#it took 7 years for me to even suspect that i had bipolar disorder | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

just-your-average-tangerine · 7 months ago

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This is going to be long, I apologize in advance.

I'd say my experience started when I was just out of high school (18-19 years old). My mom was working as a bouncer at a lesbian bar, her shift would end around 11pm, and she'd stay and drink until the bar closed, then call me to come pick her up. By the time I'd get there, she'd be waiting out front with several of her friends who were regulars at the bar. These friends (the youngest of whom was 38, the others all in their 50s) had a running bet on which one of them would be the first to "have" me and how many it would take to "make a good lesbian out of me" the 38 year old even offered that if my mother would get me to marry her she would "fix me" and "make sure I stayed a woman".

Before starting t I was told over and over again by a variety of people, including other queer people and even other trans people, that I shouldn't go on t, or I shouldn't want to go on t because it was bound to turn me into a monster or a rapist.

In an intake interview to get in to see a gender therapist to get my letter to start t. The therapist, who very clearly lacked even basic trans competency, diagnosed me with bipolar disorder, based on a bad reaction I'd had to a medication that subsequent doctors agreed I should never have been prescribed in the first place, 4 years earlier. This diagnosis was used to delay my appointment with the gender therapist until I had a minimum of 8 weeks with a different therapist, I don't believe this diagnosis is accurate, and I suspect it was to delay my transition.

When I started testosterone, the physicians assistant that was supposed to show me how to do the injection refused to do so, claiming that if I didn't already understand how to self administer an intramuscular injection then I clearly was not competent to be making this decision. The only thing she did tell me was that I didn't need to measure a dose because each vial was one dose. As I'm sure anyone on injectable testosterone knows, that is absolutely not accurate. This led to my t levels being way too high. Before that test came back, the doctor took me off t because I'd gained weight (~7 pounds, a perfectly reasonable amount for the first 8 weeks on t). Then, once my hormone test came back showing such high levels, all my future appointments were canceled, and I was told testosterone was clearly not a viable option for me. Luckily, a friend of mine urged me to get a second opinion, and I've been safely on t for 2 years.

Shortly after starting t, a trans fem nonbinary person who I had considered a friend prior to this, called me in the middle of the night claiming to need help. I went to their house immediately and discovered they'd lied about needing help. It turned out that they'd seen me post on Instagram earlier, and based on the post, they assumed that I was drunk and would be easier to take advantage of. They spent an hour or so telling me how it's such a shame I'm a man and I would be so much better off being nonbinary because they "don't like men but they like me". They then asked if they could practice knot tying on me, I agreed, and they bound my hands together, pushed me back on the couch, climbed on top of me, and said I should "just let them fuck the man out of me".

Ive sat through trans support groups where it was explained that trans men shouldn't want to be men but since we are we have a responsibility to be good allies to women by never going out in public after dark, never speaking to women in public, etc. Because it could be taken as a threat. I've sat through trans support groups in which it was explained that because all fetuses initially develop as female, that trans femininity is a developmental issue, but trans masculinity is a mental illness, and therefore it makes sense that I'm both trans and autistic because "all trans men are retards". I've sat through trans social groups where one person explained to another that "t boys make the best fuck dolls and you don't even have to treat them like people".

I tried to join a queer mens group and was told that it's for queer men, not "delusional little girls."

My mothers believe I was manipulated into thinking I'm trans (and gay) because the lgbt center I went to "hates lesbians"

I could probably go on but this is long enough as is.

❗️❗️ This is asked entirely in good faith. This post is intended to open dialogue and help with solidarity and understanding. ❗️❗️

I would like to hear specifically from trans men and trans mascs how the system of [whatever the fuck you call the intersection of transphobia, misogyny, and specifically your gender- whether transandrophobia, isomisogny, antitransmasculinity, transandromisia, transmisandry, or any that I have missed as there are a lot of words to describe similar concepts] uniquely targets and affects you. Things that you feel other demographics do not experience. Reblogs and replies are very encouraged! If you would prefer, you could dm or send an ask to be added anonymously by me.

This is in the spirit of wanting to understand. I am listening. I encourage all non-trans-mascs to not speak on this topic and let trans mascs and trans men do the talking here. Reblog the post to spread it, but please say nothing.

Any and all people who identify as trans men and/or trans mascs are encouraged to participate.

This is not bait to start a fight. I will block without hesitation anyone who is actively being a shithead on this post. I want to hear and uplift your voices by getting it directly from you.

Click this to access the trans fem and trans women version of this post.

