inpatient

13 years ago…my last admission at South Street

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FarewellSSH

Photo credit: http://www.lhsc.on.ca

For me, PTSD is extremely linked to anniversaries of dates.  January into February is a difficult time, with the memories of my last extended hospital stay in 2005 and my family law trial in 2016.  I often have flashbacks, memories and symptoms, and then notice the date and realize what is triggering them.

My last admission to South Street was in early January 2005.  I was there for about 5 weeks, my longest admission at that facility.  I was transferred in early February to the Regional Mental Health Care facility, the former London Psychiatric Hospital, where I stayed until sometime in March.  Since then, I’ve largely been free from in-patient admissions.

In my mind, I can walk through the buildings at South Street, especially the main building.  The large stone steps which led to the main entrance.  The single stall washroom off the lobby where I cut myself on a number of occasions, with sharps I brought back inside from walks.   The smell of institutional brown paper towel, and the cheap, strong soap found in hospitals everywhere still brings me back to South Street.  The smell of adhesive first aid tape and band aids, bring back the rusty smell of blood harden on towels during long emergency room waits.

Past the lobby was a small gift shop on the right side of the hall.  I would go down there to browse sometimes or to buy a magazine.   Just past the shop was a cafeteria.  It was more of a snack bar, I suppose they had meals there, but at that time I rarely ate more than a muffin or rice krispie square.  Being in the hospital was an excuse for Ana to get away with restricting more, when nobody was watching me eat or expecting me to do so.  I remember walking through the line style cafeteria.  I’m not sure what I bought, maybe cookies.   A little further, past the first set of elevators was a Tim Hortons kiosk.  It was small and didn’t carry a full selection of items.  It was open longer hours than the cafeteria, which shut at the end of the office hour work day.  I remember it being more dimly lit in the evenings.  There was a second set of elevators, the only ones which went all the way to the 7th and 8th floor: psychiatry.   If you kept walking to the rear of the building, there was a door to the “patio” which was where people went to smoke.   It was also the place where psych patients who had off unit privileges but not full privileges to leave the property, went to get fresh air.   The hallway split into a Y shape at this point.  To the left was the admitting department.  You could walk down a long hallway and exit there as well.

That last time I was admitted, I was a patient on the 7th floor.   There was an orderly who sat at a desk at the entrance to the inpatient unit, which was to the left side of the Y.  The stem of the Y had offices and the right hand side of the Y had other departments, like occupational therapy, and a patient dining room.   The hall was carpeted.   The carpet was dirty, even though it was vacuumed daily.   Patients and visitors had to sign in at the desk.   As a patient, passes off the unit were awarded in increments.  Maybe a 15 minute pass, lead to 30 minutes, led to 4 hours and then to an overnight pass.  Smokers were given 15 minute breaks at intervals throughout the day.  Visiting hours ended at 8pm and at that time the orderly went home and the door to the unit was locked.  Patients returning after 8pm had to ring a bell which alerted the nurses to let us in.  I remember coming back after an evening home, or out with my ex-husband.  The hospital was quiet, the main floor abandoned with the exception of security at the main entrance.  The elevator ride was quiet, the halls semi darkened.  It was easy to believe the building was haunted.  I would be buzzed back onto the unit, check in with the nurses to get my evening medication and then get ready for bed.

The rooms all had reinforced glass windows, many of them had metal grills covering them.  Some of them opened a tiny crack and others did not.   The hallway seemed impossibly long, with the nursing station 3/4 of the way towards the far end.  For all intents and purposes, it wasn’t all that safe.  The nurses were quite far away from most of the patient rooms.   They didn’t search us when we came back from passes.  It was quite easy to smuggle in anything.   On a different admission, I had a roommate who used cocaine and cut herself in our shared washroom. Another time, a patient who was supposed to be recovering from an eating disorder continually smuggled in laxatives which she took by the handful.   A third patient, being tube fed and struggling with bulimia would order large amounts of food and then purge.

It wasn’t exactly a safe place.

I spent a lot of time sleeping, resting and talking to other patients.  I filed out my menus and looked forward to the muffins and cereal at breakfast.   I ordered peanut butter and jam sandwiches for lunch.  The vegetarian and vegan options for dinner were largely inedible.  Sometimes I went home for dinner, sometimes I just didn’t eat.  The meals arrived at 8am, 12pm and 5pm on trays, covered with burgundy or dark blue coloured domes to keep the food hot.   There was a fridge with cheap Colt Ginger ale cans (regular and diet).   Sometimes I brought cereal from home.  I often went for a walk to the Tim Horton’s down the road where I would order caramel coffee cake and black coffee.   They don’t make that cake anymore, but you could order extra caramel sauce drizzled over it.

