Hospitalisation

Hey there!

Just wanna throw in a Trigger Warning for talk of self harm and suicide…

 

These past months I have been a bit better since my last hospitalisation, but in the last couple of weeks, since Teenstreet, I have been getting worse and have fallen back into self harm.

I went to Opus (a program for people with psychotic disorders) on thursday and told them how I had been having a lot of urges towards self harm and suicidal thoughts. They were very worried for me even though I didn’t really share their worry, maybe because this time around I haven’t been as emotionally affected by my thoughts as earlier on. So I haven’t been as sad and haven’t cried as much as I did some months ago when I was last hospitalised.

But the doctor at Opus convinced me to go to the hospital for an evaluation by one of their doctors.

I waited for a couple of hours to speak with a doctor and during the conversation I didn’t become emotional or cry and I felt that I presented very well, so I hoped to be sent home right after. However things didn’t go that way. The doctor and the Chief Physician really wanted me to stay at least one night, and even though I really didn’t want to I just went along with it.

There weren’t any open rooms in the open unit so I was admitted to the closed one upstairs.

I was almost immediately, upon admittance, approached by another patient, N. We fell into talking and I showed her some of my drawings and she really liked them and asked me to do a couple of drawings for her, which I agreed to.

So we spend some hours sitting together, while I drew pictures of people she showed me (some family photos and one of Martin Luther King), and N finished the drawings with some shading.

My mom came to visit me after dinner and we talked for a while until she left and I went to bed.

I slept alright that night. Not as well as I do in my own bed at home, and I woke up early but it was okay.

I had some yoghurt for breakfast and spend the next couple of hours listening to music, drawing and watching some Youtube videos.

Then I spoke with a psychologist and a Pre-med student and they evaluated me again and decided they wanted me to stay another night, to which I woefully agreed to.

I then listened more to some music and slept a bit and started assembling a puzzle. Then around half past three a nurse and the psychologist from earlier entered my room and told me if I still felt like going home today, I could. I was overjoyed and immediately packed my things and left soon after.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find N to say goodbye and exchange information with her. I hope she is alright and gets better soon.

I walked home and now am sitting here, eating some M&M’s and writing a blog post.

That’s it. Hope you got something out of that!

See ya!

 

The River

There’s a blue river in my wrist

But it’s not flowing freely

There’s a cover over it

Blocking it from air

It doesn’t breathe

It doesn’t live

It’s entombed in fleshy walls

It does not have the power to break through

But I do

The metal’s hard in my hand

Hard and cold

All it takes in one swipe

And the blood will flow freely

Admitted to a psych ward

Hey there!

Just recently I spend a night in a mental hospital, let me tell you a bit about it.

I went to OPUS (a place of treatment for people with psychotic disorders) on that fateful monday like I do every week and met with my contact. We started talking and got into the subject of suicide.
I told her that I had been having increasingly more suicidal thoughts for the past couple of weeks since I switched medication and that it was at an all time high at the moment. She asked me if I had any plans, and I said that I had a couple of razor blades lying at home in case I decided to go through with it. I also said that I had been experiencing strong urges to cut myself lately and that I didn’t really care any longer what people might think about it. That it is bad.
She asked if I could promise I wouldn’t go home and cut myself after talking with her. I couldn’t truthfully promise her that, so she was understandably very worried about me and offered taking me to the psychiatric emergency room a couple of minutes away. I didn’t really want to go, but she was very insistant and kind of decided to go on my behalf, so I just kind of went along with it and followed her over there.
She called ahead to let them know we were coming. We arrived and she announced our arrival at the desk.
I then talked to the nurse at the desk and told her how I felt and she said that a doctor would come around within the hour to talk to me. At this point my contact from OPUS had to go back to work, so she left me at the psych ward.
I waited for half an hour and then the doctor came and we talked and she decided that I should be admitted for at least one night.
They didn’t have a room available so they set up a bed in the training room and put up a sign with my name on the door.
I was admitted to the open unit so there was no locks on the doors and they didn’t go through my stuff or confiscate anything.
My mom came to visit me and brought some stuff for me. We sat and chatted for an hour until a nurse came and said that a room had opened up and I could move into a single room for the night, which I was very grateful for.
I was feeling very jittery and anxious and getting a proper room helped a bit with that.
My mom had to leave before dinner so I just walked around a bit and tried to find something to distract myself with.
There were several other people admitted to the ward. They all smoked alot and talked to each other or watched tv or had visitors, but mostly they kept to their rooms.
I told a nurse that I am allergic to gluten and asked if there would be any gluten free food available that night, and she promised to find out, but I never heard from her again and when dinner came around there was only these sandwiches which I couldn’t eat, but ate anyway because I was hungry.
I got my evening medication half an hour before dinner which I wasn’t too happy about because I get very very tired from my medication and need to go to sleep about half an hour after taking them.
After eating I started feeling increasingly jittery, one edge and anxious. It got to a point after an hour where I couldn’t stand it any more and I went out of my room to find a nurse. I spoke to one and they gave me something for the anxiety, which helped alot and I quickly fell a sleep after that.
I didn’t sleep too well that night, I lay awake for several hourse later in the night and woke every time they came in and checked on me during the night.
For breakfast I ate some yoghurt and a banana which was fine.
I spend the next couple of hours in my room watching videos on my phone. I was interrupted a couple of times when I had to have an EKG and blood taken and when they came with my medicine.
My mom came back again at around noon and we sat together until the doctor came to talk to me, at which point my mom had to go to meet my sister.
I talked to the doctor and told her how i felt, which was ok. I wasn’t experiencing the same thoughts as the day before and I wasn’t sad or anxious, even though I wasn’t exactly happy or content either. I wasn’t really feeling anything, but the doctor thought I was doing well enough to go home, so I got some sleeping medication to take home with me, gathered my things and went home.