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omgokiguess · 4 years ago

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wow guys i just got out of rehab today

first of all. it was so terrible except for some of the people there. but also a couple of the people there really sucked too.

the staff was TERRIBLE. they were literally so mean and power hungry. i was friends with basically every patient (except for the few shitty ones) and was really nice to them.... like i took in this innocent 20yo girl who started calling me her big sister and i helped this 21yo girl so much with her anxiety..... like i took care of everyone that i could and i stuck up for everyone that the staff treated like shit. and the staff was so fucking rude to me. the whole staff said so many times “we have no problem giving you extra phone time/computer time to take care of things like work, aftercare, legal problems, financial problems, etc” but literally every single time i asked to call work or call my lawyer or anything i got a no. it literally took me two full weeks to get things straightened out with exelon and i literally got let go from anthro because they would just not let me get on the phone so that’s cool. i never once was able to speak to my lawyer or my pre-trial officer. neat. also i got in a pretty heated fight with this one bitch employee who told me i was disrespectful because i asked her superior to open the laundry room for me because i had my period and needed new underwear out of the dryer. we were like screaming at each other and she ended up being sent home for four days. two guys actually ended up leaving randomly and left all their shit including their phones and wallets. that’s how bad the staff was.

the doctor was really good and knowledgeable and helpful and i really liked him. he was really chill. but i do have to say he really was pushing meds on not just me but everyone. i didn’t get on any meds though, and honestly one of the nurses congratulated me for not getting on meds when i left. i thought it was fucked up that i was the only person not on meds. we’re just alcoholics.... there’s no way we’re all fucking psychotic or something. nobody was on less than 2 meds besides me and i would say the average number of different meds was about 4 for somebody my age.

the staff just really frustrated me. it’s rehab so obviously there are a lot of rules for the sake of having rules and i honestly did not have a problem with the rules even though a lot of them were very silly. like you would not find me complaining about the unhealthy food, the fact that they said the gym would be open certain hours but was actually never open because they were “understaffed,” that our bathrooms were locked from 7:30am - 9:30pm and 25 people had to share two toilets, that there were essentially no covid-19 precautions, that somebody checked where i was every 15 minutes, that smoking a pack of cigarettes a day is okay but the juul is not, that i had to get the actual doctor to approve me using contact solution or allergy medication, or any other stupid thing they enforced. i literally only complained about the fact that i couldn’t talk to my employer(s), couldn’t talk to my lawyer, couldn’t talk to my pre-trial officer, couldn’t figure out my aftercare, couldn’t call my therapist, and that the staff spoke to me like i was either an idiot, a delinquent, or like i was a bitch.

i did put up one little stink though. this bitch that worked there, if we were in our rooms, when she checked on us she didn’t knock she just fucking opened up the door, so i decided to just chill in my room and read in the nude one day cause i knew she would just open the door without knocking... and wouldn’t it be fun for her to have to deal with the sight of my entire bush..... so i went for it lmao. she told the entire staff that she walked in on me LOL and the “director of operations” (this woman is truly a dumb cunt) asked my roommate, who was a 45 year old MD from lake forest, if she wanted to switch roommates (???) and dr. nancy my hero was like “um no i actually lucked out with erin and also diana should learn to knock.”

anyway, nancy and brittany my two fave people, left on the same day which really sucked but whatever. then sam left which also whatever... i loved her too. and then..... oh god i hate to admit this so much.... but then michael came in. he made it in 3-ish days before i left.

i literally have NO IDEA why this would be, but okay the protocol is before you go to rehab you go through alcohol detox in the hospital, so i was an inpatient in the hospital for 5 days. i slept through most of that because they put me on valium for those 5 days so that I wouldn’t experience the hells of alcohol withdrawal. i’m glad i was asleep for most of it though because there was nothing at all to do, they had like 3 different crossword puzzles and no TV but as it turns out..... i wasn’t in the alcohol detox section of the hospital.... for some reason they put me in the psychotic wing..... there were only 6 patients total in that wing and i was the only person living in reality. one woman escaped the hospital because she thought her husband was telling her to leave, and the other 4 men were handcuffed to their beds. i was the only person in there with any sense of reality, and i had gotten there in the middle of the night so i was unaware of other wings in the hospital. on my last night there, they moved me to “2 north” aka the normal alcohol detox wing, which probably had 100 people in it. so in the morning we all had breakfast together and i was like WHAT THE HELL..... I COULD HAVE MADE FRIENDS HERE.... and that’s when i met michael. i knew him for like a full 90 minutes total in inpatient but we were literally instant best friends. we met because some old men were telling me jokes trying to get me to laugh and he was sitting nearby and he was like “so how old are you like 35?” and i was like “you’ve got to be kidding me fuck you....” and he was like “yeah lol i’m kidding” and i was like playing back, like “so how old are you like 45?” cause he looked about 30 and he was like “yes” and i was like okay bullshit so he showed me his hospital band and it said 45..... and i was like okay this is ridiculous. anyway he had been to the rehab i was going to before so he told me about it and he gave me a note for sam and i just thought he was really cool. he was getting ECT treatments which is “a treatment most commonly used in patients with severe major depression or bipolar disorder that have not responded to other treatments. ECT involves a brief electrical stimulation of the brain while the patient is under anesthesia.” aka it’s literally where they put those diodes on your brain and shock you. he got 16 treatments. i thought he might end up back in rehab with me. but he spent like 2 full months in inpatient which is super abnormal, almost everyone is there for exactly 5 days like me. anyways

so michael shows up right before i leave and the big question is WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME...... i spent like 3 days with him nonstop and we can probably all see where this is going but.... this dumbass of course falls for him....???? there were some cuties in rehab and i had NO INTEREST in any of them but idk michael is just kind of.... the personality i’ve been looking for.

