Interlude: Life Goes On...

...but nothing much has changed. I'm back at work, and I still feel like a useless, worthless piece of crap.

At least I got to hear this lovely song by Yo La Tengo earlier...

Chapter 4: Boy, Interrupted

(Yeah, I know “Boy, Interrupted” is a shit chapter title, but it’s the best I can do at the moment. Suggestions are welcome.)

As I look around the ward, I’m starting to get a real “Cuckoo’s Nest/Girl, Interrupted” vibe. It feels like I’ve been dropped in the middle of a movie. The blonde girl must be the Angelina Jolie “free spirit”... the dude shuffling along with his eyes half-closed is ‘The Chief’... the guy with his forearms covered in tattoos is the trouble-maker/rebel, and the other 3 guys with tattooed arms are his cronies...

But it’s not a movie. These aren’t fictional characters; they’re real, damaged people. And somehow, by some mistake, I’ve been lumped in with them.

I turn to Victor: “I really don’t belong here.”
“Ahhh ... okay,” he replies. We continue the tour.

There’s a TV room – “TV’s not bloody workin’!” says Tattooed Guy #1, who I will now refer to as The Loudest Man In The World; the kitchen, where I can make myself a coffee or Milo (at pre-specified times – now is not one of those times); the therapy room (locked), which contains musical instruments, exercise balls and a too-large pool table jammed in on a weird angle to fit; and finally, Room 8, my bedroom.

It contains a chair, a set of drawers and the most uncomfortable looking bed I’ve ever seen, complete with vinyl-covered mattress. It seems that the cure for depression is to put the patient in the most depressing environment on earth.

I realise that my parents will have no idea where I am, so I ask if I can check my phone for messages and maybe give them a call. Victor seems okay with that, so I follow him back to the nurses’ station. He retrieves my phone for me, and as we wait for it to power up, I try to explain to Victor that there has been a mistake; I shouldn’t be here, I’m not like these people. On cue, The Loudest Man In The World comes and stands next to us at the counter. “Nurse!” he bellows. “Can I have my medicine before I hurt myself?”

Victor smiles at me sympathetically. I have a text message from my dad’s mobile, asking me to give them a call. Victor says I can’t use my phone; he’ll dial out from the nurses’ station and put it through to a phone on the wall out in the day room. He dials the number, and I hear him explain in his terrible English (sorry, but it’s true!) who he is and where he’s calling from, then he transfers through to the wall phone. It’s my mother.

“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” she says. “How are you?”

“Great!” I reply. “Hurry up, and GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

~ INTERMISSION ~

Just to break the tedium, I'm gonna link to another blogpost that I was made aware of yesterday (by one of the awesome commenters over at the messandnoise.com boards). It's by Melbourne comedian/writer Ben Pobjie, detailing his own experience with depression and all the shit that goes along with it.

http://benpobjie.blogspot.com/2011/05/crumple-zone.html

I hope I can one day write something half as insightful, eloquent and just-plain-great as this, without blatantly ripping it off.

EDIT: when I started this blog, I had intended to include a music clip in every post. Three posts in, and I've already screwed that up. I'm not gonna kill myself over it, though ... instead, I'll just add this beautifully depressing video from the BRILLIANT British band, Blueneck. Enjoy! Or don't...

Chapter 3: One Flew Over the Kookaburra's Nest

Throughout my heroic struggle with depression, whenever I’ve had to face a new hurdle or challenge there’s always been a nagging thought at the back of my mind: “Why don’t you just kill yourself?”

It’s obviously not the greatest thing to be thinking, but it's something I’ve accepted as part of who I am and have grown used to. It usually gets dismissed in a second.
“Hmmmm... gas bill due next week. Might have to kill myself.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Okay.”

As I felt myself becoming more and more numb during the last couple of weeks, these thoughts became more and more pervasive, and not so easily dismissed.

(“These new drugs don’t seem to be helping... you should probably kill yourself.”)
I’m pretty sure that I was spending every waking second wishing I was dead.

So... around 11am last Tuesday, August 16, I went into the bathroom at work and burst into tears. I thought about getting the retractable knife from my desk and opening up a wrist or two. I threw some water on my face, took some deep breaths and went back to my desk. Next thing I knew, I was hunched on the floor with an agonising pain in my chest, like someone was standing on my breastbone.

I couldn't breathe. My boss called an ambulance, they rushed me to Emergency, I was wired up to the ECG, etc. They were very good, asking me all the right questions...

"Do you know where you are?"
"Hospital."
"Have you ever had these pains before?"
"Yes, last December."
"What was the diagnosis then?"
"Stress-related, not cardiac or anything."
"Well, that's good. Are you currently under stress?"
"Yes and no..."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I have no real reason to be too stressed at all, but lately I've had an overwhelming urge to, uh... to kill myself."
"I see. And do you have a plan to do this?"
"Several."
"Hmmm. I might get someone from our Mental Health department to come talk to you."