I coloured and read books.  I waited, sometimes what seemed like endlessly, for the doctor to arrive.  Sometimes the doctors checked in with you ever week day.   Sometimes they didn’t appear for days.  They appeared at unpredictable intervals.  Much of the time they spoke to us in our rooms, even in ward rooms with 4 beds, affording us little privacy.   If we were lucky we might get 15 minutes to talk to the Dr.    That last admission I had a very kind doctor.  He spoke to me in a private room.  It wasn’t his office, just a room for meeting with patients.  He believed me.  He talked about referring me to the mood disorders program at the RMHC.  He didn’t think I was borderline.   Sometimes there would be medical students or nursing students.  I liked them because they were allowed longer to talk to us.  It was lonely and there was little actual treatment in the hospital, aside from medication and medication adjustments.  The medical students gave each patient a physical exam within 24 hours of being admitted.  Even when I was in and out of South Street, I got the check up every time.  In reality, these 1st year medical students were just using us to practice doing physical exams.  But I didn’t mind.  I liked the attention and the chance to speak to someone.  The days were often long, and even the nurses were busy, assigned to multiple patients each shift.

Sometimes, if I was having a rough night, my nurse would bring me into a small room attached to the nursing station.  We would talk about how I was doing.  Mainly I talked about the urges I had to self harm.  Even in the hospital I generally harmed myself on an almost daily basis.   Looking back it’s hard to see exactly how I was helped by these admissions.  Once I even ended up needing stitches, while I was admitted.  I cut myself in the ground floor washroom, then went up to the 7th floor to confess.  A different medical student, maybe a psychiatry resident stitched it for me in my room.

In the sad, lonely state of mind I was in, there was something about the ritual of having my cuts sutured, that comforted me deeply.  I think it was a moment of literal relief to have something FIXED.  The inner trauma I was struggling with was coming back to the surface with frightening intensity.  I was in a new relationship that had rapidly become all consuming, emotionally and then sexually abusive.  I felt trapped.  I felt numb, depressed and hypomanic, agitated and anxious all at once.  I was in a frantic state which was triggered by SSRIs and other antidepressants.  I wasn’t thinking clearly for over 4 years.  I was afraid all the time, and yet I felt invincible in a way.  I knew only peripherally that my impulsive self harm and suicide attempts were extremely dangerous.  I both wanted to die, and felt like I was not at risk from the self harm.  I felt torn, tangled and pulled down, like I was drowning in trauma and suicidal thoughts.  I felt like a mechanical robot, and a wind up toy spinning out of control.

When I look back at myself during those 4 years, I barely recognize any aspects of my true self.  I was changed, and not in a positive way.

I was so young.  I was 20-24 years old.   I felt like a child, colouring, whining for help, begging for someone to SEE me.  I didn’t feel truly SEEN by anyone at that time.  I think I’d felt invisible and misunderstood for so long, that I actually was disappearing, even to myself.  I felt like I’d aged decades in a few short months.  I felt like a child trapped in the body of an older person.   My health was poor, due to medication side effects, self harm, self starvation and lack of structure and routine.  I became more and more socially isolated.  I lost connection with the “normal” world and I became a full time psych patient.  I filled out and inhabited the role of a sick person.  So much so that I no longer realized I was playing a role.  It became all I knew of ME.  I lost myself.   I lost myself in more ways that I can express in words.  I wanted to be rescued.  With all my heart I wanted to be rescued, but I learned to carefully shut people out.  I was also being isolated by my abusive partner.

That last winter in South Street, I was so suicidal I couldn’t leave the hospital alone.  I was perpetually compelled by thoughts of throwing myself in front of traffic on the busy road near the hospital.  I didn’t trust myself to walk anymore.  I knew all the train tracks that criss crossed the  neighbourhood, and all the shops which sold sharps I could use to harm myself.  I was a dead person walking.  I was more than half dead, I had more than one foot out the door of life.  I had 95% given up.

But somehow that last doctor who admitted me, he didn’t see my case as hopeless.  He didn’t see me as someone who was just “trying to get attention” or “manipulate the system”   I think he realized that it was possible the medication was making me worse.  I think he realized, and actually believed me that my next suicide attempt would be a completion.  He quietly talked to me, and quietly sent the referral to the specialist.  I didn’t have much hope, but I sensed that things were different.  Instead of lying to get myself discharged, I stayed there until the bed became available on the mood disorder unit.

