Monday, March 16, 2009
Lakeshore Mental Health Institute: Part I
So, here I am, sitting on a crummy cot in my crummy apartment feeling pretty crummy.
I was feeling even worse last week, so I went to the Fort Sanders Hospital Emergency Room to check myself into their psych ward. Well, it turns out they don't have a psych ward there, if you need to go inpatient, you have to go to Lakeshore Mental Health Institute.
I really did need to go inpatient, so despite the fact that I was calm and cooperative, they had a police officer handcuff me, escort me to the back seat of his cruiser, and drive me to Lakeshore.
Now, Lakeshore Mental Health Institute is probably one of the worst hospitals I have been to. It's a toss up with New York Methodist Hospital. At Lakeshore, they did a complete psychiatric evaluation, which they did not at NYMH. However, NYMH did offer group therapy, and you have to be at Lakeshore for at least a week before they will allow you to do anything, even take a guided walk around the halls. Lakeshore's food was absolutely terrible; NYMH's was actually pretty good. I kind of like hospital food, because it's all pre-portioned. You have just one tiny container of butter for 1 piece of white bread in a plastic baggie, you don't have to make any decisions about what to do.
One thing that really bothered me about Lakeshore was that they didn't take me as seriously as I would have liked, and told me things to more to quiet me than to provide me with the information I was requesting.
I started writing this to point out flaws I found in their system, but rather than a list it turned into a narrative. It's gotten pretty long, though, and even though I've only finished writing about the first "day", I'm going to stop for now.
---
I signed into the Fort Sanders ER at 4:00 PM last Wednesday, so when I arrived at Lakeshore at 11:30 PM, I was hungry. I asked if they could give me anything, just a sandwich or something, and they said "As soon as you get upstairs they can give you something." I inquired as to when that would be, and they said "Oh, probably in a half hour or so."
Two hours later when I actually arrived upstairs, they said they didn't know if or when they could get me something to eat, it would have to be dealt with by Security, who were downstairs.
"Well, if they're downstairs, maybe you can call them and ask them when they'd be able to do it."
"We will once you're in your room."
This bothered me, because again, it just seemed like a dishonest attempt to placate me. Downstairs, when checking in, they had refused to let me take my notebook, even plain sheets of paper or pens upstairs. I said I needed to write, and a security guard said "They can give you paper and a pencil upstairs."
Back upstairs, I flipped through the "Patient Rights & Responsibilities" brochure that was given to me in admissions. I looked up and said "Well, you're going to have to give me a pencil and something to write on so I can take notes about the patient rights that you are violating." One of the women in the room said "We can't give you a pencil, but when you're in your room we can give you a marker and some paper."
Another woman behind a high counter picked up the telephone, dialed, and after a pause said quietly, but impatiently, "Can someone bring some food up? One of the girls is talking about writing stuff down..." I smiled at this. Obviously, my remark had proven to her that I wasn't just another brain-dead/drug-addled idiot who could be ignored without consequence, and, more importantly to her, I might be able to get her into trouble. More importantly to me, her action was an admission that she hadn't been doing her job properly, though I don't know why this gave me cause for pleasure. I found it amusing that she expected security to understand the gravity of the situation simply due to the possibility of something being written down. Were the majority of the patients illiterate? I mean, true, this is Tennessee, but I haven't really found people to be less intelligent than in New York/New England. Less arrogant, maybe, but not any less intelligent.
For some reason, they had confiscated my wristwatch as contraband, so I asked if there was a clock in my room. A woman told me that if I wanted to know what time it was, I could look through the window to see clock in the room we were presently in(which was kept locked). I pointed out that the wall clock that should have been visible was laying face down on a counter, to which she replied, "Oh, it's broken right now."