couple problems. 1. i have a boyfriend. 2. michael is 5′6″ .... (???) .... 3. i cannot get his fucking stupid smile out of my head and i’m hoping i was just sexually deprived for weeks and this is just a dumb thing BUT

idk my boyfriend like made all these promises of things he was going to do for me while i was in rehab and he kind of didn’t follow through on any of them. i really basically only told him and my sister that i’m going to rehab and my sister lives in boston and so i kind of assumed he would do the things he promised he would do, which clearly was stupid on my part. i can’t rely on him. i should have learned that by now... if i want something done i have to do it myself. i didn’t even ask very much of him. he basically promised four things. 1. he would take care of my guinea pigs. 2. he would check on my car to be sure it doesn’t get impounded 3. he would clean my room before i get back and 4. he would bring me the stuff i need (contact lenses to fucking see, hairbrush, tampons, other necessities) since they wouldn’t let me leave hospital care between detox and rehab. the only one of those he did was take care of my guinea pigs, which is essentially nothing because he goes to whole foods every day and his MAID cleaned their cage.

and idk, we were allowed 10 minutes of combined computer and phone time a day (which is literally nothing), and i always called him and ignored the computer because i thought he would want to hear from me and i would want to hear from him too, but at least 30% of the time i left phone time upset and crying. i mean i was turning my whole entire life around and it took him 13 days just to check to see that my car wasn’t impounded, and he had the audacity to complain that he was overwhelmed with all the stuff he had to deal with on my behalf even though it was literally just feeding my guinea pigs and then he had his own work shit. i suspect he’s taking more adderall than he should again. but i can’t even complain. his dad found the lawyer that may end up saving my life.

and anyway. he never ended up cleaning my room (he wasn’t even gonna clean it himself, he was going to hire someone to clean it and he couldn’t even do that even though he promised. i don’t need it i just kind of thought he was gonna keep his promise), and it took him 5 days to bring me the stuff i need. i kept in one pair of dailies for 5 days (i wore my last pair over from detox) and went blind for 2 days. my rehab was only 20 minutes from his house, a straight shot on the never-crowded 294. i left him with all of my debit cards and pins too, and bank logins so that he wouldn’t have to pay for anything i needed.

and idk then when i talked to him, whenever i complained about rehab he would just kind of be like “this is why you should have gone to PSI” which is where he went to rehab for marijuana.... which costs and arm and a leg because his dad will pay for anything for him and he doesn’t understand that i’m paying for this myself. and i didn’t want some cushy rehab. i mean yeah i didn’t want the staff to be such a load of cunts but i didn’t want his cushy frilly rehab experience. i would have really liked my program if there had just been better people working there. and he wanted to talk about my sobriety so much and like.... i don’t want to talk about it with him. idk in his head i think he thinks i’m taking his exact same journey and like i’m NOT. like it’s not even the same drug. he acts like he totally understands and it’s like... yes there is a lot he understands but there’s a lot that’s different and there’s no way ANY two patients ever went through the exact same thing, ESPECIALLY when it’s different drugs!!!!

and i’ve been with him since about 1p today (he was late to pick me up, it was supposed to be noon, which he promised he wouldn’t be late, and him being late was also something i brought up a lot in rehab because it caused me so much stress..... i just KNEW he was gonna be late and it caused me a lot of anxiety and i told him this so much and he was still late) (and anyway the point here is).... i’ve been with him since 1 and he just keeps saying weird stuff about alcohol. which is EXACTLY why i didn’t want anybody to know i was going to rehab. like after eating hospital food for weeks i wanted to go to a nice restaurant and most nice restaurants serve alcohol.... which is FINE like i was not gonna drink.... but he kept saying things like “we probably shouldn’t go to a pub” or “lake forest food and wine hmm better not go there” and it’s like..... i’m fucking HUNGRY i purposely didn’t eat the hospital food because i wanted to eat good food and it took us till 2:30pm to get somewhere because he felt the need to beat around the alcohol bush.... and every time alcohol came up in conversation (which just HAPPENS because that is how life is....) he’d be like oh sorry shouldn’t mention that and it’s like I CAN HANDLE IT..... i literally finally said to him “wow I’m so glad I didn’t tell anyone i went to rehab because if everybody talked to me the way you’re talking to me that would make me want to drink”

and also right before i went to rehab i told him i was afraid i wasn’t going to like him anymore if i was sober. and boy was i right. and adding michael in did not fucking help. i told myself i would never like somebody fucking shorter than me but i can’t fucking help it. i’ve never liked people for their looks anyway and his personality is just fucking perfect. i can’t get his voice and his smile out of my head. and i trust him to be sober. i really do. this was his first relapse in five years, and he only spent one month drinking before getting help. and i think we could be sober together.

idk maybe i was just so sex deprived that i was just horny or something. i don’t know.

i start online intensive outpatient tomorrow at noon. this week i have it wednesday thursday and friday but it’s gonna be different every week and somebody is going to at least speak with me every day. i’m doing it through derek’s practice and i told him to make sure i have a lot of homework.

i’m not sure how or when i’m going to get back to work. i don’t even really care though. i can always get another job. and after talking to my sister and working through some therapy at rehab, i almost think it’s best to move anyway. i think it would really help me to get away from my parents.

