An update, with progress

I apologize that it has been almost a week since my last post.  Some explanation is needed, but I just wasn't ready until now.  Shortly after I wrote this post, I drove with my husband to a fast food restaurant to drown my feelings in food.  On the way there, I realized that this was no way to go on living.  So I started driving to the hospital.  My husband took over driving since I was crying buckets, and it was snowing quite a bit.

I didn't know what I was expecting to happen at the hospital, I just knew that I needed help.  I am the type of person that if I don't do something when I decide to do it, it won't get done.  So I went to the emergency room at the local hospital at 8PM on the Monday night before Valentine's Day.

They placed me in triage, probably expecting me to talk it out and go home.  I insisted that I needed help.  They gave me a room, took vitals, put me in a gown and towel socks (what I nicknamed the odd, fuzzy slipper socks they asked me to wear), and had me talk to a nurse then a doctor.  The doctor was not a psychiatrist, so he called a crisis worker in to talk to me.  By the time the crisis worker arrived, I had told my entire story 4 times.  I tallied another with her. 

I was in the tricky position of considering suicide just enough to need help, but not considering it enough to get much serious attention or preference.  It just seemed like the rational alternative to me, but it wasn't something I considered myself being able to do and I had never made plans to do so.  So the crisis worker and I had a nice chat, and we agreed that I would need to be admitted in behavioral health in order to get the help I was expecting.

Then a nurse transported me by wheelchair, escorted by a security guard, to a secluded part of the hospital.  I said farewell to my husband and watched the door lock between us.  They gave me a room, and a nurse brought me a peanut butter sandwich that I had to fix with a spoon (no knives allowed in behavioral health) and a diet coke.  Then she brought in a cup.  I was counting on that to happen, so I had been holding my desire to go to the bathroom the entire 3 hours I had been at the hospital.  When I came out of the bathroom, another nurse came in to draw blood.  It was all I could do not to pass out.

I probably retold my story/situation/whatever you want to call it 10 more times before I finally saw a psychiatrist.  They told me in the ER that I would see him first thing in the morning, yet I didn't see him until almost 10AM.  I had an awkward breakfast in the TV room.  It was just like something out of the movie "It's Kind of a Funny Story".

The psychiatrist's office was disturbing.  It had a hunting theme wallpaper, a faux deer mount on the wall, as well as a quilt with photographs of the psychiatrist holding a gun and dead animals.  He looked like an older Zach Galifianakis.  I still trusted him.  He told me I had Major Depressive Disorder.  He prescribed fluoxetine for me (generic prozac).  Then he recommended that I participate in the group activities, even though he knew I didn't feel like it.

I started crying.  I was not comfortable there.  I was just depressed.  I didn't need to be wearing hospital gowns to breakfast and using a plastic spoon to spread peanut butter on bread.  I missed my husband.  It was Valentine's Day.  I was tired because I couldn't sleep in a room with a night light I can't turn off and a security camera pointed at my bed.  I was afraid nurses would keep asking me to talk about my problems every five minutes.  I had gotten help, and I needed to be at home.

So he discharged me.  Mr. Crowe & I filled my prescription and attempted to have a semi-normal Valentine's Day.  The next day was rough, but I pulled through.  The day after that was amazing.  I decided that if the rest of my days felt like Thursday, getting meds was the best decision of my life.  Since then, I have had trouble sleeping but my spirit is much higher.  I have more energy, and I have resumed working out and marathon training.  I saw my counselor today.  I will blog more about her later.

So right now I am trying to take one day at a time, appreciate myself and my life, and acknowledge the areas of my life that I can control and can't control.  There are some things I can do to improve my future, and other things I just have to learn to accept.  I'm so thrilled to be able to take this blog forward with a positive note now.