As it turns out, constantly fantasising about your own death is NOT a particularly healthy state to be in.

After chatting with one of the Mental Health team, it was suggested I spend some time under observation "in hospital". I don't recall the term "psychiatric ward" ever being mentioned... and that's probably a good thing; I might not have agreed to it if it had. I just imagined I'd be spending a day or two in a hospital bed, playing with my fancy new phone and watching bad TV. Yeah, I was wrong.

After a few hours in Emergency, I was walked up to "the ward". Entry was through an 'airlock'-system of sliding doors, where one door had to be completely closed before the next one would open. The nurse accompanying me said it was to "stop escapees". I'm still not sure if she was joking or not.

The first person I met there was Victor, who would be my nurse for the day. And here is where I will change tense, just because I can.

Victor is Chinese. Victor’s English is really hard to understand. I hate myself for not being able to understand him... I’m sure that a better person than me would have no trouble at all.

Victor tells me to empty my pockets and hand over my wallet and phone... mobile phones are not allowed on the ward. He can’t tell me why, exactly. Nurse Maureen joins us, and explains that it’s a “privacy” issue, what with phone cameras and the Facebooks on the internets and everything. Fair enough.

Victor then takes me on a tour of the facilities; past the isolation room and the nurses’ station, through the “day room” – complete with dishevelled-looking inpatients asleep on couches – and out to the smokers’ courtyard.

“Do you smoke?” he asks.

“No.” I reply.

“Oh.” He seems disappointed.

By now, I’m beginning to think that this is not your everyday hospital ward. When a blonde Kim Clijsters lookalike floats past us in her dressing gown and slippers, flapping her arms and saying, “Oooooh, it’s someone from the other side!” my suspicions are confirmed.

Chapter 2: Basket Case

Do you have the time

To listen to me whine

About nothing and everything all at once?

I’m not a big Green Day fan, but it was sure nice of them to write a song about me.
“Sometimes I give myself the creeps” – check.
“Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me” – check.
“It all keeps adding up; I think I’m cracking up” – check and check.

The “am I just paranoid/stoned” line is no longer applicable, but it definitely fit when I lived in a share house with a bunch of unemployed, dope-smoking musicians in my 20’s. But that’s another story for another blog (as is the whole “lack of sex that’s getting me down” thing).

I'm not sure what the purpose of this blog is gonna be, exactly ... I just thought it might be good to get some of the thoughts/feelings/experiences that led to my recent psych-ward visit written down. Sorry if it rambles (it probably will) or gets self-indulgent (it definitely will)...

A little history: I was diagnosed with clinical depression about 15 years ago, when I was in my early 20’s (and living in a share house with pot-smoking musicians, coincidentally). My psychologist suspected I’d been suffering quite a bit longer than that ... I had my first serious thoughts of suicide in 1991 as I was completing Year 12 in high school (probably around the time I first heard Scatterbrain! Is that ironic? Alanis??).

After trying a few anti-depressants, I ended up on Efexor (venlafaxine) – which kept me “afloat” for around 12 years, I think. As a mood stabiliser, I found it (mostly) kept me from serious thoughts of self-harm, but it also made me feel “numb” in many ways. I wasn’t hating life, but I sure wasn’t loving it, either.

In late-June of this year, I had a pretty major depressive episode... the combination of winter, loneliness and self-loathing just seemed to overwhelm me. So a review of my medication was undertaken and I switched over to Lovan (fluoxetine), starting on a very low dosage (10mg) which was doubled after a week. My initial response was quite positive, although it really screwed up my sleep – I would find myself still awake at 3am with a random flow of sounds and images from what seemed like 12 different made-up movies running through my head simultaneously. But I found that I had renewed energy and attentiveness during the day, despite the lack of sleep, and the overall numb feeling seemed to be lifting.

As my system adjusted to the new meds and my sleeping patterns returned to normal, I think I started drifting back into the same state of “numbness” that I’d just been woken out of... but I wasn’t quick/aware enough to act upon that feeling before it got too much for me.

IN THE NEXT THRILLING INSTALLMENT:
Grantley visits the nuthouse.

Chapter 1: Scattered-brain

1991: a young GrantleyBuffalo hears Scatterbrain's "Don't Call Me Dude" for the first time...

An immediate connection is made. Stoopid lyrics, crazy riffs and general awseomeness - these things are right up Grantley's alley. 

Little does he know that 20 years later, he will be blogging about a deeper connection to the song, one line in particular...

(nor does he know he will be talking about himself in the third person, but I digress...)

"Today I leave the psycho ward 'cause my sentence did conclude
I killed a man with my bare hands because he called me dude..."

Okay, I didn't leave the ward "today", as such - it was last Friday - and I didn't kill anyone, BUT: I did spend three days in a psychiatric ward last week. It's not half as much fun as it sounds.

To be continued...

...maybe...