The (very) short story:
I overdosed again. Bugger.
If you don’t want to know or may be triggered by the details, stop reading here.
The short story:
Last Saturday night I went out. Unfortunately the night didn’t go according to plan and ended in an unplanned trip to A+E with rather more of my medication in my system than there should have been. Spent rest of week at home with parents staying to keep me safe. Parents have now gone leaving me with intensive crisis team intervention to survive the bank holiday weekend. We shall see.
It’s still not too late to stop reading…
The long story:
Last Saturday night I went out, to a Ceilidh. This should have been a good thing. I wanted to enjoy myself, have fun, feel normal. The problem was that the venue was crowded and noisy, two things I find hard to cope with at the best of times. To cope with this I took diazepam. Unfortunately diazepam doesn’t go well with remembering or coordinating dance moves and I felt that I made a bit of a prat of myself to put it lightly. By the end of it, I had completely cut myself off from reality. I have no recollection of leaving the event or of how I got home. I remember feeling happy that nobody seemed to be in so I could carry out my plans in peace. I collected all the medication I could find (I’d stashed a reasonable amount) and went to my computer. Glass of water in one hand, tablets in other with occasional pauses to write my note. I recall being proud that I had a note, I didn’t write one last time.
Then there was a knock at the office door. Turns out my housemate wasn’t as out as I’d initially surmised. Instead she’d received a concerned text from someone I’d been at the ceilidh with to ask if I’d got home safely. Unfortunately it didn’t occur to me in time to hide what was going on and other friend was quickly summoned to transport us to A+E which was surprisingly quiet for a Saturday night.
I was pretty rapidly hooked up to a cardiac monitor as my pulse was dancing somewhere around 120-130. This was somewhat irritating as the warning alarm was triggered every time it topped 125. This meant I was beeping almost continuously. Time passed. Conversations were had but I can’t remember what they were. Friends didn’t leave me for which I’m very grateful. At some point in the early morning, I’m guessing around 3am, I was moved from A+E to CDU. Seemingly simultaneously my parents arrived. having been called by my housemate at an earlier point. Friends went home. By this point the drugs in my system had kicked in big time and my recollection is decidedly hazy. I hadn’t taken enough to knock me out and I was too nervous to let them send me to sleep. Everything seemed like a dream. The voice coming out of my mouth wasn’t mine, the movements of my hands weren’t a part of me. At some point they put a bag of fluids up, this helped things come back to reality somewhat.
A baby doctor determined I wasn’t an alcoholic (I think he was a medical student doing research). This was odd. It was late afternoon by the time my obs were anything like approaching normal and the on-call psych came to visit. It was immediately apparent that all she wanted to do was send me home so I shouted at her. I don’t think this helped much. In the end it was indeed decided to send me home, not least because I really needed to attend my ESA medical the next day (incidentally I passed this, the fact I’d been in hospital the day before and was still wearing my patient ID band may have helped my case somewhat).
My parents moved into my living room floor. I visited Complex Cases and spoke to people on a daily basis but nobody seemed to listen, nothing was being done. On Thursday the Home Treatment (crisis) team were finally involved. We have a plan. It’s a risky plan but a plan nonetheless. The plan is I stay at large in the community. I am a real risk to myself at the moment. There’s no denying that. I have multiple plans in place which could be acted on should the need present. However, the benefits of staying home may outweigh these risks. The HTT are going to visit daily and I have their phone number (as if I’d use it). So we shall have to see.
Right now though I feel just fine. The plans are there if and when I need them and in the mean time I have my space back.