idk. my life is just so in limbo right now. i can stay on FMLA leave for 3 months and on my upcoming court date, that will mark one month. i think it might be wise to use the whole three months. it also might not be wise though because i need things to do. maybe if i could just get back to anthro.....

anthro terminated me in the weirdest way and i think my lawyer can get my job at anthro back for me with a simple letter. that might be the best thing for me right now.

not to mention.... i haven’t been back to my apartment yet but.... the gold coast has been destroyed. i don’t know what i’m going back to at this point. this is really sad sad sad to say but i don’t think i will be living downtown chicago anymore, once i find some other solution or once this lease expires, i’m leaving. maybe i’ll stay in chicagoland but probably not. if i do stay in chicagoland i’m gonna be living in the suburbs. but i think it only makes sense to get out of here. i think it makes sense to go to the southeast. florida or atlanta or north carolina or virginia. california is always on the mind too but to move there i think i need to be really really confident in my sobriety.

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moldybits · 5 years ago

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Yeah I'm doing okay. I've taken the last two months or so to think on my mental health, and honestly I don't know what's wrong with me. I've never been formally diagnosed with anything, though I have suspected OCD in the past, but now I'm realizing that I fit the bill for a few mental illnesses, and that a lot of the behaviors I've had for ages could be symptoms, but I never realized until now. It's all just so confusing tbh

I know exactly how you feel. I’ve been through many diagnoses and meds and nothing worked until super recently with Rapid-Cycling Bipolar II and C-PTSD (and most likely ADHD but that’s on the back burner rn). I had been constantly told I was just experiencing clinical depression and anxiety with my trans dysphoric my entire life but... that wasn’t it. At all. I think my meds are working now but I can still have psychotic symptoms on them since they only treat my bipolar depression so 🤷🏻‍♂️ we will see

My partner went through so many doctors and they just kept saying they were “unspecified psychotic disorder” or something and the only confirmed things were 1) autism 2) psychosis 3) C-PTSD but it turns out that not only did they have those things, but the “unspecified” was actually Dissociative Identity Disorder. It took years to find this out... but it did happen and things are better. Things are a lot better

It’s extremely confusing and I wish I could say it didn’t take me long to figure out what’s going on, but it did. And I think the things I struggled with is telling doctors how I truly feel because I didn’t have the vocabulary for it. It really took going into every little detail of my life with a new therapist and she saw things I did not realize were not normal, and was immediately like “you’re bipolar” which was NEVER considered my entire life.

Spend time in the different mental illness communities. Ask yourself questions. Keep journals, even if they’re just random incoherent thoughts on a page with dates. Get symptom trackers. Like... don’t “obsess” over your mental health to the point of stressing yourself out, and possibly triggering whatever you have, but I find that researching is a very good thing. Something I suspect you’re already doing anyway, but still

Oh, and if you suspect something and assume it’s that for a long time and it turns out it’s another disorder... like don’t worry about it. This shit is confusing but it’ll all make sense one day. Well, kinda lmao I’m still figuring it out

I wrote a lot oops but I just got my bipolar diagnosis in uhh November and meds in February and recently started trauma therapy and this is after spending like...7+ years misdiagnosed. So I’m still figuring this out too anon. It sucks not knowing and I know how you feel but I promise it really will get better. Don’t give up, always feel free to message me btw

#mental health #asks #anon

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spaci1701 · 5 years ago

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Ranking a few from worst to best (yes, really best).

Worst - a shrink my family was sent to by child services (NOT a child psychologist) due to suspected abuse - has one session as a family, one each with us individually and then tells me (7) and my brother (10) that "it's not fair what you're doing to your family" and "don't you think it would be more fun at home if we behaved so we weren't always in trouble?"

Almost as bad - teeth disintegrating due to prior medication, genetics and a bout of malnutrition. Fillings falling out and teeth shattering below the gum line. Trying to save up enough for dentures and on waiting list for full extraction. Constant infections. End up in the er in the worst pain of my life, hurting too badly to even sit down. In waiting room for almost two hours. Have to ask for an ice pack. Shown to a back room finally. Sit there for another two hours without anyone even looking in. Finally hint down a desk to ask if anyone was coming. Get told dismissively that they don't deal with my section but will pass on a message. An hour later this bitch finally comes in (won't dignify her with a title). I explain the situation. Her first q "So how much meth do you do?" (No other symptoms of drug use.) Tells me that I'm over-reacting and could have afforded the dentures much sooner if I didn't smoke. Jabs her finger HARD into the most painful spot on purpose, randomly jabs a novocaine needle into my upper gum 7 or 8 times causing a fair amount of bleeding, tells me it's clearly not infected and sends me home with a T3 prescription since that's "obviously what you came in for. "

Crawl into bed as soon as I get home and sleep for 3 hours. On awakening my dad took one look at me and took me straight to a different er. My face was so swollen I couldn't even put my glasses on. New doc treats me like a human being, explains that the pain was from the nerve in that tooth dying, tells me that they normally don't administer novocaine in the upper jaw without a dental specialist due to the high risk of missing and injecting it into the brain cavity and tells me that she clearly stuck the needle through a highly concentrated pocket of infection and released it into the rest of my face. I end up with a port on my arm for twice daily high dose antibiotic IVs for 10 days and another two weeks of high dose oral antibiotics following.