A small desk clock told me that it was 2:00 AM by the time they were ready to take me to my room. The girl who escorted me was wearing a college sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers, and couldn't have been any older than 22 or 23. Rather than condescending (as the other staff members had been), this girl was actually quiet friendly. Maybe it was because unlike other patients, I was around her age. I also didn't have meth mouth. The back wall of the room had a large window, and there were twin beds with wooden frames on either side of it. Each bed had an 8-inch thick mattress covered in beige vinyl, and on top of the bed on the right were 2 thin plastic pillows next to a set of folded bedclothes and a blanket, bleach white.
"I didn't make up your bed because I didn't know which one you'd want." I wanted to laugh. I'd just been admitted into a mental institution, so I wasn't really in the state to have any kind of strong opinion on which bed to sleep in. I chose the one on the left without any deliberation or difficulty, which is incredible, considering it usually takes me over 10 minutes just to decide which toothpaste to buy.
"They said I could have paper and a marker..." I mentioned, and she replied "Oh! Sure, hang on," perky as hell. I made up the bed, and she quickly returned with a few sheets of printer paper and a pink Crayola marker. Pink.
"Here you go!"
"Thanks..."
"Do you need anything else?" Is that really a question you want to hear the answer to?
"Well, no, but I asked earlier about food..."
"Oh, someone will bring it to you when it gets here."
"Ok, thanks."
She left the room almost with an air of skipping, her blonde ponytail bouncing behind her.
Something I find interesting is that even though I'm a pretty bitter, unhappy person, when I see people who seem happy it makes me feel good, rather than angry or jealous. But then I realize I'm by myself, and that I am myself, and things darken quite a bit.
I kicked off the navy blue slip-on shoes they had issued me earlier and sat on the bed, legs crossed. Amazed that the marker wasn't dry at all, I wrote for a few minutes but quit after less than half a page. My belongings were at the foot of the bed in a paper bag, and I grabbed the one non-clothing item it contained - a copy of The Fountainhead I had bought in Florida a month earlier but not yet cracked open. I decided to read but about 8 pages in I was bored and put it aside. I lay down and quickly fell asleep, despite the fluorescent lights above.
I really don't have any comments about the comfort (or discomfort) of the mattress, but this may be that I haven't consistently slept on a real bed in several years. My current mattress is inflatable.
I awoke to a quick rapping on the heavy door to my room, and someone came in and handed me a brown plastic tray with what was to be my dinner. As the person was leaving, I asked "What time is it?" From the hall, I heard the yell back "It's 3 AM."
When I opened the styrofoam container, my eyes were immediately drawn to the primary compartment: it contained big chunks of what turned out to be potatoes covered in a reddish-brown liquid dotted with ground beef and spots of grease. The first thought that came to mind when I saw this was "pre-processed diarrhea". One of the two smaller wells contained what looked like regurgitated broccoli, under a yellow-orange sauce which had the consistency of pudding (including an impressively developed skin). It was probably supposed to be cheese of some sort.
I think that in any other situation either of these foods could have been decent, even good, but here they were somehow unfathomable. Not to mention cold in places.
There was another small container with a plastic lid that contained some very feeble pear halves. These tasted okay, but their limp, degenerated softness almost made me feel even more hopeless.
To drink, they had given me two options: a carton of 2% milk, and a carton of sugar-free sweet tea. I don't drink milk, so I had some of the tea, which lived up to the title "sugar-free" more than "sweet".
Thoroughly disappointed, after finishing half of the "meal" I put the tray on the nightstand (which happened to be next to the door, across the room) and went back to sleep - lights still on.
I think I sleep with the light on for the same reason I always have a heater/fan/air conditioner turned on, it distracts me from my own isolated existence. I'm not afraid of the dark, I'm afraid of myself.
I was feeling even worse last week, so I went to the Fort Sanders Hospital Emergency Room to check myself into their psych ward. Well, it turns out they don't have a psych ward there, if you need to go inpatient, you have to go to Lakeshore Mental Health Institute.
I really did need to go inpatient, so despite the fact that I was calm and cooperative, they had a police officer handcuff me, escort me to the back seat of his cruiser, and drive me to Lakeshore.
