Well today is my anniversary. Nope not a wedding, birthday, promotion or graduation anniversary. One year ago today I was taken by the police and unceremoniously dumped off at the psychiatric hospital. I tend to go nuts in the spring. This is the first June 1 in two years that I haven't been locked up. Anniversaries tend to make me look back on things and I started dwelling on all the awful memories of being locked up for three months. So I dug into my head trying to seek out any positive recollections of the experience and it suddenly dawned on me that you really do meet the most interesting folks in the nuthouse.
You would think that for obvious reasons the
nuthut would be a
desperate, frightening, sad, pathetic place...and it was, however, at times I laughed so hard I almost wet myself. As I alluded to in my previous post mental illness does have its humorous aspects and we mental folk do like to laugh at ourselves. So let me share the funny memories of my incarceration and introduce you to some of the folks that I did hard time with:
BRIAN: you always knew when Brian was coming in the room;
every time Brian came in or out of a doorway or entrance he said
fuuuuuuuuuuck really loud. I dunno must be an
OCD thing. Sure scared the heck out of the visitors.
JACKIE: Jackie was my
roommate. Jackie made me look normal and that is hard to do. She used to come into the room and look at herself in the mirror and laugh maniacally at her reflection. It was the most high pitched creepy laugh I have ever heard. She would do this for at least 45 minutes before she would go to sleep every night. She could definitely give the wicked witch of the east a run for her money. She also used to sit on the end of my bed in the middle of the night. When I would ask her why she was sitting on my bed she would do the laugh thing.
HILDA: Hilda is 72 years old. one night she went up to the nurses station and pointed to each of the 6 nurses one at a time and said you are an asshole and you are an asshole and you are an asshole and then to the last one she said and you, you KNOW you are an asshole. Hilda also out of the blue told me that her bra size is 38 Long...uh they were pretty long...oldness sucks.
LANA: Lana is diabetic and she also loves fruit and fruit juice. She was always stealing, begging and borrowing
every body's fruit and fruit juice or tomato juice from the dinner trays and snack carts. She would drink the stuff until she put herself into a diabetic stupor and then would be staggering around like a drunk. She would stash the stuff in her room and then go nuts with it.
DAVID: David was afraid of water...really afraid of water. Every 3 or 4 days when he got really stinky the staff would get together, surround him and drag him to the shower. They would strip him and throw him in the shower and try to hose him down. Almost without fail when he was wet and soapy he would elude their grasp and come streaking down the hall all lathered up and buck naked. He would be sliding and skidding all over the place with at least 3 or 4 staff members hot on his heels. Not bad as far as entertainment goes.
MIKE: Mike was the resident sleepwalker. If you heard piercing
shrieks in the middle of the night it was a pretty sure bet that Mike had wandered into some girl's room and was standing beside her bed staring at her.
SALLY: Sally was a doctor and an alcoholic. Sally must have been less crazy than the rest of us because she was usually allowed to go home on weekend passes. She used to come back on Sunday nights so drunk she could hardly stand up and then she would start telling us all these horror stories about all the ways doctors screw up and kill people. Half the people would refuse to take their
meds on Sunday nights because she would tell about all these lethal med mix up stories.
DR MURRAY (not his real name so he
doesn't sue me for slander even tho he can't sue me for slander
cuz this is a true story: Dr. Murray is the medical doctor for the psychiatric hospital. They sent him to see me because all of a sudden I can't see anything. I have perfect vision one day and they start me on a new med (
lamictal) and 2 days later I can't see a damn thing. Everything is blurry. So I tell him what is happening and he says "Heather I think you might need glasses" I may have been way crazy at the time and all but still I am like
WTF? So I say "hey doc two days ago I had perfect vision then I start a new med and now I can't see a thing". He says, "well Heather I was about your age when I first needed glasses. I will take you to my office and you can read the eye chart." Now try to keep in mind that I am supposed to be the crazy one here. I say, "
ummm doc, I can't read the
eye chart cuz I can't see a thing." and if you can believe it the
dumb ass says "well we will go to my office and read the
eye chart anyway." So we went to his office and I couldn't read the
eye chart. The psychiatrist took me off the med and my vision went back to perfect in 3 days. I wonder if it is only me that thinks this is hysterical?
HENRY: Henry was the best. He would sit there in group and mimic everything the facilitator said. You know like you do when you are a little kid to drive your siblings nuts...repeating back every single thing they say. They would say Henry please
don't disrupt the group like that and he would say Henry please don't disrupt the group like that. Then they would say Henry do you need to leave the group and he would say Henry do you need to leave the group. All us nuts would be having laughing fits over the facilitator trying to gain control of his group. Eventually the techs would come and drag Henry away.
BARB: Barb was the unit lesbian. Barb was
big time into shocking the newbies. As soon as a new woman came onto the unit she would walk up to her and look down her shirt and say wow you have great nipples or say I am a lesbian wanna play tonsil hockey. She also told the head psychiatrist that she does men once in a while if he wanted to go for it.
JEFF: Jeff was a pacer. He would pace up and down the hall of the unit for hours and hours on end. He would walk literally until he dropped. And wherever he dropped he stayed until he was ready to start pacing again. People were always having to walk over and around him. He wouldn't get up or move for anyone. It was pretty funny watching the staff trying to maneuver the med carts and meal carts around his sprawled out body.
MARY: Mary used to hide the
TV remote so that no one could change the
TV channel. Of course she would first put the
TV on the fishing channel....yep the fishing channel. No one could reach high enough to change the
TV channels because the
TV was high up on a bracket so no one could break it. 15 very bored people would be sitting around watching two old rednecks in a rowboat talking about bass and lures. You gotta give Mary credit she never let the men control the remote.
LOUISE: Louise was the pill
spitter. She used to get in the med lineup with the rest of us and then when they handed her her
meds she would pop them in her mouth and then turn around and start spitting them one at a time at all the people behind her in the line. She had good speed and distance. I am surprised she
didn't put out
some one's eye.
ME: okay I guess if I am spilling everyone
else's secrets I should tell one about me. I don't suppose anyone would believe that I was the perfect angel of the bunch? No?
Ok...I used the patient phone to call the police and tell them I was being held hostage against my will. I gave them the address of the psych hospital and told them they better hurry and come get me because my captors were drugging me and kept tying me down and locking me up in small rooms...not a lie by the way. The police actually came. Apparently they have to check things out if they get a call. So what happened? My captors locked me in a small room for the day. There is no justice for the mental.
...So there you go there are the positive aspects of being at the nuthouse for 3 months. Where else would you ever get a chance to meet such a cast of interesting characters. Never a dull moment...It's a crazy life!
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