Bad - school counselor brought in at age 11 partially due to my fairly obvious problems, many of which were caused by the extreme bullying I got at school. Read a story I wrote of someone committing suicide by going over Niagara Falls in a barrel and assumed I was suicidal (wasn't at that time). Dealt with it by putting my entire clad through peer counseling training and TELLING THEM WHY -IN SPECIFICS.

Many other stories of varying degrees but...

Good - family doctor called me in for test results at 17 when I hadn't taken any test in 6 months except a pregnancy test. Used the time to officially apologize to me for not listening better when I tried to explain my mother's behaviour over the years. Stated that, "Every teenager thinks their parents are crazy. You were right." Sent me home with an iron supplement as an excuse for my mother. Got my mother diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder.

Best - Got inexplicably sick at a year old. Sudden spikes of life threatening fever, vomiting, failure to thrive, the works. Doc ran every test he could think of and then any his coworkers could think of. Discussed my case with every medical person he met, including at at least one cocktail party. Ran those tests. Couldn't find anything for over 2 years. Made hundreds of copies of my charts and mailed them to every every doctor in Canada that could possibly have a clue. Got a call from a doctor on the other side of the country demanding to know why I wasn't in the icu and why we were relying on my elderly mother for my care. After much confusion they figured out that the other doc had gotten a bad photocopy and misread my birthdate. Thought I was 33 instead of 3. Ended up with two surgeries on my kidneys to repair an issue that normally only shows up in adults. Was one of the first 10 people in either Canada or North America (Mom couldn't remember which) diagnosed with this under the age of 30. It's now in the books as a rare possibility for children. My life was saved by a technical misdiagnosis.

Do me a favor.

Reblog this if a medical professional has ever treated you like shit or fucked up your diagnosis or was just generally wrong.

#long post

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scandalbaby · 7 years ago

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Massive Ask

I was tagged by @hmg621 on my @penaltywaltz account, but I thought it’d be cool to answer this here.

Rules: tag 20 people

The Last:

1. Drink: Water

2. Phone Call: My mom

3. Text message: A reminder about my ultrasound tomorrow.

4. Song you listened to: "Hoot" by Girls’ Generation

5. Time you cried: When I was at the emergency room with my five day (later twelve day) migraine because it was too bright and too loud.

Have You:

6. Dated someone twice: Yes

7. Kissed someone and regretted it: Yes

8. Been cheated on: Yes

9. Lost someone special: Yes

10. Been depressed: I have dual cycling bipolar so I'm always depressed, I just don't usually show overt symptoms since I'm also hypermanic.

11: Gotten drunk and thrown up: Yes

List 3 Favorite Colors:

12. Steel blue

13. Cornflower blue

14: Navy blue

In the last year, have you…

15. Made new friends: Yes

16. Fallen out of love: No

17. Laughed until you cried: Yes

18. Found out someone was talking about you: Yes (but not in a bad way, which is what I think this question means)

19. Met someone who changed you: Yes

20. Found out who your friends are: Yes

21. Kissed someone on your FB list: Sort of? I kissed my mom on the cheek a lot, and we're FB friends.

GENERAL:

22. How many Facebook friends do you know in real life: Maybe 2/3rds.

23. Do you have any pets: I have two cats (Sally and Molly) and my mother's cat and I are buddies (her name is Shamrock) since I usually take care of her, too.

24. Do you want to change your name: I used to want to change my first name but now I want to adopt the same last name that my mother and son have (my son took my mother's last name when he was adopted, has has both our maiden names hyphenated)

25. What did you do for your last birthday: I don't even remember. I don't think I did anything super special because I was depressed.

26. What time did you wake up: 7 in the morning, but I kept napping until 8

27. What were you doing at midnight last night: Trying to go to sleep

28. Name something you can’t wait for: The arrival of a DVD I ordered before the hacking from England that never arrived that was resent yesterday (it's that Shakespeare thing that Benedict Cumberbatch and all the other Hamlets were in with the Hamlet speech...I'm getting the full show)

29. When was the last time you saw your Mom: 10 AM

30. What is one thing you wish you could change in your life: my health

31. What are you listening to right now: "Partyman” by Prince

32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: Yup. I spent 16 years in retail off and on so I've talked to a lot of Toms.

33. Something that is getting on your nerves: The damn roach problem in my apartment, which hopefully will be less of a problem after today.

34. Most visited website: Since I use the Tumblr app more than the website, either AO3 or Insanejournal.

35. Mole/s: I don't have any, I don't think. I have dark brown spots all over my body, but no moles that are raised.

36. Mark/s: My arms are riddled with scars (mostly very faint ones from when my sister and I would fight and she'd dig her nails into my arm until I bled when we were kids, but also some recent ones from scabs I picked at because of how stressed I've been) but I also have one across my left thumb (from cutting it on a dog food can lid when I was eight or nine), a closed naval piercing, the scar on my lower back from my back surgery and four tiny scars on my abdomen from my gallbladder surgery.