Now, Lakeshore Mental Health Institute is probably one of the worst hospitals I have been to. It's a toss up with New York Methodist Hospital. At Lakeshore, they did a complete psychiatric evaluation, which they did not at NYMH. However, NYMH did offer group therapy, and you have to be at Lakeshore for at least a week before they will allow you to do anything, even take a guided walk around the halls. Lakeshore's food was absolutely terrible; NYMH's was actually pretty good. I kind of like hospital food, because it's all pre-portioned. You have just one tiny container of butter for 1 piece of white bread in a plastic baggie, you don't have to make any decisions about what to do.
One thing that really bothered me about Lakeshore was that they didn't take me as seriously as I would have liked, and told me things to more to quiet me than to provide me with the information I was requesting.
I started writing this to point out flaws I found in their system, but rather than a list it turned into a narrative. It's gotten pretty long, though, and even though I've only finished writing about the first "day", I'm going to stop for now.
---
I signed into the Fort Sanders ER at 4:00 PM last Wednesday, so when I arrived at Lakeshore at 11:30 PM, I was hungry. I asked if they could give me anything, just a sandwich or something, and they said "As soon as you get upstairs they can give you something." I inquired as to when that would be, and they said "Oh, probably in a half hour or so."
Two hours later when I actually arrived upstairs, they said they didn't know if or when they could get me something to eat, it would have to be dealt with by Security, who were downstairs.
"Well, if they're downstairs, maybe you can call them and ask them when they'd be able to do it."
"We will once you're in your room."
This bothered me, because again, it just seemed like a dishonest attempt to placate me. Downstairs, when checking in, they had refused to let me take my notebook, even plain sheets of paper or pens upstairs. I said I needed to write, and a security guard said "They can give you paper and a pencil upstairs."
Back upstairs, I flipped through the "Patient Rights & Responsibilities" brochure that was given to me in admissions. I looked up and said "Well, you're going to have to give me a pencil and something to write on so I can take notes about the patient rights that you are violating." One of the women in the room said "We can't give you a pencil, but when you're in your room we can give you a marker and some paper."
Another woman behind a high counter picked up the telephone, dialed, and after a pause said quietly, but impatiently, "Can someone bring some food up? One of the girls is talking about writing stuff down..." I smiled at this. Obviously, my remark had proven to her that I wasn't just another brain-dead/drug-addled idiot who could be ignored without consequence, and, more importantly to her, I might be able to get her into trouble. More importantly to me, her action was an admission that she hadn't been doing her job properly, though I don't know why this gave me cause for pleasure. I found it amusing that she expected security to understand the gravity of the situation simply due to the possibility of something being written down. Were the majority of the patients illiterate? I mean, true, this is Tennessee, but I haven't really found people to be less intelligent than in New York/New England. Less arrogant, maybe, but not any less intelligent.
For some reason, they had confiscated my wristwatch as contraband, so I asked if there was a clock in my room. A woman told me that if I wanted to know what time it was, I could look through the window to see clock in the room we were presently in(which was kept locked). I pointed out that the wall clock that should have been visible was laying face down on a counter, to which she replied, "Oh, it's broken right now."
A small desk clock told me that it was 2:00 AM by the time they were ready to take me to my room. The girl who escorted me was wearing a college sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers, and couldn't have been any older than 22 or 23. Rather than condescending (as the other staff members had been), this girl was actually quiet friendly. Maybe it was because unlike other patients, I was around her age. I also didn't have meth mouth. The back wall of the room had a large window, and there were twin beds with wooden frames on either side of it. Each bed had an 8-inch thick mattress covered in beige vinyl, and on top of the bed on the right were 2 thin plastic pillows next to a set of folded bedclothes and a blanket, bleach white.
"I didn't make up your bed because I didn't know which one you'd want." I wanted to laugh. I'd just been admitted into a mental institution, so I wasn't really in the state to have any kind of strong opinion on which bed to sleep in. I chose the one on the left without any deliberation or difficulty, which is incredible, considering it usually takes me over 10 minutes just to decide which toothpaste to buy.
