 inches long. Once again we had a grandchild born three months early and once again doctors prepared us for her death. Like Josiah, Anna-Grace proved them wrong. Baby Diva is thriving.
These are the major events that we had dealt with for four years. One tragedy after another visited out family. For me it proved to be too much. I craved release from my life. I wanted to be free of responsibility and I wanted to run from the devastation that had rocked my world. My relationship with my husband began to disintegrate. My relationship with my kids grew more distant. My parents were gone. My foundation was gone. I felt like a kite that had the string cut and I was floating over a world that was not mine.
Although I couldn’t know it at the time my life was about to change. It was June 4, 2008. As usual Jeff and I had been arguing all day. I was tired. I didn’t want to live, but I didn’t want to die. I just wanted it all to stop. I wanted to get off of the merry-go-round so I could breathe, so that I could rest, so that I could just be.
About a year before I had found out, quite by accident, that the cold steel of a razor blade carefully slid across my arms would bring a wave of relief, a rush of peace. The crimson threads running from the opened skin made me realize I was still living and that I could still feel.
That day was no different in the beginning. The fight continued. I was tired. I was overwhelmed. Jeff and I were arguing, we had been all day. I couldn’t get it to stop. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t go on listening to how much of a failure I was. I needed time, time to sleep, time to breathe and time to recover. I reached for my Ambien. It would help me recover. It would drown out the noise in my head. It would give me relief from the fighting. I wouldn’t be able to hear Jeff. I could sleep, I could be still, I could just be.
I knew from discussions with the doctors after the death of Isaiah, when I was so worried about my daughter, that it’s incredibly difficult to overdose on Ambien. Those conversations coupled with the fact that I needed a release led me to making a decision. I locked myself in the master bathroom. I took the four Ambien.
Ambien began to take hold of me about the time the scarlet droplets were falling from my arms. The release was immense. The peace was back and soon I would be asleep. The arguing would cease and I would be able to catch my breath.
The rest of what I remember from that night is in flashes. I’m not sure that all of them are real or if they were fragments of dreams brought on by my hallucinogenic savior. Then things get really hazy.
Someone was washing my arms. I wanted to sleep. Someone was walking me around. I wanted to sleep. The next vague memory is someone telling me that they were starting an IV. I remember telling a woman that I wasn’t trying to kill myself that I just wanted the noise to stop. I didn’t want to listen to the rants of my husband anymore that night, I wanted to sleep.
Then there was a person helping me change clothes. They let me sleep. They left me alone. I could breathe. The sunlight coming through the window that next morning woke me. I didn’t know where I was. My head was foggy. I took in my surroundings. I was on a small bed. There was a clock on the wall. It was like the ones they had in school. There was a window with bars on it. There was a door with a small window at the top. Then reality hit me. I was in the hospital, and in a part of the hospital that I didn’t want to be in.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what was on the other side of that door; I didn’t know what was going to happen. I got out of the bed, I was in hospital scrubs. It was 6:30 in the morning. I needed to get to a phone, I needed my husband. I didn’t know what to do. I waited in the small, sterile room for what seemed like an eternity before I tried to open the door. I didn’t know if the door would open. Maybe it was locked. I tugged on the handle and the door opened. I walked slowly out into the hall.
There was a nurse behind a window. There was a big open room with empty couches. A phone was on the wall. A sign above the phone said that phones were not turned on until 7 A.M. What the hell time was it? It felt like I had been awake for hours. I began to cry. Not just tears falling from the eyes crying, but whole body, shaking, convulsive crying. The nurse must have seen my breakdown and she handed me her phone to use.
I tried to see the buttons through my tear filled eyes and because of my shaking it took me several times to get Jeff’s phone number right. It rang and rang and rang before he answered. “Hello?”
“Why did you do this to me? You have to get me out of here, now!”
“Teri, calm down. We didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know what you had taken, there was blood everywhere and the kids were screaming for me to call 911. When I got to the hospital they wouldn’t let me see you. I couldn’t take you home.” Then Jeff began to cry. “They wouldn’t let me see you; they wouldn’t let me take you home.”
I began to plead with him to call my attorney, call someone, and do something to get me out. I knew the score though. We’d had foster children put in the hospital on psych holds. They’re three day holds. You don’t get out. I went back to my room and cried and cried until I could cry no more.
After a couple of hours I couldn’t stand being in that room any longer and I ventured out into the hallway. I looked around at the other patients and knew that this was somewhere that I didn’t want to be. One man walked over and asked what he could do for me. He too had on scrubs and a hospital bracelet. Then he was whisked away by a watchful nurse. I decided that it might be best if I went back to my room.
Eventually a social worker came in. She seemed nice enough, but I didn’t trust her or anything that came out of her mouth. She asked me to tell me what had happened. “We had been fighting all day and night. I wanted it to stop; I wanted it to be quiet. I wanted my husband to leave me alone.” I glanced over at the make-shift mirror they had on the wall above the sink and caught a glimpse of myself. I would be unrecognizable to anyone that knew me. My face was red and blotchy, my eyes were swollen nearly shut and my nose was scarlet from blowing it continually.
