People I Met Chapter 1: Burnaby General Hospital Psych and Addictions Unit 2009 Patients (names changed)

 

Traudl

She acted the part of the “no-nonsense German woman”, either as a compensation for being so utterly out of control with her mental illness, or having control stripped from her by being forced to stay there. She got ECT, and said it made her lose her memory. Perhaps she, like some others there, chose to have the ECT, too... just to have something she had chosen that wasn’t forced on her, to be able to tell herself that it wasn’t forced on her, that she hadn’t suffered that indignity.

Ernst

“I’ll tell you what it was like after,” he said to me about the electroconvulsive therapy he was getting. “If I remember.”

After all, ECT often wipes a lot of your short-term and long-term memory.

Wanda

She might have been grasping at straws. She told me she signed the paper for ECT herself, but perhaps it was to avoid the indignity of having a judge sign it for her anyway. She said the doctor was so good, the way he explained it all. As though that redeems the doctor for shocking people’s brains, scaring people worse by shocking their brains than their depression would if they didn’t have the “treatment”... giving them worse anxiety than the treatment itself could even alleviate.

Bridget

She tried to reach out every day, to the staff and to other patients, talking about her past and her feelings. She needed comfort, but all she got from a hospital that was supposed to be making her feel better was scorn from staff. “I don’t care if you’re happy or sad or glad or what!” the mean nurse once told her. They injected her when she didn’t take her meds, which traumatized her more than she was traumatized before that was her mental illness in the first place.

She was desperate, trying to tell herself that she had a chance with a young guy who was also a patient on the unit. Maybe she did. Even if she didn’t, it’s awful that society makes older people seem like not good catches on account of their age... hence the young guy not wanting her due to her age, and her wanting a younger guy sometimes and not an older one.

People... older people are gems with lots of stories and wisdom and experience, stop treating them like crazy stupid nothings!

Bridget also talked about her golden times when she was younger, and popular, and an it girl. If it was true then she was trying to prove she wasn’t always this crazy old lady, and if it wasn’t she also was trying to prove that because she was unfortunately ashamed of her own history though she should never have been, should never have been made to feel like she had to be... because this society treats people like they’re worth less or worthless if they’re older and/or crazy.

Randee

She was told that if she didn’t take some extra medication right then, she wouldn’t be allowed to go home on a visit to her parents.

Tecoa

Brainwashed me thought, She’s so sane, why’s she here? She’s so normal! She talked “normal.” Then again, there is no such thing as normal overall, and normal more specifically varies and changes with the situation. Therefore “normal” isn’t necessarily good, or even the self-appointed “leaders’” own definition of “good.”

She chatted with me and others, and another patient she got close to made a promise bracelet for her in the arts and crafts room. She was one of those life-goes-on people. I admire them.

Martin

He was in a psych ward for a reason, but that wasn’t why I was intimidated by him... I felt intimidated more just because he was a boisterous young guy who was a bit hardened, perhaps from the streets. He was a human being though, and had his outbursts that showed his vulnerability that was the result of being locked up. Which reminds me that all outbursts are from a place of vulnerability, a place of desperation... from a corner the person is in. Intimidation is a reaction to one’s own situation of vulnerability.

Anneliese

I was one of the few people that didn’t treat her like she was stupid. She was old, not stupid. Nobody’s stupid. They stereotyped her as not all there. They controlled her every move, it seemed, even telling her to put her hand down when she put it up “because I don’t want your arm to get tired.” She was under constant supervision, with a staffer always with her, and sometimes the staff played cards with her and talked to her, and sometimes they didn’t. She, like the other older people on the unit, was treated with even more condescension by staff than the other patients, we who weren’t old.

I think she didn’t want to admit to them that she was more there than they thought, because that would mean admitting the painful truth that she was being patronized to death. So she told them they were right, that no she didn’t remember the last few days, and even became more disoriented sometimes seemingly spontaneously (or perhaps was trying to make herself that way or make herself seem that way so that she’d at least be able to tell herself that she deserved the treatment she was getting).

She confided in me on my last day there that people thought she was stupid and treated her accordingly and that she hated it.

Roberto

He was a dishwasher for seven years, and earned the respect of some of the decent staff because he was always helping clean around the unit.

He was there due to what I think was a miscommunication. He told his brother he wanted to be a writer and no longer a dishwasher, his brother told him to get out of the house, he didn’t take it seriously, so his brother called the cops to evict him and he lost it, not understanding that his brother probably was kicking him out because he didn’t think he could pay his share of the bills with writing, not for personal reputation reasons because he wanted to be a writer and change his career.

This guy spoke slow, perhaps overmedicated or perhaps for some other reason, but spoke very eloquently. He kept writing pretty good poetry in the facility.

It really sucked for him that they told him it was up to his brother when he got out. He said it was because his brother was his guardian but I wondered if that was true and should have told him what I was wondering. But I was too scared staff would overhear me talking about this and decide to retaliate against me. Either they lied that the brother was his guardian, or the brother was actually his guardian (which isn’t cool either-- big NO to James Spears-style conservatorships), or they neglected to explain to him that they were just looking for housing for him and that if he didn’t want to go back with his brother he might have to wait longer for housing.

Globe

He saw spirits and thought the computers at his school were full of spirits, and was locked up for something to do with that.

Henrietta

She was a heroin addict, and told me she’d been in psych wards 37 times and in rehab 24 times. She was happy and friendly and energetic and acted proud of it as a defence mechanism, she was so over feeling ashamed and that was good. Better to be proud of yourself, of surviving so much. And best to be proud of seeing the best in even the so-called “worst” people she hung out with. “He’s my friend!” she said gleefully about one of the really questionable characters, Marcus.

Marcus

He was addicted to drugs and was friends with Henrietta. He tried to befriend everyone he thought might have drugs for him. He felt panic one day so bad he couldn’t stand up, and was sitting on the floor, and told me to go get a staffer and tell them he couldn’t stand up. I wonder if he was experiencing something physical or something psychosomatic, but regardless, it was real. Even if he was faking it, it was because of a very real psychic pain. So staff shouldn’t have tried to reason with him that he could stand up... they should have asked what was really going on.

Donnie

He held me as I cried from my parents kicking me when I was down when they came to visit. The icing on the cake had been when my father said, “We didn’t abuse you. We sent you to private school!” as though the school they send you to negates the effect of abuse or makes it not abuse.

I don’t think Donnie fully understood why I was crying, as I didn’t have the words to fully explain it, but he understood some... and he understood I was upset and needed love, not a lecture as though I was a faulty machine or “stupid and soulless person” to be reprogrammed with lecturing rather than a sentient being to be loved and taught by being loved.

I think Donnie was a bit brainwashed himself about lecturing being helpful, but deep down underneath, like everyone, he knew it wasn’t, and he was lucky enough to be able to let that part of him shine through a little. I was grateful for it, though it didn’t seem like much.

Randall

He was the first other patient I talked to when I got on the unit. We connected by talking about what it had been like for both of us in the seclusion room in the emergency department. People can bond over anything.