5 weeks later, I was off all anti-depressants and on a new mood stabilizer.  The mood disorder specialist retrieved my life from the purgatory and hell of anti-depressant side effects, including medication induced hypomania.

Less than a year later, I was pregnant with my first child.

I never had another extended hospital admission.

South Street has been demolished for years now.  I visited the site last summer to see for myself that it was gone.

But South Street haunts my memories.  The images are so vivid, but in the faded colours of a worn down, dirty building.  Those years were brightly intense simultaneously to being muted and grey.

I expect they will be with me always.  But 13 years ago, I never imagined I would even get out alive.

South Street.

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Photo credits to the London Health Sciences Centre website documenting the decommissioning and destruction of South Street Hospital.

I’ve been thinking about South Street.   It’s been completely demolished now, destroyed and decommissioned but it’s still alive in my memory.

I haven’t written many posts about being in the hospital since I started this blog almost a year ago now.  Those were first posts, the first thoughts on my mind which I wanted to share.

I think people who have never spent time on a psych ward often have a dark curiosity about what they might be like.  I find myself filled with the same morbid curiosity as I search through pictures of the abandoned South Street hospital online.  How can a place where I survived so much just be demolished?  On one hand I’m glad it is gone.  It was a horrible place!  On the other hand, I feel like it should have stood there forever as a monument to the suffering and the intensity I felt there.

What were days like as a patient at South Street?

The days varied slightly depending on which unit I was on.  There was something comforting about the meals being delivered on neatly organized trays.  In the morning you could select your choices for the following day, marking them off on a paper slip.  The selection for vegetarians was rather poor.  The food in general was awful, but they would bring me a peanut butter and jam sandwich for lunch.  I wrote in my request beside the offered choices.   In the morning there were little boxes of cereal and tiny muffins.  Breakfast was always my favourite meal.   For your first day or two, your meals are delivered directly to your room.  After that you were encouraged to eat with the other patients in a small dining room which was unlocked at meal times for this purpose. I never ate there.  I carried my tray carefully back to my room where I ate alone.  The meals arrived like clockwork at 8AM, 12PM and 5PM.  You could order ginger ale as a snack or a treat, it arrived in a paper bag with your name.   I used to order Colt diet ginger ale, but I’d use the edge of the can to hurt myself, I never drank the pop.   Dinner was the worst meal.  There were a selection of about 4 different vegan dinners that came in plastic trays, preheated.   I would peel the plastic wrap off and sample them, sometimes eating very little.   The arrival of the trays marked the passage of time through the day and the long hours after dinner stretched out, especially if you didn’t have a visitor.

Medication times were another way to tell the time.  At first my nurse would come to my room to give me the selection of pills (at one time I was taking more than 11 pills a day).  After settling in, patients reported to the nursing station at set times to receive their pills.  Each pill came in a tiny sealed plastic bag, labelled with my name and patient number (I still have it memorized!).  The nurse would check my wristband carefully against the name on the plastic bags.  Then the nurse would rip them open carefully and tip the pills out into a small paper cup or into my hand.  I would get another small cup with water and the nurse would watch me swallow the pills.  Night time medication was always greatly anticipated as it marked the end of the day and the time at which it was acceptable to go to sleep for the night.  Realistically, on high doses of anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic medication I often slept during the day as well.   Floating in between high levels of anxiety and thoughts of self harm and suicide, and drugged, sluggish, words slurred together medication induced slumber.

There were no cell phones at that time, difficult to imagine!  There was a Bell payphone at the end of the hall in the TV lounge area.  There was a black leather chair you could sit in while you were on a call.  There was another payphone halfway down the hall, at the edge between the Y and Middlesex portions of the 7th floor (older and comparatively newer parts of the wing).  Talking on the phone to friends and family members was one way to pass the time.  Some patients also sat in the TV room watching whatever was on. I rarely sat there, preferring to stay in my room or in the room of a co-patient I had befriended.

If you were upset, you could ask to speak one on one with your nurse.  There was a small room attached to the nursing station where we could sit.   Sometimes the nurses would speak to me in my room.   The psychiatrist would visit once every few days.  These visits were highly anticipated.  Sometimes I would wait around the floor for hours, figuring that my Dr might check in on me.   Visits from the psychiatrist meant changes in medication, changes in privilege levels, and often discharge from the hospital.  The doctor generally just spoke to me in my room, even when the room was shared with 1-3 other people.  The level of privacy on the psych ward was very low, unless you were lucky enough to be moved to a private room.