37. Childhood dream: Teacher, astronaut or writer

38. Hair color: Naturally dark brown but I dyed it burgundy to cover up the horrible bleach/blue job I did on Mother's Day. It’s faded now and my brown roots are coming back, so I’m going to re-dye it later this week when I can find the boxes my mom isn’t going to use.

39. Long or short hair: Medium (shoulder length, though I desperately want it shorter)

40. Do you have a crush on someone?: No

41. What do you like about yourself: My creativity and my stubbornness

42. Piercings: Seven in each ear (though I don't know how many are still open, aside from the furthest bottom lobe one)

43. Blood type: A+ (which is how I found out my dad isn't my birth dad...everyone else in my family is either O+ or O-)

44: Nicknames: Waltzy, Penny, Mom

45. Relationship status: Single, as I have been for fifteen years now, and happy about it.

46. Zodiac: Aquarius

47. Pronouns: She/Her

48. Favorite TV show(s): Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries is, like, the only show I watch right now, because it's my comfort show. But I also like Elementary, The Amazing World of Gumball, Murder She Wrote, Agatha Christie's Marple, pretty much every Scooby Doo cartoon in existence, Midsomer Murders and Grantchester.

49. Tattoos: None yet

50. Right or left hand: Right

51. Surgery: Tonsilectomy in 1991, gallbladder removal in 2014, lower back surgery in 2016.

52. Hair dyed a different color: Often. Like, I've been every natural color, what feels like a million shades of red, platinum blonde and green and blue.

53. Sports: Not a huge fan of them but soccer is okay.

54. Vacation: Like I have the money...the last time I went on vacation was to Hilton Head in 1994, right before I moved to the main island of Beaufort (which actually made me hate Hilton Head High School more than my actual rival at the time, Battery Creek...which worked out well when I transfered to Battery Creek my senior year)

55. Shoes: Usually my slide on sandals with the memory foam or the Easy Spirit slip-ons I bought for $3 at a yard sale (seriously, better money spent than the $50 I spent on Doc Martens after I had my gallbladder surgery that are useless to me now).

56. Eating: Some cheddar Chex Mix

57. Drinking: I actually can't have alcohol anymore. I used to be a whiskey person, or vodka and fruit juice (usually orange or cranberry with Sprite).

58. I’m about to: go add more posts I saved to the queue and fix a few IJ layouts for characters I have to do apps on for roleplay purposes.

59. Waiting for: Another call with my son.

60. Want: My health back, but since that's not really an option an actual diagnosis agreed on by EVERYONE involved in my care (because right now neurosurgeon says degenerative disc disorder / GP says fibromyalgia / rheumatologist is suspecting psoriatic arthritis, but I could have all three for all I know) so I can apply for disability and get a more steady income.

61. Get married: Maybe. I'm actually okay with being single for the rest of my life if that's what happens.

62. Career: Writer of...something. Not sure if I want to write novels or what.

WHICH IS BETTER:

63. Hugs or kisses: Hugs

64. Lips or eyes: Eyes

65. Shorter or taller: Taller

66. Older or younger: Older, but no more than 5 years.

67. Nice arms or nice stomach: Arms

68. Sensitive or loud: Sensitive

69. Hook up or relationship: Relationship

70. Troublemaker or hesitant: Hesitant

HAVE YOU EVER:

71. Kissed a stranger: Yes

72. Drank hard liquor: Yes

73. Lost glasses/contact lenses: Yes (recently, actually...I have no earthly idea where my glasses are)

74. Turned someone down: Yes

75. Sex on first date: Yes

76. Broken someone’s heart: I've been told I have

77. Had your heart broken: Yes

78. Been arrested: Sort of? Not actually arrested but I was but in the drunk tank after I came back from Tijuana once, which was hilarious because my friend WHO WAS DRIVING was drunker than I was.

79. Cried when someone died: Yes

80. Fallen for a friend: Yes

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

81. Yourself: For the some part, but not always.

82. Miracles: Yes

83. Love at first sight: Not for me, but other people have said it happened and I don't doubt them

84. Santa Claus: Yes

85. Kiss on the first date: Yes

OTHER:

86. Current best friend: @thegirlisme, @posterofamyth and on the rare occasions I get to talk to her (since I'm not on FB often) my girl Heather, who has been my friend since my freshman year of high school (23 years now).

87. Eye color: Hazel

88. Favorite movie: Clue, The Phantom Tollbooth, the new Ghostbusters or any of the Mummy Trilogy

I tag everyone. Anyone who wants to do this, have at it.

#about me #i was tagged

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tiredbiplantlady · 7 years ago

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bipolar ask posted by loloren69

General:

1. Type 1 or type 2?

I don’t really know. I could speculate as a psych master’s student, but I don’t feel comfortable making that call. I only know my therapist told me I was bipolar, said I was manic, and described mania to me and specified my behaviors that fell in line with that, no doubt about it, which would indicate bipolar I

2. Self-dx or professional dx?

Self-suspected, professional confirmed

3. Are you currently hypo/manic, depressed, mixed, stable, or not sure?

Hypomanic at the least, but it feels like I’m coming down because I’m exhausted for the first time in a while and 6 or 7 days of barely sleeping

4. Do you have any other mental illnesses/disorders?

I’ve had a diagnosable form of nearly every anxiety disorder in the DSM at different times since childhood and was diagnosed with various disorders from ADD to dysthymia and adjustment disorder. I consider my only other still-valid diagnosis to be PTSD, but it’s in remission.

