When I was first in hospital I was in an open unit. On my second day I jumped over the back fence and went and stood in the park opposite V’s office. This also happened to be next to a police station and after a while they became suspicious and quizzed me. I confessed and was taken back. Ridiculously because I was a sectioned patient I was searched and thrown in a police van despite my compliance. 2 days later in my totally fucked up state of mind I "assaulted" a fellow patient by throwing a jug of water over her. i had my reasons, it wasn't unprovoked. An hour later 2 nurses came to my room and said I was being moved. I didn’t want to so I walked out of my room. From nowhere 2 police officers pounced on me and threw me into a wall, I banged my head hard and then they dragged me to the floor. They restrained me and cuffed me. I was in hysterics by this stage from the sheer shock of it. I will never forget this, it was very traumatic. From the floor I was dragged through the locked down unit and in to the back of the police van. I was moved to the secure psychiatric intensive care unit.
Looking back the PICU was a very good ward. Absolutely brilliant staff, I cannot rate them highly enough. I was a bugger though, I was a very angry person. I repeatedly smashed things up; windows, doors etc and was repeatedly in and out of restraint, seclusion and getting injections in my bum. Seclusion usually lasted a few hours but I did a couple of overnight stints the longest being 26 hours. Seclusion always consisted of the same sequence of events. At first I would be angry and shouted about the unfairness of it and I would bang my head against the wall and kick and hit things. Then I would become really upset and cry my eyes out. I absconded a few times too. I ran away whilst on section 17 leave. I went and got drunk with my uni friends until the police took me back. That was fun. Can you tell I didn’t take my detention seriously?
I had good relationships with quite a few of the
nurses here. But one will always stick in my mind. He was called A. A was
really funny, he could have done stand up but on the other hand he was
excellent to talk with. A always had time for me, he taught me how to play a
card game called speculate to accumulate (A.K.A gin rummy). He mostly beat me
but I always beat him at my game which was shit head. We played pool together
often as well, he always beat me at that too. Other times we would sit and smoke
together and talk or I would read him my poems. It’s quite strange I got on so well with
a male, but it was a really healthy and therapeutic relationship and I will
never forget him. Another relationship I had with a nurse was with K. It
wasn’t so healthy though and was a little along the lines of my relationship
with V my CPN. I craved her attention so much and loved it when me and her
watched DVDs together late at night and when she was caring towards me. If I had been there much longer I may have
fallen in love with her too, like I did with V.
There were bad times in the PICU, really bad
times where I seriously struggled to contain my emotions but there were good
times too. Times I look back to and smile about. It was an extremely nurturing
environment which is something I had craved for a long time. The staff that
worked there were amongst the nicest and most caring people I have ever come
across and I will probably struggle to come across a bunch of people like them
again. Sometimes when I feel crap I wish I could go back there and while i was on
the personality disorder unit I constantly wished I was back there. So that’s
basically my brief time spent on an open unit and then the PICU in a nutshell. If im honest I couldn’t think
of a better place to have spent that period of illness than in the PICU.
Part 2 will be about my time spent at the private hospital on the personality disorder unit.
Brokemind
x
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