Discharged from the psych ward

I know I haven't posted for quite some time. For those who may have been worried about me, my apologies. I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital last Tuesday and was discharged this afternoon.

I feel better after having been in there, but I have mixed emotions about the way it was all handled. I'd made the decision that I was going to go inpatient. I'd planned on going in on last Wednesday around 2pm or so. Things didn't work out that way.

My shrink emailed me saying he wanted me to call him at home that night (Tuesday) and tell him that I was going inpatient voluntarily or he would start the EOD process. (For those not familiar, EOD stands for Emergency Order of Detention and is the last thing you want if you're a psych patient - it gets the courts involved.) So I called him at home and said I'd go voluntary. He talked to Hubby and I was whisked away to the hospital that very hour.

I then spent 1 very long boring week in there.

I thought they were going to adjust my meds, but nope. Not one iota of adjusting happened. They did, however, straighten out my sleep cycle. That's the only thing I can account for why I feel better. Now the trick is to see how long the change lasts. I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that the sailing stays smooth.

I know that it's up to me to make it last, but you know the old saying 'old habits die hard'. Well, it's easy to go to sleep when you're bored to tears in an unfamiliar hospital ward that shuts off the lights and makes you go to bed by 10pm. It's much harder when you're back at home in familiar surroundings and old routines with plenty to do and no one's shutting off the lights and making you go to bed but you.

There is one thing that is worse since I went in. I'm seeing things. Much more than I did before. I'm seeing bugs out of the corner of my eye and I'm feeling them crawling on my skin. It seems to happen in tandem. First I see them, then I feel them. Part of me knows they're not there, but part of me has to ask to make sure. I don't trust myself about them at all. I don't trust that I'm seeing them, yet I don't trust that I'm not seeing them. Does that make any sense at all?

I didn't tell any of the staff, though. I didn't want it jeopardizing my discharge. Since it's not putting me or anyone else in harm's way, then they can't keep me because of it. I know this. Yet I was still afraid they'd find a way to keep me hospitalized because of it. If I was still in danger, then yes, I would need to stay. But seeing bugs? No, that's simply annoying. Don't worry, I'll tell my shrink about it on Wednesday, if not him then my therapist and doctor on Thursday. I see all 3 this week.

I did find out that seeing walls and other things breathe is more common than I could have ever thought. Funny what you learn in there from the other patients, isn't it? You definitely find out you're not as unusual as you thought you were.

When I was discharged, I was so happy to be going home. But I'll tell you, when I walked through that door and they shut it behind me and all that was around me was open, it was very strange. No fences, no staff supervising me. Just me and Hubby and the world. I was free to do whatever I wanted, go wherever I wanted, and I didn't have to ask. It's amazing how quickly the human animal can acclimatize and adapt to a new environment. We may not always like the environment, but we get used to it very quickly.

What I need to do now is to integrate parts of my old environment with parts of the new one I experienced this past week. To that end, I have a new schedule now:
Get up 7am
Breakfast 7:30am
Meds 8:30am
Lunch 12pm
Dinner 5pm
Meds 8:30pm
Go to Bed 11pm

I know, I didn't make the bedtime, lol. It's a work in progress. :-)