Monday, July 12, 2010

My "vacation" in inpatient psychiatric ward with the VA

Oh the joys of the VA. They took me off about half of the medications I was on because they said those medications were like speed and were probably making my anxiety worse. Then they put me on a bunch of new meds, most of them sedatives, and said they would make my panic attacks go away *poof* like magic. Its funny but I recall my psychiatrist said the same things about the meds I was on before, the ones that were making my panic attacks worse, and the meds before that come to think of it. I have two gallon sized bags of medications I have to go turn in to the VA today of crap that didn't work or made me worse.

Ten days in the hospital and two weeks later and I'm still not doing much but sleeping all day and having panic attacks. I can't concentrate well enough to read more than a chapter at a time, I've accidentally set my hair on fire, I can't get dressed correctly the first time around, and I have a tendency to fall over. Oh yeah and I forget to eat sometimes too.

They asked me three or four times while I was in the hospital if I felt as though I had lost something. Duh. I've lost everything about the person I used to be. I've lost my ability to have simple trust in people. I've lost my sense of personal safety. I've lost the ability to leave my home alone. I've really lost my identity, and what they expect me to do now is pick up a few pieces and glue them on at random until I become a functioning human being again. One of the nurses at inpatient told me "Just get over it, get with the program".

....
I don't know how I didn't hit that woman. I was having a lot of anxiety at the time that she said that. I was very very angry. Well in as much as I can feel anything at all as heavily sedated as I am most of the time.

So my bf shuffles me to his parent's house when I don't have any appointments, because he wants me to be alone as little as possible given the effects of the medication I take.

Because of my service connected condition I had to drop out of school, and now the VA says I owe them $3000. My income every month is like $541. My bills every month are about twice my income. Let me think. I can't pay them. They originally said it was five grand, and they posted on my credit report that I had an account in collections for about a grand. Dropped an A-bomb on my credit score.

Oh yeah and I got orders to mobilize to go to Iraq. That is the event that finally pushed me into the psych ward. I got the orders and I just started puking, and spent most of the day completely out of it, walking around like a damn zombie. My advocate got the orders rescinded and is working to ensure that nothing like that happens again. I'm kind of a full time job for her.

So I'm making it one foot in front of the other and that is all I'm capable of at the moment.

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