Gone Crazy Be Back Soon Part Seventy Four

The car ride to the hospital1

Was a painfully silent trip
My mom was too disappointed in me
To even put words to her feelings
And I was to confused about how I felt
To even put words to my feelings2

At the hospital 3

I went through the same experience
Of changing into the too revealing gown
Getting hooked up to the sticky heart monitor lead
Getting an IV jammed in my hand
And getting blood tests poked out of my arm4

As always the worst part of the whole ordeal was the charcoal
As always I swore to myself
At some point in the painful ordeal
That I would never overdose on anything again
As usual mom sat with me the entire time
As usual I was too grateful for words at the fact that my mom
Was so amazingly patient and loving and available
It hurt me deeply that I had almost hurt her
In such a horribly irreversible manner
At the point I was sane enough to realize that
Killing myself would not be doing anyone a favor5

Six hours after I arrived at the hospital6

They decided I was medically cleared
And they sent in a crisis worker to talk to me
The crisis worker asked me the usual questions
I was too exhausted to hide anything
I answered her completely honestly7

I told her about the suffocating depression
I told her about the feelings that I was too much trouble
For my parents to be able to
Or even want to be able to handle
I told her about the voices that wanted me to die
I told her about the purging after meals
I told her about my desperate desire to lose weight
And my feelings that the weight loss
Would somehow someday offer me the salvation I craved8

I told her all this and then slumped back
Against the thin pillow on my gurney
And felt tears pouring out my eyes
And a quiver in my charcoal stained mouth9

I clutched the teddy bear I had brought with me
As if I were clinging to him like a life preserver10

“I think you need to be hospitalized, I’ll talk to your mother and my supervisor, but from everything you’ve described it really sounds to me like right now you need to be in the hospital.”11

The crisis worker told me
I just lay there limply
I felt too drained to respond12

At this point I didn’t have much hope left
I didn’t want to be in another hospital
But I didn’t think I could safely go home either
It felt like there was nothing left for me anymore
I just lay there on the gurney with nothing left inside me13

My mom and the crisis worker went out into the hall
And I listened to all the people in pain surrounding me
I listened and I cried silently for everything that I’d been through14

At some point I fell asleep
When I woke up mom was back in the room
Reading a book with sad and tired eyes
She glanced up and in an exhausted voice told me
That I was going to go back to Harding Hospital
And that an ambulance would be there in a few hours
To take me back to the same hospital for the third time15

My third hospitalization at Harding Hospital16

Went remarkably similar to my first two hospitalizations at first
For the first week I had a really hard time staying in control
And I get restrained and put in the Quiet Room a lot
I had the same doctor and social worker on my treatment team17

By the beginning of the second week I was no longer getting restrained
But I was also barely eating anything because I was scared of getting fat
They weighed us every week at the hospital
When I had been admitted I weighed 86 pounds
By the time my first week ended I was 82 pounds
My blood pressure was already too low
And it would drop every time I stood up18

Dr. Whitman checked in with me one morning
And informed me that I was being put on eating disorder protocol
They started making me change into a hospital gown to get weighed
They did this every single morning and it was torture for me
Because they weighed me with my back to the scale
They wouldn’t let me in the bathrooms for an hour after meals
And they took my blood pressure and pulse three times a day19

I just ended up restricting my food intake even more
Because I didn’t know what else to do
I was terrified of not knowing my weight
And put in a panic state because I knew I couldn’t purge20

While I was in the hospital they put me on a new anti depressant
The new antidepressant seemed to be working pretty well
And because I was no longer purging my medications
The voices were much quieter if when they were present at all21