July 14, 1998

I had my physical for college today. The nurse practitioner went crazy on me when she noticed that one piece of paper said I had an associate's degree, and that the other one said I was 16. But it was okay. I realized it was the first time I ever went in to see a medical person (psychiatrist people don't count) without one of my parents coming in too. It was kinda weird. I think medical people (she wasn't really a doctor) act different when your parents aren't in the room... for example it was the first time I had a doctor (well.. not counting my shrink) ask me if I needed birth control. Now that I think about it, it was a funny thing for my psychiatrist to ask me, seeing as how it's written in his file probably a million times that I'm gay. Maybe he missed that part. They've been known to do that. Once, my inpatient psychiatrist (I can't remember which one- I had them all at one time or another) missed the line on the chart that said I was going home that day, and he told me there was no way I was going home, that I had a lot of work to do yet. And I got so upset, because it was three days before my birthday and I wanted to go home, and it was funny because the first time I was in the hospital I didn't want to go home- I was dreading it. But this was the third (and final, so far...) trip, and I was so much better, and I got so mad at him when he called me out of my room to say "sorry, my fault" when he obviously didn't mean it and would have kept me there if he could have, but he'd already signed the papers the day before.

I think the worst incident I had with a psychiatrist, (this was a different one- I remembered his name so I wouldn't ever go see him again) was when one of them put me on Haldol. Now for those of you who are uninitiated to the world of psychotropic drugs, Haldol is an anti-psychotic. It's an older one, one of the oldest, I think, and it has a ton of side effects that newer drugs (that do the exact same thing) don't have. But I this Dr. had probably been prescribing Haldol since he got out of med school, and I guess he wasn't about to quit then... But I really didn't need an anti-psychotic in the first place. He gave it to me, because when he asked me if I heard things I told him that sometimes when I tried to go to sleep, I heard something that sounded like static on a radio. He didn't bother to inquire further, he just prescribed it right then. If he had inquired further, he would have discovered that there were a thousand explanations for this besides me being psychotic- the biggest one being that I slept in the basement bedroom, right next to pipes and radiators that can sometimes sound just like static. (the other big one- I was sure I was going crazy, and took everything I heard, saw, felt, or did as an example of that.)

Anyway, so this doctor prescribed Haldol, and my mom signed the consent forms even though she knew what it was and that I didn't need it, because she was kinda shell-shocked, and was thinking the doctors must know better than her, because she obviously hadn't done a very good job that I was there in the first place. So I was taking Haldol, in the smallest dose, because I was only 13. And the doctor didn't warn me about side-effects, one of the counselors did that when she heard I was on it. I got them all within a day- especially a really dry mouth. And then, one night, my eyelids started to twitch, and I was trying to close my eyes to go to sleep and it required major effort to actually keep my eyes shut, so I called down to the nurse's station, and told them, and this one really annoyed looking counselor came up and I told her I couldn't shut my eyes, so she looked at me and said "try"... I did, and of course they stayed shut for a couple seconds, because I was trying just like she said. Her response? "You can to, just relax and go to sleep. I took me about an hour that night, and I finally fell asleep with my hand holding my eyes shut.

Then, a couple days later, when my neck started to get stiff, I went down to the nurses station, and the nurse there felt my neck and started making a storm of phone calls to every doctor on call (and a few that weren't, I think) until he got someone to prescribe cogentin (the antidote) for me. Only, by then, my neck muscles had contracted so much, that my head was turning all by itself. I would be just sitting there by the nurses station (so they could keep an eye on me) and all of a sudden, my head would start turning to the left, and I couldn't stop it or turn it back. It was not easy to swallow that pill, let me tell you! So then they all started telling me how that would stop it, but I should sit by the nurse's station a little longer so they could be absolutely sure. So I sat and sat, but my head just kept getting worse! And people kept muttering things about it "getting worse" and the nurse kept coming over and taking my blood pressure every other minute, and they had people calling up doctors on both telephones. Obviously, I was getting just a little bit nervous! And my head just kept turning and turning, until even when I put both hands on my head and tried to force it to look straight, I couldn't do it. And my head started to turn further than my neck could turn. I was sitting there thinking what would happen if my head turned all the way around. (I was very out of it.) But that's what it felt like. My head just kept kinda bouncing toward the left, and I was sure that one of those times it would bounce hard enough that it would just keep going around. (I was too out of it to realize that my head spinning around would equal me dying. It just sounded painful to me at the time.)

Eventually, one of those doctors on call actually called back, and he told them to go ahead and give me a shot of benadryl. They did, and it stopped. It must have been a high dose of benadryl, or that combined with all the stress, because within 15 minutes or so I was ready to go to sleep. At that particular hospital, you have to keep your door open during the day, which didn't really bother me. But there I was, lying down on my bed, nice and comfy with my teddy bear, and too sleepy to be self-conscious, and while I was falling asleep I could hear people yelling down the hall about "why in the hell would he prescibe Haldol to that girl when there are so many medicines that don't have side-effects!" (actually, there's a special name for that kind of side-effect and I don't remember what it was, but that's what he actually said.) and I was happy. :-)

Okay, here's the part where I shock you. (what you thought my story was over? :-) The next day, I went to talk to the offending psychiatrist, expecting some kind of explanation, and instead I get in there and the doctor says "I have a hard time believing you had on such a small dose."

What do you say to that??? I had gone through hell the day before, my neck was still sore and I had seen every person in the place run around like I was dying. And here he was, saying he thought I had faked it all! I was too stunned to even get mad- I only remember shrugging in response. The nurse told me later that day that the reason he had been taking my blood pressure so much was because it had gone up really high since the night before when they took it (they take blood pressure every night, to make sure nobody's gonna have a heart attack from some medicine they gave them.) And I'm sure that was in the incident report the doctor read. I've thought a lot about why he would say something like that. I mean, could he really think I could fake it to that many people? At least 20 trained professionals saw me while it was happening, because it started just before a shift change. And he wasn't there, he was off doing something else (probably seeing a private patient for $175 an hour, trying to forget he also worked at a public hospital...) and just from reading the reports he decided that everybody else must have been wrong? I think the only other explanation is that he wanted to see how I'd react, but that doesn't make much sense because he never took it back... It was very bizarre.




I have no clue where that came from. I warned you- I never know what I'll write when I just start writing.... ^' '^