5. When did you first start having symptoms?

In retrospect I’d say the mood problems started around 15, but it got way worse in 2014 and worse still in 2015. the depressive symptoms were out of control and may have been a mixed episode (age 22)

6. When did you realize/learn that you have bipolar?

I suspected it briefly as a teenager even though I didn’t know shit about it, but didn’t think about it again until the past year and then the past few months my therapist identified symptoms I described as hypomania and in the last week as mania

7. Have you ever received a misdiagnosis?

I don’t know if my former diagnoses were necessarily “misdiagnoses” - I think symptoms change over time, new things come up, other things trail off. I think one professional can see symptoms and call it one thing and another professional can call it something else. It’s complicated and subjective.

8. How self-aware are you on a scale of 1-10?

LMAO I am the most over-analyzing, self-aware person - easy 9 or 10

9. How many people know about your bipolar disorder?

Couple people. I’m skeptical about talking about disorders, especially new diagnoses because I’m insecure about what people think because I’ve received several from different professionals, and outside people tend to just see a shifting diagnosis and think I’m making shit up “new year, new diagnosis” always gotta have “something wrong with me” to talk about. Which isn’t how I feel and labels don’t really mean shit, it’s the symptoms and their treatment I care about. A label is just a fast way to describe something complex. sorry it took a while to figure out what was wrong and i went thru many labels before landing here

10. Are any of your family members bipolar?

Two formal diagnoses/very related diagnoses that I know of (grandma - MDD w/psychotic features, highly likely undiagnosed bipolar based on past behaviors (delusions, hallucinations, yelling on top of a roof, etc. police called, institutionalization), uncle - bipolar I w/psychotic features). some others I suspect, imo

11. Name three fictional characters you relate to and/or headcanon as bipolar.

Uhhh Ian Gallagher. I’m not creative with this right now and I haven’t thought about this at all.

Hypo/mania:

12. When hypo/manic, do you get euphoric, dysphoric, angry, creative, social, or several of the above?

It depends. It seems like I get euphoric, creative and social sometimes, and euphoric, agitated (not angry), and dysphoric other times. But those cluster together

13. What has been your longest hypo/manic episode?

I think it was from November 2016 to January 2017, so like 3 months, but it was the first “episode” I noted and kept even some track of after the fact. I may have had others in the past.

14. Have you ever had a psychotic episode? What symptoms did it include?

I’ve had two depressive episodes that I can specifically certainly note that included delusions (lasted just over a month to two months) of the somatic variety.

15. What kind of impulsive decisions have you made?

Where do I start? Over-spending, over-eating, drinking to excess, impulsive risky sex/sexual situations/hypersexuality, getting tattoos/piercings (kinda goes with spending, but I mention it specifically because it’s permanent), long-distance travel without telling anyone where I was going, cheating, lying, not thinking ahead and it hurting people, falling in love, ending relationships, general recklessness and selfishness. I’m sure there’s more and I’m not proud of it in the slightest, so please don’t think I am.

16. What’s the most money you’ve spent in a single day while hypo/manic?

$200-300

17. What’s the longest you’ve gone without sleep?

Period...um. I couldn’t say. Probably 2 with NO sleep and with minimal sleep (3-4 hours) over a week

18. Are you a creative type? Have you ever made a poem/song/other artwork about being bipolar?

I’m creative, but I don’t write about being bipolar because I never fully considered myself to be so until recently. I’ve written about mood instability and trauma a TON tho. And much of my art work is and always has been about duality, mixed emotions, extremes, and highs/lows.

Depression:

19. When depressed, do you get suicidal, bored, anxious, guilty, or several of the above?

It depends, but I’m mostly unmotivated as fuck and empty. I start feeling worthless and unlovable and I hate myself. Sometimes I feel suicidal, but have never attempted and won’t. I’ve self-harmed and planned how to kill myself, but was never intending to do it. I’ve spent the majority of my life in a state of constant anxiety so there’s that, especially when depressed. Irrational guilt and sluggishness are common for me with depression. Once in a while my mood dives along with my energy, but my mind is over-worked and highly anxious, which is when the delusions I’ve had occurred.

20. What has been your longest depressive episode?

Fuck...months upon months. I couldn’t tell you. Maybe even a year or more, which is why I was misdiagnosed as dysthymic as a teenager

21. How do you cope with depression?

In the past, I didn’t. I suffered massively. Now, I’m still not so great with it. I talk in therapy and I write, but even still I tend to stay in bed and feel numb/mope/distract myself with anything I can. I tend to be able to function enough to go to school because I feel like my life and future depends on it, am anxious as fuck, and do my best but end up with late work, being withdrawn and feeling doomed to fail, believe I’m doing far worse than I am and that I’m awful and don’t deserve to be there

22. Are you a sleep-all-day depressive or an insomniac depressive? Do you overeat or lose your appetite?

It depends, but in the most recent past, sleep-all-day and overeat. But I’ve been sleep-all-day and no appreciative and I’ve also been insomniac and overeat (2013-14)

23. When is the last time you cried or had a breakdown?

Tuesday August 1, 2017 (9 days ago)

24. Have you ever self-harmed?

YUP. Razor blades/cutting, punishing binge-eating, starvation, and abusive risky BDSM/relationships/sex

25. Have you had problems with substance abuse?

Not really, but I’ve drank a little lately

26. Have you ever attended AA/NA/etc?

27. Have you ever attempted suicide?

28. Have you ever written a suicide note?

Yes, but it was just to get it out. I threw it out after I wrote it.

