Another night at the ER

Maybe the psych ER should just reserve two chairs for Galen and Gabriel in the waiting room. Monday night we spent yet another night there. Gabriel came to my room about 11 PM and said he needed to go back to the ER because the voices were really bad. By this point, I have become the devil's advocate when it comes to seeking "help" there. Once again I reminded him that when he's gone there before, with exactly the same complaint, they haven't done anything. I suggested that he put on his headphones and listen to the radio to drown out the voices, as he usually does. He said he'd try. A few minutes later, he was back, again complaining that the voices were really bad. As I had heard the doctors ask so many times, I asked him what the voices were saying. "They say they're going to kill me...or that I should kill myself." OK, I knew we had to go.

At the ER, the waiting room was full of folks with very tired faces. Listening to the general conversation, I learned that some of these people had been waiting since 2:00 that afternoon. Sigh...I knew it was going to be a very long night. It was a pretty typical crowd. There were a couple of middle aged ladies with teary eyes, a young woman with her boyfriend, a teenaged boy with his mother who compared experiences in prison with another ex-con in the next seat, an intense young man, a homeless man who apparently had just come to get out of the cold rainy weather to sleep someplace warm. For a while we had to deal with an obnoxious woman who had come with her sister and somewhat elderly father, announcing with dramatic flourish that she had come to commit herself. When she wasn't granted immediate entrance to the exam area and was told to fill out the required registration forms, she started complaining loudly in a string of obscenities. "F-ing fill out f-ing forms? No wonder people f-ing jump off f-ing bridges!!" A staff person at the window told her that they'd get to her in a few minutes. So she went downstairs to smoke a cigarette and, when she returned, she was outraged that they didn't take her right back to the exam area, and her ranting escalated, with her family members hovering around her, trying to calm her down. Far from being sympathetic, I was getting more and more irritated. I'm not a psychitrist, but after all these years of living with my kids and dealing with lots of psychiatric disorders, she struck me not as someone who was suicidal, but as someone who had borderline personality disorder, who was there for one simple reason: the drama. She wanted to stir up her family and she wanted the attention. Sitting there, knowing the severity of Gabriel's problems, I was further irritated that she was demanding to be seen ahead of him and all these other folks who had been waiting up to 10 hours. I finally couldn't stand it any longer and spoke up: "You know, other people have problems, too, and some of these people have been waiting since 2:00." Oops. All eyes were riveted on me, and the woman instantly turned her wrath and her obscenities on a new target. I thought she might come barrelling across the room for me. After several minutes of verbal assault, she left with dramatic flourish, shortly before two security officers showed up.

The rest of the night was uneventful. Several folks finally stretched out on the floor to sleep while they waited for their name to be called. By the time they called Gabriel back to see the doc, it was 6:30 AM and we were the only ones left in the waiting room. The effete resident doctor sat aloofly at his desk, reading through the notes from Gabriel's hospitalization last week. He asked Gabriel about the voices. He asked Gabriel if he felt like hurting anyone else: no. He asked him if he felt like hurting himself. I was stunned and frightened by his answer: "Yes, sometimes I think about stabbing myself in the head with a knife to make the voices stop." Now, a couple of weeks ago, I would have been outraged that they didn't think Gabriel should be hospitalized as a danger to himself or others, but, knowing how worthless the latest hospital stay had been, even in terms of observing his behavior and mental state, not to mention adjusting his medication, I accepted the decision to send him home. I did convince the doctor to try Gabriel on a first generation antipsychotic medication, and, with prescription in hand, we left.

Fortunately, as of Monday, I'm off work on short term disability due to my back problems, so I can observe Gabriel on the new medication. As I write this, he's had 2 doses of this med that he is to take 3 times/day, and he was actually talking with me a bit last night. So there is a glimmer of hope...