Monthly Archives: March 2004

On the way UP

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Well, I was mucho relieved this morning when surprisingly, I did feel better. Depression is just funny that way i guess. A weird thing happened though when I was anxious and on the borderline of depression… my pallet for FOOD came back to normal and i ate haf of one of those frozen pizza’s that Caleb brought over. When I tried to eat pizza before I felt anxious, it tasted like it was smothered in hot sauce. But, caleb said it wasn’t hot. Now, all of a suden I start to feel better and the food that i was eating yesterday is no longer appealing. I did however eat a piece of steamed salmon at my dad’s. I am assuming because a regular fillet of salmon when cooked right is not VERY strong in taste.

I have therapy with the amazing Dr. C tomorrow at 1:00. I am going to tell her how I kind of dipped and then came back, but I also have to remember… this is LIFE, and everyone is subject to mood changes and stress ( most people don’t stress about the bread isle at the supermarket… but that’s not the point). I just watched myself to make sure I wasnt going to go downhill, and Today when I woke up I felt semi-normal. Caleb made me oatmeal and toast. and then throughout the day I started feeling better and better. I even got in a nap for about an hour before chris and the kids are picking me.

I want to write about Matrix ( the anti ssocial) cat, because he is really coming out of he shell. I told caleb today… it seems like he’s MY cat since he mainly comes to me, follows me around… etc. Caleb corrected me by saying “NO, He’s your human”….. how true.

So anyway,
I cant think of anything else vital…

Onward and upward,
Beth

Stuff

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Today is going to be fairly busy but laid back. I do feel a lot better than I did last night. Caleb actually set the alarm last night to wake up at 4:00 am so we could hang out on the porch and then go back to sleep. What a dork.

At 2:45, my counselor from NorthStar is coming to pick me up and I have an appointment there. Then she will drive me back, chris and the kids and I will stop at the pharmacy to fill one of my perscriptions. After that It’s dinner at dads and then putting the rugrats to bed. I miss them and they miss me. Zachary really wants me to make him a dream catcher. He used to have one. I know he wants another one just like it. I haven’t been to the craft store yet, so I hope he’s not too dissappointed.

Anyway, I am outta here to go watch tv and/or read until my social worker gets here. Yahoo.

Be good and be good at it
Beth

Gotta admit

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I slept all day. and I am feeling a srong bout of anxiety. I dont know if this is a trigger to go downhill or if it’ll just pass. I havent dealt with this situation yet. I think in two or three days, if it gets worse, I will contact my psychiatrist. At this point, I would call the feeling I am having anxiety, but there is a ledge between anxiety and depression. At least I know better now that the more depressed I feel, the more cognative distorted. like the battle I always think of “person” versus “property”. I understood perfectly why I am a person, however… depressoin and anxiety distort the mind and i start saying “but it oould have been my fault”, or ” I am not a person like the rest o you. I am not meant for this different world , far from the way I grew up. That was a different world but at least I knew the rules there… there are so many more people out here, and they aren’t my kind… That right there is a cognitive distortion.

and now I am going to go distort my mind in my bed.

Beth

Saving two lives

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I had said in a previous entry this week that I had two major things to talk about. They both involved suicide attempts made by two other patients.

When my roommate K arrived, she was almost in a catonic state. She did not respond to anything, and then i showed her our room and she climbed in her bed and for almost two days did nothing but sleep or stare upward. On K’s 3rd day as my roommate, I was taking an afternoon nap, and i suddenly sat straight up ( I usually wake up groggy). I went straight to the bathroom and the door was locked, so I said “K, are you in there? and got no response… so my instinct was to run to the nurse station. When the tech got down there and opened the door, she told me to run to nursing and get everyone… and all kinds of nurses started coming from every direction. What the tech told me as they were walking her limp body out of the bathroom was that she had tied a sheet around so tightly and even though the shower rod failed, she was then too weak to intie it and she was about to turn blue. The nurse on duty told me “60-90 seconds… and that would have been it”. I did not really feel like I “saved her life” but something wpke me up and then instinctually took me to the nurse station… K came out of her shell about two days later and started doing very well.


Throughout my stay I came to know another woman named C. We would sit in the smoking room in our “spot” all the time, and she had a tape player and we’d listen all the time. We had a lot of fun and serious talks, and hysterical moments in that room… but I digress. Because C could neither read nor write, I had been taking down some dictations forher to give to her doctor to kind of understand how she was perceiving and processing things. She had talked about suicide before, but I think everyone in the hospital talks about suicide half the time anyway. She had told e some different plans she had made for ending her life when she “got out” of the hospital ( which isn’t going to happen because the state took coustody of her and now sheis committed). Anyhow, the night before i was to leave, she asked me to take down a dictation for her. I of course said yes. This dictation was very different than all the rest, besides being psychotic, there were sections that were being referred to as the last will and testament, and what she wanted to be said at her funeral. She also was sayin g things like “the car goes to… an the whatever goes to so and so… Of all the dictations I had ever taken , this one had a different flavor… a definitive flavor.