"They said I could have paper and a marker..." I mentioned, and she replied "Oh! Sure, hang on," perky as hell. I made up the bed, and she quickly returned with a few sheets of printer paper and a pink Crayola marker. Pink.
"Here you go!"
"Thanks..."
"Do you need anything else?" Is that really a question you want to hear the answer to?
"Well, no, but I asked earlier about food..."
"Oh, someone will bring it to you when it gets here."
"Ok, thanks."
She left the room almost with an air of skipping, her blonde ponytail bouncing behind her.
Something I find interesting is that even though I'm a pretty bitter, unhappy person, when I see people who seem happy it makes me feel good, rather than angry or jealous. But then I realize I'm by myself, and that I am myself, and things darken quite a bit.
I kicked off the navy blue slip-on shoes they had issued me earlier and sat on the bed, legs crossed. Amazed that the marker wasn't dry at all, I wrote for a few minutes but quit after less than half a page. My belongings were at the foot of the bed in a paper bag, and I grabbed the one non-clothing item it contained - a copy of The Fountainhead I had bought in Florida a month earlier but not yet cracked open. I decided to read but about 8 pages in I was bored and put it aside. I lay down and quickly fell asleep, despite the fluorescent lights above.
I really don't have any comments about the comfort (or discomfort) of the mattress, but this may be that I haven't consistently slept on a real bed in several years. My current mattress is inflatable.
I awoke to a quick rapping on the heavy door to my room, and someone came in and handed me a brown plastic tray with what was to be my dinner. As the person was leaving, I asked "What time is it?" From the hall, I heard the yell back "It's 3 AM."
When I opened the styrofoam container, my eyes were immediately drawn to the primary compartment: it contained big chunks of what turned out to be potatoes covered in a reddish-brown liquid dotted with ground beef and spots of grease. The first thought that came to mind when I saw this was "pre-processed diarrhea". One of the two smaller wells contained what looked like regurgitated broccoli, under a yellow-orange sauce which had the consistency of pudding (including an impressively developed skin). It was probably supposed to be cheese of some sort.
I think that in any other situation either of these foods could have been decent, even good, but here they were somehow unfathomable. Not to mention cold in places.
There was another small container with a plastic lid that contained some very feeble pear halves. These tasted okay, but their limp, degenerated softness almost made me feel even more hopeless.
To drink, they had given me two options: a carton of 2% milk, and a carton of sugar-free sweet tea. I don't drink milk, so I had some of the tea, which lived up to the title "sugar-free" more than "sweet".
Thoroughly disappointed, after finishing half of the "meal" I put the tray on the nightstand (which happened to be next to the door, across the room) and went back to sleep - lights still on.
I think I sleep with the light on for the same reason I always have a heater/fan/air conditioner turned on, it distracts me from my own isolated existence. I'm not afraid of the dark, I'm afraid of myself.
Labels: depression, mental illness, narrative, therapy, treatment
posted by skweeds at
3/16/2009 07:56:00 PM
About Me
- Name: skweeds
- Location: Knoxville, Tennessee, United States
I have outgrown my unsatisfiable wanderlust. My capriciousness has cooled off, and I'm making mature and responsible decisions right and left. What has happened to me?
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douche
Who would have thunk that the hosptial food would turn out to be a belly-bomber, fancy that?! :o)
You're in my prayers, hope that everything turns out alright. I have been unhappy since moving to Knoxville, I really miss my life in NY. So I've been doing work on some weekends at the Rescue Mission to try to take my mind off of things, and I'm going to start volunteer work at the GSA headquaters that just opened up, in the museum. Maybe some day I'll find my niche here.......or else I'll move back to NY, whichever comes first.
I'm sorry you have had such a time and since it's several months later, I hope you are better.
Do you attend UT? Why is it you are in Tn...or were?
Cindy - I am doing much better now, thanks for your concern... I never attended UT, I came here because I got kicked out of my place in NYC and didn't feel like moving around there again...
So yeah, I've been in TN since January, and I like it a lot... thanks for the comment
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