Private rooms were highly coveted.  On the psych ward private rooms had nothing to do with the insurance coverage you had and everything to do with privileges.   When I arrived on the 7th floor I was generally in a ward room, 4 beds separated with curtains.  I didn’t mind this as long as I had one of the two beds by the window rather than one of the two beds by the door.   Patients who just arrived on the unit were placed in the ward rooms closer to the nursing station.  Aggressive or self destructive patients were placed in these rooms.  If I stayed longer, I would often be allowed to move further down the hall, further from the nursing station and closer to the exit (both literally and symbolically).   I loved the single rooms which had their own washrooms.  All the rooms had these chain link grills over the windows, but some of them did open a crack.   There were also double rooms, some of which did not have washrooms.  There was a shared shower room.  It had space for 3 people to shower or bathe at the same time, but the showers were separated by curtains.   Rumors circulated that people had completed suicide in these shower rooms and all the patients believed them.  There was also a laundry room where longer staying patients could wash their clothes.

The best part of staying at South Street was that I was generally allowed to come and go for brief periods on my own.  Sometimes I was allowed only on hospital ground, in which case I would go down to the patio at the back of the building.  This was a place where smokers could smoke and psych patients who were not allowed to leave could get some fresh air.  I would go down there with fellow patients sometimes and it was almost like an outing.  Smokers looked forward to the scheduled times we were allowed to leave the unit.

Other times I was allowed to go for short walks around the neighbourhood.   I used to walk down to the river by the hospital.  I’d walk around the streets in the area.  Sometimes I’d walk to Tim Horton’s and buy a piece of caramel coffee cake.  There was a walking path along the river to a small waterfall.  I know we sometimes though of jumping into it.  There were ducks which could be fed if you ordered extra bread with your meal.  Sometimes I walked alone, sometimes with visitors and sometimes with other patients.   I made some friends at South Street.  A few of them I still stay in touch with today.

Ironically enough, many of the patients were allowed to basically come and go as they pleased.  At night the door was locked and you needed permission from your psychiatrist to have a pass home for the evening or overnight.  Sometimes I had accompanied passes which meant my boyfriend had to sign me in and out.  Other times he would just drop me at the front entrance.   Ironically, though I was often admitted to the hospital for self harm and suicidal thoughts or attempts, I was still allowed freedom to leave the floor unaccompanied.   In reality I could have harmed myself pretty much anytime I wanted, even when in the hospital.  Sometimes I did, but other times I didn’t.

I often wonder exactly what made the hospital safer than being at home.   I think it was the thought, or the hope, or the desperate idea that it was safer which kept bringing me back there.  I was almost hypomanic and highly impulsive about self harm while I was taking anti-depressants.  I felt unsafe, I thought I’d be safer in the hospital, admitted myself then realized I felt trapped.  I was generally a voluntary patient, so I soon discharged myself and the cycle began again.  I never really felt safe anywhere.

Sometimes the hospital was a comfort.  The routines, the quiet, the break from real life.

Sometimes the hospital was terrifying, like when one of my roommates was cutting and snorting cocaine in our shared washroom.  Leaving blood and white powder traces for me to find.   Like when a patient who dressed in black and openly worshiped Satan was restrained by multiple security guards and wheeled down the hall on a gurney screaming.   Like when an old man came up behind me in the hall and placed his hands around my neck, whispering that he would kill me.  Like the blood stains on the 7th floor carpet, from where a man had been seriously injured trying to escape.

There was  tenuous grasp on order there, and we all knew it.   Sometimes people think of the psych ward as being filled with crazy people.   But in reality, I was neither more nor less crazy than the other people there.  I wasn’t psychotic, like some of them were, but I was destructive and depressed.  Everyone was there because they weren’t safe.  Our reasons were different, but the result was the same.  We all lined up for our pills.  We all ate our meals off plastic trays.  Some of us were allowed real cutlery and others only plastic.   The lines were drawn in terms of privileges, delineating various levels of “crazy.”  But in the end we were all there together.  We were all psych patients.  I see myself as being no different from the others.

Even today, over a decade later, there is a part of me that still holds that identity.  The identity of being on a psych ward, of being hospitalized against my will.  It did change me and it did shape me.  But it no longer defines me.