Well, I knew she had a plastic bag in her room because several days earlier she told me she got it out of the laundry room to tie to her towel bar because the cleaning lady took her garbage… fair enough. She asked me if I would watch her stuff for a second while she grabbed something… so I said SURE. now… since she can’t read, all the pages of my dictations looked the same to her, so I snagged the one I had just taken from her ( 4 pages) . I waited until after we were supposed to be in our rooms, and then I snuck the back way to avoid her room, and went to the nurse station and handed the pages in to the tech there, I also told them for a fact that I knew sshe had a plastic bag in her room. Well, they searched her room and did not find it, but as a precaution, she had to sleep with her door open and get checked every ten minutes rather than every 45 like the rest of us.

Well, the tech on duty came into my room at about 3am. He told me that C wanted to talk to me… and on the way to the smoking room, the tech told me that while he was doing regular rounds, he passedby her room and she wasn’t in bed, so he knocked on her bathroom door, and sshe did not respond. He opened it… and C was on the floor with the plastic bag so tight around her neck that she was barey ( if at all) conscious. The tech told me he ripped the top off first and then undid the knot.. and it was sooo HOT in there. Somehow.. she survived through the panic stage and was going to really doing it.

Since the smoking room is open 3-4 am, I walked in there and said ” my presence was requested” and she said.. ” you took the papers didn’t you” and I told her yes… (I had never lied to her before so I wasnt going to start). and then she said… “when I came to your bedroom door and asked you if you had seen the papers and you siad no… I just want you to know you are a terrible liar” I chuckled a little, and so did she, and then i looked her in the eyes and asked her to forgive me because my moral obligation , and that even though i gave my word that I wouldnt tell anyone, I felt I had no choice.

She forgave me, and we talked for a long time. After that stunt, or a stunt like K pulled, tthe patient has to go on CVO ( meaning constant visual observation) they cant even sleep in ther room. She was scared to sleep in the main living area cause it felt so big, aso I asked her if we could pull the couches togethger like in a square thingand then I’d come out and sleep there for the rest of the night. Normally, a tech would not allow that, but in this case, and it being my last night there… he of course let me sleep with her out there.

I promised C that I would always stay her friend because she was saying that people come and go constantly and she has nothing consistant in her life… and I am proud to say I have called every day, we’ve been talking, and I told her… see? I told you when I said we’d be friends.. I meant it. My word is gold to me… what else do you have.

As for K, she discharged even before I did, and I dont know whathappened to her, but she was on some kind of happy pills so all was well???

I also wanted to write about my furnature and stuff, hwever writing about K and C really took a lot out of me. Both came within 60-90 seconds of their death… and to think that while i was there… they were the only two who attempted suicide.

The nurses and techs said I saved both of thir lives, but I think I was probably at the right place at the right time… or that i was driven by some force to intervene between the person and the staff.

and now… we present the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome.
I will write more tomorrow-ish

Be good and be good at it
Beth

Moving Day

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Well, I cant figure out how to thank Chris and caleb for going to the warehouse and getting all the furnature (including a 1500lb marble table) and then bring it all in here, and not only re-arranging it…but cleaning and vaccuming and caleb is even doing laundry. I discovered a few things about moving during this trip… I will let you in on them tomorrow. Tonight we are all worn out.

BGABGAI

Bethlehem (beth meaninh house, and Lehem meaning bread)

so, love,

The house of bread…

The Shopping Experience

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This morning around 11:am, Chris Came over to tell me that he HAD reserved a truck for tomorrow’s “official moving of stuff” day. All this time in the apartment and I have not had any of my furnature.

Chris had to be there to deal with the kids by 4, so him and I went to breakast together (in the building where I used to work before it was a different place). I ordered a side order of fruit because i really cant pallet much and if I can it’s vegetables, or SOME fruites. In the fruit bowl was pineapple, strawberies, canteloupe, and grapes.

I tried a piece of pineapple first and It tasted to me like i was eating a sliced lemon wedge, only more sour. I asked chris to tasteit, but he said it was just fine. I tried the strawberries, and by the texture I knew it was strawberries, but it tasted king of likke dirt… and once again, chris told me they tasted fine to him. The grapes I could kind of handle because even though they were a VERY strong grape taste, they were not offensive to my tongue. I had no problem whatsoever with the canteloupe.

