It's late in the night, and yes, once again, I'm wide awake when I'm supposed to be in dreamland. With such a flurry of thought swarming me, it's difficult to find a starting point.
I feel like a ball of entangled string.
My brother must be merrily gallivanting in Paris as his sister remains all alone at home. That bastard. He'd better bring me back something fabulous. Sharon Lee's due to return on the 16th. She'd better bring me nice stuff too. We've planned to go Bangkok later in the month (mainly due to her insistence), but it looks like the travel system in Singapore is once again up to no good. We may not have return flights (this made me cancel my trip to the US in dec). So all KIV plans.
Heh.
It's time to analyze the situation and reflect upon what these 2 weeks have brought about.
Firstly, I've finally finished my 2 week stint at a mental health institution. On one hand, I couldn't wait to burst through the locked, double doors, screaming freedom with aplomb and wildly swinging both hands up in the air. Yet, on the other, there's a tinge of sadness, knowing that this may be the last time I would walk through those doors.
I was made to sit through the compulsory briefing that the institute deemed necessary. I came out, without any increased knowledge and a bitter taste in my mouth. You see, the Director of Nursing, whom had so kindly graced us with her presence, chose to address us personally. In the beginning, she gushed with passion, highlighting all the positive changes she'd help direct through the years in the organization. I thought she did a pretty decent job advertising.
Then, she swerved and did a dramatic kamikaze.
Her misguided mind went on to rant, implying that most nurses in other healthcare institutions did not care enough to look into the psychological component of patients under their care. She cited a heavy load of paperwork and a general inapt of handling such situations.
My, my. If only she'd care enough to open her eyes and look right under her nose.
After she left, we were forced to sit through a slide show, introducing the history and growth of the mental institution. There weren't much things of use or interest to me.
These were what I really wanted to know :
1. Did any patient develop seizures, heart attacks and/or died from electroconvulsive therapy?
2. How many staff had a history of mental disorders?
3. How much are the staff paid?
4. How much bonus did they give?
5. Why are hallucinations/delusions deemed as abnormal in patients with mental deficits when it is perfectly acceptable for a child to have imaginary friends?
6. Are patients abused?
7. Why do mental patients eat so much and yet stay so skinny?
8. Why the patients in the C class deemed as 'crazy' and the paying classes brought in under the guise of booking into a 'wellness center'?
For the record, most nurses that I've come into contact with, truly take an effort to bond with those under their care. Most of the time, there's an unmistakable kinship that develops based on daily close contact. To stereotype and undermine such efforts, especially by someone from the same line, is bitterly disappointing.
As for the posting, it went quite satisfactorily. We decorated the ward to usher in the Chinese New Year. A patient made us a Thank You card. A few hugged us and told us they would be sad to see us go. We even had a small ward party on the last day.
Being sent to an acute setting allowed me to witness the changes in behavior brought about mainly by medication. I had the opportunity to really sit and talk to some patients.
Some shared with me their life stories. Most have a long history of repeated admissions. One in particular left a huge impact.
Her name is YY. In the beginning, she irritated with no end in sight. Her sickening, insincere laughter echoed throughout the ward. Her incessant gravelling for attention kept my blood boiling. Her robotic speech repeated like a broken record.
And as the drug levels in her blood rose, the days past and her negative attention seeking behavior slowly subsided. We had a conversation on my last day, where she practically begged us to visit her at home after her discharge.
I wonder what blows these individuals in their prime endured to end up this way.
The facade of a vex, eroded into that of an individual plagued with loneliness. With no family of her own and her parents deceased, stood a woman before me with unmet needs. She had nothing much else that brought the same familiarity then a ward filled with screaming, restrained women, and nurses pacing about in uniforms, forcing her to swallow her medicine. Wouldn't you default on your medication to return to the only familiar setting you have grown so accustomed to?
Perhaps her sanity lies between those locked doors and grilled windows.
Schizophrenia, or any alterations in mental state that is classified as normal, is an unkind disease. It's hold escapes gender, age and has a tendency to hide in genes, ready to manifest without instigation. You may be able to lower your risk of lung cancer by choosing not to smoke, or remove your reproductive organs if you have a strong genetic link to cervical cancer. But how does one minimize the risk if you have had a parent or grandparent that developed a mental disorder because fate dealt too great a blow of him/her to handle?
How can you stop a person from snapping after physical, emotional, sexual abuse?
How can one shut out those voices or visions if they illicit joy?
And look at all the shit modern medicine puts them through. Placing them behind locked doors, restraints for both their own safety and that of others, pumping medicine into them, shocking them with electrical current to induce mild seizures.
Then releasing them back into society like freed animals. Only to haul them back the moment their symptoms reappear. All in hope of what? Sometimes I wonder, if faced with such options, what route would I take? Perhaps it would be better to reject medication to escape reality. Then I would not be aware of my own behavior, forget the past that brought me thus far and the bias that I would face on the outside.
Sigh.
In a matter of mere hours, I'll be trotting back to school. Only another theory exam and a final 6 week PRCP separate me from graduation. Hopefully, I'll be able to scrap a merit and hackle my way into uni. Else, its down to plan B (read : slogging in the wards until I save up enough to pay for my own degree).
I'm taking things one at a time.
