DAY 22 - 29th August
Keri had her CPA this morning. She was getting very agitated beforehand and as soon as she walked into that room tensions were already in the air. Keri knew they'd already made a decision as they'd been talking between themselves for an hour before letting Keri in.
As the doctor was talking she was getting more and more hacked off. It was fairly obvious how annoyed she was getting, especially as Sally was lingering. They decided Keri's section wasn't going to be lifted, didn't even come close to discussing a discharge plan and her dosage of antipsychotics have been put up.
In the end, Keri left in a proper pissy. She stormed through the corridor to go to the garden. I've never seen her so angry, unfortunately Sally was spurring her on. One of the nurses called after her and said, "Keri, lunch is ready!" And all Keri did was shout back "I don't care!" and went into the garden. Her frantic pacing just got faster and faster as she sparked up cigarette after cigarette. This went on for about 20 minutes before her foster carer, her outreach worker and her personal advisor came outside to see her (they'd been part of the meeting). She carried on pacing for a minute before her foster carer said, "Are you not going to stop and say goodbye?" Keri replied with a blatant 'no'. Her coat was sat on one of the benches so she went straight over and grabbed it, put it on and stormed past them saying, "We're leaving."
Obviously her foster carer turned round and said it couldn't happen but Keri was already shooting up the corridor and told the nurse that she was going out with her foster carer. As Keri was looking at the nurse, the nurse was looking over at Keri's gathering of three and shaking her head. They weren't going to let her out. Keri stood by the desk near the door while they signed out and the nurse said, "Do you want to come round the other side? We can show you out the back door."
As her foster carer, personal advisor and outreach worker started making their way round the other side of the desk Keri just completely lost it. She kicked the desk before taking a few steps towards the door and repeatedly kicking it with all the force she had. The staff tried talking to her but Keri was in no mood to listen. She power walked through the ward and out into the women's garden, grabbed the bin and carried it across the garden to put up against the fence. Keri had hardly got it against the fence before several members of staff came running out into the garden.
She managed to get up on top of the bin before they reached her which meant she had a good grip on the fence to climb over. Unfortunately by this point the staff also had good grip on both her ankles and legs.
"Get the hell off of me!" she shouted at the staff.
"Keri, you're not safe to leave the hospital. I know you've just had a meeting and it obviously hasn't gone well. Come on down and we can have a chat," said one of the nurses.
"Fuck off the lot of you! I just need to get out of here! Get off my legs!" Keri shouted back at them.
"We can't do that, Keri," the nurses said, still holding tightly onto her legs. She was still trying to kick them away while she had a strong grip on the fence but she had two nurses on each leg.
"I want to leave, I don't need to be here. I don't want their drugs. I don't need to be sectioned. I just want to go home!" Keri cried as she started thrashing her head against the fence.
Because Keri refused to get down and was thrashing her head against the fence they had to pull her down, with great difficulty! She was restrained by two of the staff and they sat her down on a bench between them. At first Keri resisted but she was hyperventilating and crying, so in the end she stopped fighting and just sat between them while they held her arms. Another nurse ran off to go and get her some PRN medication. The two nurses with her spent a long time chatting to Keri to try and calm her down.
The nurse brought out triple the dose of Lorazepam she normally takes to calm down so I obviously don't need to explain the ins and outs of exactly how distressed she was! The nurses talked to her a lot, especially about Keri's foster parents. They asked her what she'd do if the situation was reversed and she had a daughter that was doing 'this' to herself. They also talked about how they noticed she lights up whenever her foster mum visits and that the love in the family was worth more than any other love. Keri started crying again and just said, "I don't understand how they can love me like their own daughter if I feel like my own parents didn't even love me. I care about my foster parents so much and I just want to go home."
"It's rare to get people like your foster parents, Keri. Deep down you must know that they're only doing this because they care about you too much to see you get hurt. If I had a daughter who wanted to take a power drill to her head then I'd do anything I could to keep her safe," one of the nurses said.
"But they won't let me home and there's nothing wrong with me! All they've done is put up my medication!" cried Keri.
"That's why it's better for you here, especially because you had to restart your antidepressants. We can watch you 24 hours a day, that's our job. Your foster parents aren't able to do that. That's what you need right now, 24 hour observation and treatment. We can see you're trying to work with us so hopefully you'll get out soon. We don't want to send you out too early or you'll end up back here again. It's like having a broken leg. Once it's healed you can't start running on it, you need to take it slow and recover. At the moment your leg is still broken. That's why you're here and why we're here. We're not your enemies. We care about you and don't want to see you getting hurt."
By this point Keri had only smoked a couple of cigarettes and already the Lorazepam was taking effect. She walked back inside with staff who went and got Keri her sandwich. By the time she'd finished actually eating her sandwich for a change she was a walking zombie. She barely had the energy to walk and was totally out of it. She also had her evening Diazepam which has doped her up even more. Add her cocktail of evening medication and she's going to be in a drug-induced coma tonight! That's why I'm writing this blog post slightly earlier than usual.
She's definitely going to be out of it for a few days until her body gets used to the higher dosage of medication. She normally gets quite sedated, her eyes are droopy and glazed over, and following simple conversations is very difficult. After those few days she goes back to normal though. Hopefully once her body has got used to the dosage it will stop her pacing so much or at least have some effect. The doctor hopes that the higher dosage will help her realise that there isn't a bug in her head and that it is just a delusion. She's still in complete denial and has no insight into her condition; an unfortunate situation when it comes to psychosis.
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