After we ate, Chris and I went shopping to get some basic items that i know I can and will eat. Apples ( of course), honey nut cheerios, coke, apple juice, coliflower, broccoli, squash and zuchini, baby carrots, and tofu ( I am going to stir fry it till its firm and then add it to my veggies because i need protein one way or the other and tofu has no taste so I dont have to worry about the taste of it being too strong in the food). ( I have lost almost 35 pounds since the end of february when I went inpatient… that’s too much too fast.) I also got 2 6-packs of the “ensure” drink things that have a lot of vitamins and a lot of protein and since I am never hungry, I can use those as meals. Oh, and I also am tolerating nutra grain bars.

Since the move is tomorrow, I have to finish two rooms of the house, both which will be fairly easy since it’s just different piles of clothes. And tommorrow after the move, I will have a washer and dryer, so I can put everything dirty in the laundry room, and everything clean in the closet.

I wanted to note that my outing with chris was stress and anxiety free, and even now I feel peaceful. Maybe it’s the meds, maybe it’s my attitude changing… but whatever it is.. I’ll take it ( cause before i went to to the hospital, I would not be cought dead OR alive in a grocery store…) not cause of all the people, just all the choices of each thing…. i end up turning everything into abstract math… i think i need to focus on just “buying what i need and knowing where it is” while forcing myself NOT TO THINK TOO MUCH.

and now on the subject of thinking too much, I am going to end this entry, look up a new diary someone told me about and check it out, and then sit down and read. mmmm This is just awesome. 6 days out and Still going strong (last time I only made it 3 days).

“Onward and Upward” (my mom’s saying)

“Be good and be good at it” (my saying)
and also

“If you are going to drive drunk.. drive someone else’s car” (that one’s mine too…

sincerely,
Beth Suzanne


Doctors, kittens, and my “happy place”

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I did go to the psychologist today. Even though I have mostly full bottles of all the new scripts, some of the dosages have been changed so I am going through some of them and some of them slower. Anyhow, He gave me all new perscriptions anyway. Just what someone with major depressive diorder needs… two bottles of each kind of pills. Sometimes doctors can be a little dense, but he’s lucky that i am not feeling suicidal right now cause I have enough pills to kill a gorilla that might out of it’s cage at the zoo.

The kitten part is… the kitten keeps jumping all over everything while you ar trying to do stuff. I keep reminding that this is a time to be cherished, because he wont be a kitten very long and he’s cute. You only get to have the kitten for 9 months or so, and then for the next 15 years you have a cat… saying that over and over is what has kept me from killing the kitten cause he seems to have ADD. I can’t wait until he calms down in like two years and then just lies around looking like royalty.

The happy place is something I did in the hospital. It is a picture of a camfire that i would build with rocks all the way around, a beautiful fire, and logs to sit on and a fire poking stick. The therapist asked me I wasn’t in the picture. I told her it’s because I can look at the picture hanging on my wall when i feel in the mood of reminding my self to be grounded, earthly and real… I can gaze at that picture, I can feel the comfort almost as if I was there… closing my eyes, I poke at the fire and it is HOT. Sometimes i think of bonfires I was at during different hippie events… and knowing that I could not really live without fire, so I got the chiminea. I can make small wood fires, and go there and think, and just clear everything for just a little while. A cultivated and contained personal fire between any number of people.. it bonds you somehow. To me, the picture is a portal to that place when I need to deal with too much stress. To think calmly. I dont think this paragraph would ever end if I tried to explain what the fire does within my spirit. So I am going to stop myself before this becomes half a novel… I am a jew from long island, and we tawk… alot.

I am alone tonight an i am feeling.. I don’t know how I am feeling. hm. Not worried, or anxious.. well maybe a tad bit anxious because I am still having occasional nightmares. But my mind.. it is quiet, I am still me.. but with a new attitude as well as well as new meds. Amazing… 5 meds and none of them seem to block my creativity, yet I am focused. Some of the other pills I was on before I got diagnosed properly really made me into a zombie, who crumbled steadly into a pile of rubble.

I feel now on these new meds… if nothing else… freedom… I am no longer under the contol of anyone else. I am an adult and that has finally recognized by myself and those around me who have watched a suicidal beth go into the hospital, and saw a totaly different beth coming out. The new beth containing my spirit and vigor and all that good stuff. That is the base and the limbs of a tree starting to grow.

I am so excited… i can’t wait to see what comes next.

