An Admission

My admission to hospital was fairly standard. A visit to A&E. Triage within about 30 minutes. Doctor a couple of hours later. Bloods, CT scan. Results an hour later. Everything was clear but it was decided that I should wait to see a specialist. That happened about 7 hours later. This is not a post complaining about the NHS being on its knees. Although,at one point, the waiting room packed full and patients moaning and grumbling about how long they'd been there, asking when they would be seen etc, I really did feel like standing on my chair and shouting 'Anyone here vote Tory? It's your fault, not the staff's, that loads of us have been here for 9 hours,' but of course, I didn't.

But there were 'non-standard' things abour my admission to hospital too. They didn't just wheel me along to a ward, they sent me onwards, with Sputnik giving me a lift, to another hospital I hadn't heard of called St Elvis. A staff member in green scrubs showed me round. There was a TV lounge, a pool table, a nicely landscaped garden where, surprisingly, the patients were permitted to smoke, sometimes joined by the greenscrubs. My room had a bed and wardrobe. Nothing else. There was nowhere to hang my suit, not even the corner of the wardrobe which sloped off at 45 degrees. As we went round, I was introduced to staff and patients alike. All were pleasant but one or two had odd quirks, like an elderly lady called Uzma who shook my hand for too long saying 'Dave, nice to meet you....how nice to meet you....'

The decision to admit me was not based on the usual  examination with stethoscope, needle and blood pressure monitor. They did not palpate my abdomen or ask me to push against their hands. Instead, we sat, their three on one side of a large desk, Sputnik and I on the other, holding hands, like a weird job interview. And the questions were a bit odd too like 'What was your social experience like at school?' or 

'Your eyes seem to be flitting around the room. Can you see anything that, perhaps, the rest of us can't?'

'No. I'm just feeling a bit stressed out. I find it hard to remember to make eye contact when I'm nervous'

'To remember to?' he asked, quizzically

'Oh, it's like a sort of Asperger's thing, I think.'

He asked if I had an ASD diagnosis, and I said that I hadn't, but that I'd read a fair bit about it, and I identified with a lot of the markers. He nodded, before explaining that while this was not a formal diagnosis:

'High functioning autism. I'd bet my house on it' as the other two nodded and smiled kindly at me. But anyway, that's not what I was there for. I'd been stumbling around Sputnik's house, shouting, breaking glass, wittering away to her at 100 miles an hour, 5am having had no sleep, the subject of my sentence changing every few words without really breaking the flow:

'What was I saying again? Oh yeah. No I'm fine. I don't need to go to hospital. I feel fucking fantastic. I think that you would agree, my lady love, that I am in excellent spirits, am I not? Behaving unusually? I think not. I wish I felt like this all the time. This is me on normal mode. Sleep is for losers 'YOU HEAR THAT YOU BUNCH OF SAD FUCKERS! SLEEP IS FOR LOSERS! Ahahahahahahahaha. That's a good one. Has that mark on the wall always been there?'

But that was hours earlier, and now I didn't feel like that. Now I felt scared, nervous, pacing as they left me and Sputnik in the room to discuss my case' Worried that they would admit me. They did, explaining on their return, that I would benefit from a spell on the ward. I kissed Sputnik goodbye, and moved to a new room. I had no idea what to expect on the psych ward. Muzak and a huge Native American silently sweeping the floor? Who knows.

What's it all about? Resist trite memes.

This is my first blog post, prompted by a brief stay on a psych ward. This was not, however my first personal experience with mental health issues. I will write about things as and when they occur, week by week,but will gradually add backstory when nothing of much interest has happened.

But this post is to introduce the tone and likely content, a mixture of where I am on any week, and recollections about how I got to where I am. Coping with a mental health condition concurrently with a non-neurotypical personality is many things: difficult, frustrating, terrifying. But also edifying, rewarding, and, yes, laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Why do I say 'resist trite memes'? If you have ever visited a web forum or physical facility why has anything to do with mental health, you will surely have encountered the Trite Mental Health Meme, or TMHM. Well intended gems, they are, varying from the merely naive to the downright idiotically irrational. You know the sort of the I mean. Firstly, the image: a sunset, a beach, a view looking up through trees. Perhaps a stone circle at dawn. 

And then the text. Oh yes the words. 'Remember that every time you felt you couldn't go forward, you did go forward. Reflect on that.' Bollocks, actually, literally nonsense. Almost every time I've felt that I couldn't go forwards, guess what? I didn't. I went backwards. It's a great example of well-intended TMHM which is just obviously factually inaccurate. Or perhaps 'Being depressed doesn't show that you are weak. It shows that you are strong!' This is a whole subgenre of the TMHM in its own right. 

Now, while it is not particularly constructive to point out that depression probably actually is a weakness, neither is it very helpful to suggest that it is some sort of superpower. Finally, one of my favourites, which I only saw for the first time the other day: 'Don't forget how far you have come!' I was waiting in a room, scanning the walls of sort of interview room in a mental hospital, while five or six medical health professions discussed whether I needed some time on the psych ward. I did. For the first time in my life, I was admitted to a mental hospital when they came back in. The irony of the don't-forget-how-far-you've-come sentiment was not lost on me. 'Look how far gone you are?' would have been more apposite.

Of course, we need to put a positive spin on some aspects of mental health care. But well-meaning disingenuity, if that is not an oxymoron, is not helpful. Mental health problems may not always be a curse, but are they really ever the blessing some TMHMs suggest that they are? These conditions are illnesses, not superpowers. In fact, I rather suspect that if I claimed my psychosis gave me special powers, I would have been on the psych ward quite a bit longer.