Confession Time

I guess it's time to confess why my psychiatrist put me in the mental ward again in April.  And if you only listened to the bare facts and not to the entire situation, you would probably agree she was right.
Because my liver was eating my sleeping pills, I was only sleeping about five hours every other night.  I was going to the pharmacy every two or three days to pick up new prescriptions that consisted of only two to four pills.  Her office faxed these to the pharmacy; I couldn't take them.  Once before she hadn't gotten the fax to the pharmacy before it closed, so that meant another night without sleep.  On April 28 I got home from my TMS therapy about mid-afternoon and found a crew of yard workers at my house.  They petrified me.  I couldn't turn into my driveway with all those strange people there.  Instead I drove to the pharmacy to wait for my prescriptions.  Around 4:30 the pharmacist told me to just go on home and he'd bring me the meds when the fax came in.  I went home, but the people were still there--five or six of them.  I knew they meant me no harm; it was obvious why they were there; but I could not make myself stop and go in my own house.  I started calling friends I knew who didn't work so I could go to their house.  The first one was getting her hair cut, the second said she was two minutes from my house and would be right there.  With her help, I was able to walk past the people into my kitchen.  Now I know I had a panic attack; I didn't recognize it as such at the time.   The pharmacy called later to let me know they'd never received my prescription.  Oddly enough, they called the next morning to tell me they finally received a fax cancelling all my prescriptions, even the ones for thyroid, depression, etc.  I have never figured that out and my doctor denies it happened.  But back to the wee hours of Friday morning.  It's 4:00 a.m. and I'm practically in a frenzy because I want to sleep.   It crosses my mind to take a whole bunch of aspirin, but I realize that's a bad idea.  I finally decide to go sleep in my car.  I would be foolish to deny there wasn't some suicidal ideation going on there, but the fact is our 100-year-old garage is too leaky, too many windows broken, too many boards termite-ridden to ever asphyxiate myself in that garage.  Just because I closed the door and left the motor running does not a suicide attempt make.  I compare it more to a person who superficially cuts herself--it eases the pressure of wanting to kill yourself.  You know you're not going to die from it.  My husband found me that morning around 8 and took me to my TMS appointment.   After the doctor heard "in the garage with the motor running",  I don't think she listened to another word or took any time to assess the situation.  She committed me.  As far as she was concerned, I was then no longer her problem.  The hospital said she sent no records and because she'd cancelled all my prescriptions, they weren't sure what to give me.  Neither she nor her office would return any phone calls.  Finally the doctor working the weekend shift decided to give me one-fourth of the amount of sleeping meds I'd been on before she cancelled them, but nothing else.  So I went cold turkey on all my other meds--outside meds are completely out of your control once you're in the mental ward.  On Monday I saw the regular hospital psychiatrist who listened to me and said he'd let me out as soon as my husband confirmed my story and could make an appointment with my psychiatrist to see me when I was released.  Dan was there within a couple of hours.  I'd been seeing my shrink pratically every day, so neither of us thought it would be any problem getting an appointment for the next day.  But now I was persona non grata.  She couldn't fit me in for eight days.
Hospital doc wanted to talk to her before releasing me; he said she wouldn't return calls, she said no calls were made.  I wouldn't know.  But I know Dan called, I called, I was next to the nurse reading her the extension for my shrink's office manager, I called her cell phone (yes, when I was in her good graces, she'd given me her personal number so I could get her any time) and suddenly no one was available.  Tuesday was a horrible roller coaster of  "you're getting out; oops, sorry, you can't be released yet" all day long.  I was alternately laughing and crying the entire day.  At 6:30 I decided to go to bed with a true romance paperback [see Post: Twice in Four Months?? for complete available reading selections].  Just as I'd reached the juicy part, a nurse came in and told me I was released and could leave as soon as Dan got there.  I called him--he was in the parking lot where'd he'd been waiting for the past five hours because he'd been on the same roller coaster as I had.  What a complete waste of time and money those last five days had been.  I went home with the clothes I'd come in on and seven sleeping pills.