“Tell me what happened. Tell me what you took and why you took it.” I told her again that I taken 4 Ambien because I needed to rest, I needed it to stop. “Were you trying to kill yourself?”
“NO! If I had wanted to kill myself I would have. Four Ambien won’t do anything but give you a hangover.”
She asked if I remembered talking to anyone last night at the hospital. I remembered nothing. It was a complete blank.
She told me that the story I told her was consistent, in every detail, with what I had told the night before in the ER under the influence of the Ambien. No freaking shit! She also told me that she was going to try to expedite my release, but first I had to be interviewed by a psychiatrist, a nurse and another social worker before I could be let out.
She assured me that she would try to make it happen that day. And then she reminded me that I could be held for up to three days. She left and I curled up on the little cot-like bed and cried and cried some more. I wanted my husband, I wanted my family, I wanted my home. All of the things that I had been trying to escape were the things that I now wanted. My tears soaked the pillowcase and the sheet that I had pulled around my face.
Suddenly the door opened (don’t these people ever knock?) and the nurse walked in. “Teri, your husband is on the phone. Do you want to speak to him?” She looked at me like there might be some reason that I wouldn’t want to talk to him. I got out of the bed and followed her to the phone.
“Baby, are you ok?”
“Hell freaking no, I’m not ok! Get me out of here; please get me out of here. Did you call my attorney? Do anything, but get me out of here” I pleaded.
“Teri, I did call Jim. There’s nothing he can do if it’s a state hold without a hearing and that will take time. Don’t worry I’m coming down there to get you. They will let me have you, you’re my wife, and they cannot keep you from me.”
Evidently he didn’t watch “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest." Jeff’s the old-west kind of guy. Barge in, guns blazing and taking the damsel away from mustachioed villain, then ride away on a white horse into the sunset. Although this time it would be running for our lives to get to the silver Mercedes before security nabbed us using their super powers and encased us in huge web-like ropes before throwing us both into the psych ward.
“Jeff, you might want to be calm when you come here. They won’t let me leave with you.” About 20 minutes later he was at the nurses’ station and she let him in to see me. He grabbed me and held me as we both sobbed on the other’s shoulder. Our faces were wet; our clothes were wet and our noses were snotty.
We sat down on the prison issue bed and just cried. After a few minutes Jeff began to speak. “Teri, I never knew that they would keep you, I didn’t know what you had taken, and the kids were scared. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. If something had happened to you and I hadn’t called, the kids would have never forgiven me. I had to call; I didn’t know what else to do.”
I realized that Jeff had done what he had needed to do. I scared the entire house and I was more concerned with myself than I had been with them. He did the right thing. We just needed to concentrate on getting me out of there. The psychiatrist came by and looked at me like I was an idiot when he sarcastically said “You took four Ambien. What did you think that was going to do?”
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself; I only wanted to stop the fighting.”
“Well I could tell that you weren’t trying to kill yourself, it would have been a pretty lame try.” Great, I wondered what other words of wisdom Dr. Asshole had for me. “You don’t belong in here. The chart said we kept you for fear of domestic violence. We need to go through the formalities and we’ll try to have you out by late afternoon.”
I was seen by a nurse that signed me off after a few seconds. Then there was just one left to go and that was the dreaded social worker. Jeff and I sat in the room. I was leaning on his chest and he had his arms around me for most of the day. Ironically it was the most peaceful I had been in years. The hours passed and finally the social worker showed up late that afternoon.
“Mrs. Worley, I hear we have a problem.” I wanted to slap her, but that surely wouldn’t help any.
“I’m ok. I don’t belong in here.”
“I’m worried that you might try to harm yourself again. It’s my job to try to determine how likely that possibility is. Depending on my decision you could be out of here this afternoon or I could go to court to hold you for up to thirty days.”
“Oh holy hell! This lady’s gonna play hard ball,” I thought. Then I began to get angry, but I couldn’t let her see that, she’d fry me. She must have seen my expression change anyway and she changed her demeanor.
“I don’t think that there is any need to keep you here. I’ve gone over all of the reports and no one seems to think that there is a problem. They all agree that you should have never been kept here. I’m more skeptical since I’ve had patients tell me that they would be ok and then kill themselves the night I released them. You need to convince me that you’ll be ok.”
Damn, I thought I was out of the woods. Once again I explained the entire thing. Once again I explained that I never intended to kill myself. Once again I explained that I only wanted quiet.
“Ok”, she said “You can go, but you call your therapist before you leave and set up an appointment as soon as you can.” I didn’t hear anything else that she said. I was concentrating on getting out of that horrible place. So now I’m not really sure how to end this except to say thank God that that night happened. Thank God that I was finally diagnosed. And thank God the nurse got that creepy man away from me.
You know, it’s always a chance I take when I write and publish my writing as a blog for people to read. I’m always afraid that people will judge me harshly. I’m afraid that people will think that I’m a freaking loon. I’m not. I’m just a person that had an undiagnosed disorder that took all hell breaking loose to diagnose it.
I’m ok today, things are cool and most importantly the razor no longer has power over me. As for the gun, hell I was raised in Texas. Gun safety is taught along with the alphabet. I knew I could live with a hole in my ceiling but not with a hole in me. I’m ok. I can finally say that I’m ok.
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