Of psychiatry and other memories

Today I contributed my part to the immunization effort and traveled to help with the district clinic. This meant an earlier morning, a foggy drive and a morning spent filling syringes, injecting employees and filling out paperwork. Mostly it meant answering lots of questions. The afternoon was taken up in meetings.

I was listening to the news on my drive and the major news story on both sides of the border is a 26 yr. old from Dartmouth who apparently was found to be schizophrenic a few years ago who is being accused of murdering two Halifax gay men and a man across the border in New York, he was finally found attempting to cross into Mexico from Texas. I thought several things as the details unfolded. Oh those poor families of the victims, oh his poor parents and what they must be going through and then…this will sure be a set back for all those folks working in the field of mental health as there’s already such a fear of schizophrenia etc. Not that I was always that brave myself. This makes me remember my first psychiatric experience.

In the fall of 1975 our nursing class had to travel to the Nova Scotia Hospital in Dartmouth for eight weeks of clinical in psychiatry. I prepared for this by having my then boyfriend (now husband) teach me to play cribbage as I envisioned that would be a large part of my day on the ward. Well, let me tell you, crib was the furthest thing from my mind during that two months. For starters a postal strike went on two days after we arrived in Dartmouth and came off the week after we were home so there was limited contact. Remember this is in the days before email, faxes or even reasonably priced long distance rates. Most of us were accustomed to traveling home on the weekends - I got home once during that time - and certainly not city folks. We managed the urban exchange but the psyche culture was another matter.

I was assigned to N15 which was a locked womens admission unit. Anyone being observed for the judicial system or really psychotic was here. Think One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and you won’t be far off. Crib? There was only one set of cards on the unit and someone had eaten a couple of the spades. There was a piano in the lounge but the same fate had befallen three of the black keys. It was a pretty intense experience and the closest I ever came to failing or leaving nursing school. I’m still convinced that some of the staff were more unstable than some of the patients. The whole situation was made worse as my roommates were assigned to convalescent mens (they played crib 6 out of 8 hrs per day) and convalescent womens units (where they knit and made egg sandwiches for tea parties) and complained of being bored.

I had been assigned a lady, who at the time was in her early 50s. She from my vantage point of almost 19 years, appeared to be kind of old. Her diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia. We were in class a couple of days and on the floors a couple of days per week. So we would study a subject and be able to apply our knowledge. We were making our way through a list of psychiatric diagnoses and had studied schizophrenia, nothing yet on paranoia. So I, in my infinite wisdom, thinking that a patient could only have one diagnosis at a time (how naïve of me I came to quickly understand in all areas not just psyche) decided she was ‘just schizophrenic’. Here is where my troubles began because I was supposed to be having ‘therapeutic conversations’ with this woman. She hated me. I tried every bit of charm I possessed and every approach I could think of. She ignored me. I created fictitious entries in my journal but my nursing instructor was on to me and firmly sent me back to ’interact’. While in my presence, the little lady began speaking in a language she had created which was absolutely unintelligible. And then she hid from me. So in my desperation I did a very dumb thing… I followed her. I FOLLOWED a paranoid schizophrenic. Can you only imagine how therapeutic my interactions were after that?

The only time we had any kind of interaction was one afternoon towards the end when she approached me and asked very calmly for her comb. I was so thrilled that she spoke to me I would have done whatever she asked. The purses were locked in the coat room, along with jackets, outside shoes etc. to foil escape attempts. Personal products were also secured - mouthwash contains alcohol, combs can be fashioned into weapons etc. So I opened the locked coat room and she picked out her purse but…instead of just taking the comb out she took down her coat, put it on, put her purse over her arm and when I feebly tried to convince her to stop she pushed past me. As I was bent over locking the door she walloped me over the head, leaving me dazed as she absconded down the hall and out through the exit with a visitor. She was later retrieved by three staff (two of whom were severely thumped) and the Head Nurse came to me to ask “why I had let her go out for a walk as she didn’t have privileges?” As I nursed the egg on the back of my head it occurred to me that the Head Nurse was a bit out of touch with reality herself thinking an assault was a social outing. I still can't believe that I survived/passed that study area.

I met my travel partner on the way home to exchange underwater photos and dancing shoes. We got caught up a bit on the plans for the cruise ship speaking - photo shoot, good presentation topics, cheap flights to departure ports etc. It always lifts my spirits to meet up with her - she's a role model for retiring before you look like you should. She was telling me that the tourism industry in Cuba was really suffering this year. I think that confirms I have to travel there next year and support them.

When I made it home and we were discussing what to have for supper my life partner decided that lobster tortellini (which takes about an hour to make) is what he was wanting. I usually make it one evening for the next day but I told him with his help it would be on the table for supper. As it had taken him two days to get the three lobsters (yes the catches are that bad - 79 traps checked for 2 lobsters etc) this spring, he deserved the treat. Yum.

The weather has been rotten here this week. Very cold (6 c today) and you can see your breath when walking the dog. But at least we're not getting snow as northern NS was today. The forecast is for more of the same until at least Monday so no spring like weather for the long weekend but having three days off will be glorious no matter what. May get a chance to do some scrapbooking if the outdoors doesn't call me.