#I got what. 6 months of consecutive functionality this year and so much progress toward independent living

[thateclecticbitch]

"You really should be outgrowing this adhd thing by now, most people only need it for school and then can manage fine without it in adulthood." That's good for them. I am happy for them. Thrilled even. But I am not one of them. I am one of the ones who needs this medication so that I do not get into a dangerous situation by getting off at the wrong bus stop.

[life-with-my-three]

Lucy is 4 months old in a few days.

I’ve been embarrassed by all this so hadn’t posted about any of it.

About 6 weeks ago, my psychologist (who just happens to specialise in perinatal mental health) and I agreed to doing a short 4 day admission to a local inpatient mental health place for mums and babies under 12 months old. She’d been trying to sell it to me since before Lucy was even born, and I’d been completely against the idea. We ended up agreeing to use the 4 day stay as a interruption free time to really nail down breastfeeding. All straight forward enough.

I got there though, and suddenly having nothing to do when usually between 4 kids my life is constant go, go, go, just crashed my mental health instead. My mood crashed and I stopped sleeping, I stopped eating and drinking, I barely got out of bed. Depression just hit in full force.

I’ve got a fairly significant background with depression (yay) and we know medication pretty much doesn’t work. It was decided to go straight for ECT instead of playing roulette with medication. This meant 3 times a week I’d get a general anaesthetic, get my brain electrocuted to trigger a seizure and then be woken up. For me at least it works. Within a week I was at least functioning again.

This was all going well. Nursing staff were great, the psychiatrist (a pregnant lady herself) was great and it was all working well and I was making progress. I somehow even without eating and drinking for days and whatnot managed to maintain my milk supply. Which was/is a miracle in itself.

So that was all going well, and we were starting the process towards discharge. We had my niece’s birthday 10 days ago. I had already done some overnight leave, but I was going out for the day for her birthday and then having leave that night. The nurses knew I’d had a rough few days leading up to it, and then a whole day with a bunch of 2 year olds and then leave was really pushing it, and they kept drilling into me to just come back to the ward and not stay overnight if I began to struggle at any point. I mean they REALLY drilled it in over and over again. So when after the party I was struggling, I decided I’d just go back for the night, and try leave again asap. It’s what was encouraged.

The week before though (we were about a month into the admission) the psychiatrist had gone on maternity leave herself and was replaced with this young guy. He seemed nice enough. When the Monday morning came I had my review for the week with him. It was bad.

As I said he came across as nice enough, apparently what he wants/thinks goes and he can never be wrong or challenged. When he found out that I hadn’t actually stayed the night at home he pretty much tore through me. I started to cry and explain that I thought I was doing the right thing because I had, had coming back drilled into me so many times. He then changed to some argument that being at the mum/baby ward obviously wasn’t working then, and that perhaps he’d need to transfer me to the actual adult locked psych ward. I burst into tears because no I don’t want to be there, I was heaps better than weeks earlier, I had just obviously misunderstood. I couldn’t do the locked ward, that would mean not having Lucy with me for starters. So here I waa crying at pretty much being threatened. I’d walked out and calmed myself down, then agreeing to go back in and talk to him.

I went back in, as I said this was a Monday, and he was like, well if it was a misunderstanding why don’t you do overnight leave tonight. I said that’s fine I’m happy to do so. Then he said and we can schedule another overnight leave for Tuesday night. At which point I was apparently stupid because I made a comment of “oh okay so tonight for two nights leave”. He argued and said no tonight and Tuesday. Isn’t that two consecutive nights though? He argued again that Tuesday didn’t come after the Monday we were currently in, until this mouse like little medical registrar spoke up and made a comment to him that I was right. At this stage I was crying because I was being yelled at, and if Monday/Tuesday being 2 consecutive nights wasn’t correct, I needed some clarity to the plan.

He didn’t like being told I was right and having to admit defeat. Because I was crying though he announced that ECT for the day, that I was supposed to have after this review, was going to be cancelled because with me being upset I couldn’t give consent. I knew, my family knew, the bloody nurses knew that ECT that day was needed to continue the regime so we could reach the point where it could be spaced out. Delaying a treatment day (it’s typically Monday/Wednesday/Friday initially). He was having none of it though. I was still being yelled at over the whole leave fiasco.

At this point I couldn’t take it anymore and I did became completely irrationally upset. I’d been yelled at, made to feel like dirt, and then had the one positive treatment taken away in what appeared to be a power play by him. I walked out and walked straight into the bedroom at the unit. I gave Lucy to Aaron, and started throwing things in my bags.

I’m really not proud of my actions here but I was so upset to the point of fight/flight irrationality. I was sobbing. The nurse made a comment about slowing down I could go they just had to organise leave medication. Without thinking I made a comment to the effect of “don’t worry about the meds I won’t need them”. Which isn’t a very smart comment to make they then started throwing questions at me, I was so hysterical it threw me even further into overdrive. I turned to Aaron and told him just to make sure Lucy was safe and I was going for a walk I needed out of there.

So I walk out, and was maybe 10m down the street, with 3 nurses having caught up to me. They surrounded me, and I sat down and just cried. The psychiatrist called the police on me and forced me to the hospital. I just cried. I calmed down after the tears had ran out. At which stage I was told I was waiting for a different psych to come and assess me to see if they would forcefully admit me to the adult ward. That never happened. The psych whom instigated the who scenario had signed paperwork to have me detained in a single locked room for 24hours.

The next day I got to speak to a completely different psych at the ward they had me locked in. He immediately discharged me. Saying that they had zero grounds to hold me. I wasn’t a danger to myself or anyone. I was talking completely rationally. I admitted I could of handled the situation a lot better and I was sorry I hadn’t. He felt that the hold shouldn’t have happened. It wasn’t until I was about to leave though that I got the news that the antagonist psych had reported me to child protection for the previous day. Of course I was upset at this news.

I had ECT the next day (Wednesday) and I came in from home (yay). The nurse that had been with me in the locked room came and found me and told me, that she had actually just got off the phone with CPU, and she was 99% sure we’d hear nothing further. That when speaking to them she had told them to “give (me) a break”. That I had been completely baited by this psych and that I was a f*ing good mother and did a brilliant job with my kids and if the psych hadn’t of been an arsehole I would never have been upset in the first place AND pointed out to CPU that I had actually even in a distressed state, made sure I had given lucy to someone safe to be away from me and protect her.

I had ECT that day actually felt really good mentally. Was now discharged home after the whole situation. Easter weekend meant that I only really received 1 treatment out of 4 in the fortnight though after the one cancelled one and then public holidays.

By yesterday, exactly a week after the whole drama, I was feeling really low. I knew I was heading to a bad place. I managed to force myself out with the kids to a playground to distract myself. I woke up this morning (Tuesday) though and just cried. I’ve really struggled with getting out of bed, and it’s taken until 6pm to eat/drink something and only then because Aaron pretty much made me.

I tried to be proactive and contact my outpatient psychologist; the one who I agreed to the initial admission through, because I’ve been really struggling, but it turns out she’s on holidays now for another week. Trying to speak to one of her fellow team members in her absence, it just kept rerouting you to the ward which got to witness my mega breakdown (mum/baby ward). Aaron tried talking to them because we had nothing else. All they offered was they were going to have a meeting at 2:30 and *may* get back to us this afternoon (it didn’t happen).

I have ECT tomorrow. I feel stuck and I completely managed to f*ck up my one option for help by having a breakdown and walking out a week ago. I 100% admit I made many mistakes too.

Depression is kicking my butt, and so is some kind of trauma response to everything that happened.

So yep, you now can all properly see I am completely insane.

Post natal depression sucks!