The people that worked there, the nurses and doctors, were all really nice. They didn’t yell, or speak in a demeaning way, or act like I was crazy, they just listened and understood and were there to help, so that was nice.
I hated sleeping there. I don’t sleep well anywhere else than in my bed at home, so just the entire evening and night experience was enough for me to wish never to go back there.
I think it was good that I went there for the night. It seems like it helped a bit. It wasn’t an awful experience, though it wasn’t great either.

I hope you got something out of reading this. It feels good to write a bit about it.

See ya!

New Diagnosis

Hey there!

I wrote earlier on that my doctors were considering changing my diagnosis from Schizotypal disorder to Schizophrenia.
Well, I had a conversation with a special doctor and my contact at OPUS (place of treatment for people with psychotic disorders) where the doctor asked me a bunch of questions about symptoms and stuff and he then officially diagnosed me with schizophrenia because my symptoms match schizophrenia better than schizotypal disorder. He said he was surprised my diagnosis hadn’t been changed earlier on.

I feel like it doesn’t make that big of a difference for me if I am dignosed with schizophrenia or schizotypal disorder. It doesn’t change anything in how I perceive myself or my identity.
I am more concerned with what other people might think of me. I am afraid that people I know will be sceptical. That they might think I am making it up because I don’t seem sick. Of course I don’t have to tell anyone that I have schizophrenia, but I want to be able to tell people without experiencing this fear of judgment. I don’t want to care about what people think of me… but right now I do.
One thing I find challenging is that my depersonalization and derealization gets worse with this new diagnosis. When I experience these things I feel like everyone are actors (including myself) and that we are all pretending that I am sick. We all know that there is nothing wrong with me, but we pretend there is.
I feel like I am lying to everyone, and making them think I have schizophrenia for attention. I feel awful. I hate it. When I talk about my symptoms and say out loud “I have schizophrenia”, it feels like a straight up lie. I honestly don’t know if I am speaking the truth or not in those moments.

I hope things will get better soon.

Thank you for reading!

What is my diagnosis?

About half a year ago I shared on here that I had been diagnosed with schizotypal disorder. Well, now that diagnosis may change.
I had a talk with my contact and the chief physician at Opus Ballerup before christmas and they started talking about revisiting my diagnosis since they thought I might be closer to a schizophrenia diagnosis than schizotypal. Since I have tactile hallucinations almost every day and some paranoia and thought broadcasting they thought it might be something more than “just” schizotypal disorder.
I am already skeptic around my schizotypal diagnosis, so changing that to schizophrenia would just further my skepticism even more, i think. I feel like I am not sick enough to be labeled as schizophrenic. But as my contact said, schizophrenia is a spectrum disorder, every case is different and the severity of every patient is different. I might just have a mild case of schizophrenia.
We’ll see.

Diagnosis

So yesterday my new contact person at OPUS (a 2 year program for people between the ages of 18-35 with psychotic disorders) confirmed that I have been diagnosed with schizotypal disorder.

When I first heard it mentioned a couple of weeks ago I was very doubtfull, I didn’t feel like any of the symptoms fit with me and it just didn’t feel right, but during my meeting with my Contact we went through the symptoms and I can now better understand why I got that diagnosis.

I still feel doubtful. I have a constant feeling inside that every symptom is made up in my head, that I have convinced myself that I am suffering from this and am deliberately making myself seem sick in some twisted search for attention. It feels like there is another me inside that is feeding me these thoughts and feelings and things to say to make people believe I am sick, but I don’t know how to stop it, and I don’t know how to tell the difference between my own thoughts and feelings and the ones that come from the other me. It is very distressing since I don’t feel I can trust my own thoughts and never know when a thought is true and when it is made up. It is making me distrustful of myself and others since I also have a feeling that everyone else knows that I am making it up and they are just playing along all the while hating me for it and laughing at me behind my back, rolling their eyes everytime I turn my back to them.

I suspect that this is just another symptom of the disorder. It isn’t pleasant.

I will meet my contact again next week together with a doctor, who will perform a medical exam.

I don’t really know what more is to come, I am just trying to get used to the idea of having this diagnosis.

I am sharing this here because I’ve been having trouble finding any stories online of people with the same disorder so I hope that this might provide someone else with what I have been looking for.

   Schizotypal Disorder as defined by the ICD-10:

“A disorder characterized by eccentric behaviour and anomalies of thinking and affect which resemble those seen in schizophrenia, though no definite and characteristic schizophrenic anomalies occur at any stage. The symptoms may include a cold or inappropriate affect; anhedonia; odd or eccentric behaviour; a tendency to social withdrawal; paranoid or bizarre ideas not amounting to true delusions; obsessive ruminations; thought disorder and perceptual disturbances; occasional transient quasi-psychotic episodes with intense illusions, auditory or other hallucinations, and delusion-like ideas, usually occurring without external provocation. There is no definite onset and evolution and course are usually those of a personality disorder.”