Be Good and be good at it
Beth

Facing ONE outing

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As I wrote late last night before I fell asleep, Yesterday was mentally exhausting. Today I plan to do some more reading, but that will have to be after I go to my ONE required appointment.. The Psychiatrist that will be managing my meds. I am sure that when he sees the list of medications and dosages, I will have to pick his jaw up from the ground. After that, I should end up with a few hundred perscriptions.

Caleb continued on the crusade to clean up my apartment in the Kitchen last night. It looks like I just moved in… and after we threw away everything in the fridge that was not good any more, the fridge became mysteriously empty. I need to get some more apples. It seems lately that the only things appealing to me are Hunny nut cheerios, apples, vegetables, and nutra grain bars. For some reason, a lot of other things… practicly most foods, seem unpalatable. It’s not like I dont WANT to eat other things, but for some reason… heavier foods seem to repel me.

In about half an hour, Caleb is going to take me to the Dr, and then I am coming straight home and sleeping for the next week and a half ( that might be a slight exaggeration). I am tired already, and i slept through half the morning.

I feel less anxious than the previous entry which I wrote last night.. and I am well on my way to the 99% peaceful feeling as compared to the anxiety of last night.

Well, sounds like a boring day huh ? that was EXACTLY what I was going for!!!

Onward and Upward,

Beth

Overstimulation

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I don’t realise that i bit off more than I can chew untill i get home and start feeling the anxiety catching up with me. driving chris back to plano took half an hour, then to therapy it was 20 minutes, then from there it was 45 minutes to the nursing home to see robert, and then an hour or so later i had to leave to drive another 45 minutes back to plano to pick up chris, then we picked up the kids together, and the whole family (carole, dad, chris, and the kids) had dinner together.

I realise something crutial… I have changed dramaticly, not just cause of meds, but my coping skills, I have changed a LOT, everyone else… really hasn’t (except my dad and carole who are totally laying back on me). But the decorum around the house was the same, carole screaming at my dad for not paying attention , and then for giving the dog some leftovers (she screams at him everry yime he does that… which is every night). With the four adults, there was so much cross conversation, so every time i would start to say something i would get cut off, and so i would just wait a while and try again, but i don’t think I ever got the chance… i kind of sat back and watched what seemed like everyone talking but no one listening. Actually, Kudos to Carole, I think she listens too. The kids got antsy with all the adult conversation, and i took them into the den to watch “power rangers” and nodded off a little with them in my arms.

They have been growing sugar crystals in a jar with dangling strings that chris put in there with mixed sugar water a few days ago. Tonight they finny opened the jar and there were some really pretty crystals of sugar (just what a 3 and 5 year old need half an hour before bed).

Caleb met me at my dads to take me home after the kids went to bed so chris could go back to his apartment, and caleb is taking me to the doctor toorrow. There wwere just a LOT of different hings going on today… I felt a little pang of anxiousness when i finally got to my room. I know i am not losing pace of my recovery, i am just reminding myself not to over-do it… it’s so easy to just do a bunch of stuff and then realise later you bit off more than you could chew…

Anyhow. I am going to sleep…

Be good and be good at it….
Beth

First Outings

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Today I am going to visit the amazing dr.C at 1pm, then I am going back to that nursing home to visit my friend robert there, and then i have to pick up chris and we will pick up the kids together. Caleb said he was gonna come over later (that was several hours ago) so I am sure he fell asleep. It’s no biggie.

It’s chilly outside. There have been many ambulance type sirens and such coming down my block for the last ten minutes or so. Matrix the cat is ‘hangin with me and the unnie kitten is asleep.

I read more of the new testament today. I got to 2corinthians… about the middle. I think i already answered praggie when she asked me what i was going to do when i finished the christian testament… well… uh.. probably read another book. I apologize to those who might have been misled to believe that I am interested in converting. I am a Jew, G-d made me a jew, and G-d’s presence around me (the holy spirit as it might be called) tells me that my life is as a Jew. And filled with that spirit of G-d I know my spiritual life is complete.

It’s been another baby step day. I cleaned the cat box, went out and got my mail, and yes, i put the soap and toothpaste and stuff back in the drawer when i was done with it. I think I am going to turn off the ceiling fan and go to sleep (again). Tomorrow is going to be a big day out for me, driving all around and stuff. I am looking forward to that. (Driving down the road in the diesel stick shift jetta). I hope i just dont fall asleep everywhere i end up getting to ( dont worry, i can’t fall asleep while driving, too much use of both ands and feet involved) but as soon as i get somewhere… my head might start to bob, and off i go.

Looks like i am going to miss both of my naps tomorrow. I will be fine. It will be lovely to just drive and absorb the colors and feel the peace and vitality.

“And the phantoms of the night, will fade into the past”
-Pippin

Be good and be good at it
Beth