Other symptoms and treatment:

29. Do you ever dissociate?

Y U P

30. Do you ever have hallucinations? If so, what are they?

No hallucinations. I’ve thought I’ve heard shit before, but I’m pretty sure it was a fluke and I want to believe in ghosts so. Call me crazy if you want, but what the fuck ever. I’ve had delusions only

31. Do you see a therapist? Do you feel like it’s helping?

Yes and yes

32. Are you on any medications? Do you feel like they’re helping?

No, not anymore, and I fucking hate anti-depressants, refuse mood-stabilizers and anti-psychotics and maybe want to keep having some anxiety meds

33. Have you ever been hospitalized?

No, and I want to keep it that way

34. Have you ever attended group therapy?

No, but I’ve conducted roleplay group therapy baahaha

35. Have any of your symptoms gotten worse over the years?

Yeah, I think the manic shit has gotten worse over the last 2 years

36. Have any of your symptoms gotten better over the years?

I think the depressive stuff has gotten a little better, or maybe just less frequent

37. Do you have a favorite coping method?

What does that mean...healthy or unhealthy...I guess I like meditation and I fucking miss working out A LOT. I like drinking as an unhealthy thing, but I’m sure I’ll hate it as much as I hate binge-eating once it catches up to me if I let it get that far. I’m tired of gaining weight after the 80 pounds I lost, and it’s really fucking with my self-esteem, makes me feel frustrated and sick

38. If you could choose to be neurotypical, would you?

#meandmine #mental illness///#general tw #self harm tw #alcohol tw #drugs tw #suicide tw

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supere1113 · 5 years ago

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The Conflict Within Myself - Track 12: Gutted

Gutted goes further into my processing what happened to me leading up to, and my thoughts during, my hospitalization. The dust has begun to settle, but settled yet, it has not.

In the months leading up to my hospitalization, I became familiarized with the ins and outs of many mental health conditions. In the song, I say I'm amazed by this, and I was, just not as much as I was in May of that year, when I first suspected my mental health was slipping. Much of the first verse is an exploration of that realization. The following 2 choruses are representative of the stigma of realizing you're mentally ill hitting you... hard.

Many people in minority communities (strike that, at least some people in all communities) have a primitive perspective on mental health and associated conditions. For instance, many a black parent say outright or imply that if a family member (or friend) is struggling with anxiety or depression, it is a sign that they are "weak" and that it's their fault that they feel this way, and need to fix it on their own. Now, with this mentality, I think I understand why a lot of people see suicide as a selfish act. It simply stems from an inability to empathize with the struggling person, which stems from mass misinformation, miseducation if you will, about mental health. And don't let the person be bipolar or Schizophrenic, because then they'll just assume that that person is just bugging. Rough situation.

As an Nigerian-American, those implications were instilled in me during my childhood, and in the first 2 choruses, the malignant voices in my head blamed me for their being there to torment me. Crazy, right? Keep in mind, this is where I was in 2017. It's 2019 now, and I am much more understanding of myself, what I go through and of others.

Gutted takes an interesting turn in the 2nd verse. I talk about how all the famous deaths that happened just before and throughout the Conflict Era of my life (2010-2017) and how they affected me over time. In 2009, Michael Jackson died, and I experienced what I believe to be situational depression for the first time. I took a hit, that year. Listen to tracks 6 and 7 on my first album, The Artist In Me. Then in 2012, Whitney Houston died, and that contributed to my world gradually getting darker. As did Prince's passing in 2016. I was deep in the throes of my depression when Chris Cornell died, and I literally went manic after Chester died, both in the Summer of 2017. Crazy.

Then in September, the month before I was hospitalized, A high school friend of mine named Gage lost his battle with a form of cancer, and mourning his loss got me in talks with another friend, who I used to have a crush on, mind you, about going to his funeral together. She would drive us as soon as the work on her car was done, and I told her about what was going on with me. She really understood what I was going through because she had, too. I had already opened up so much to her, and I didn't want there to be any weird energy between us in the car, so I wanted to tell her that I used to have feelings for her before we saw each other face-to-face. I messaged her, and I didn't realize this at first, but she had blocked me. I felt betrayed, stupid, frustrated and even more lost. I almost self-harmed that day (Think that was also the day that I wrote the first 3 out of 4 songs on my 2nd EP, Unofficial. Much of my 2nd mixtape, Faux Leather Futon was also written around this time of 2017. It helped me to survive those dark days). So yeah, I had a very gradual descent into, whatever I found myself in (I say that because at that point, it wasn't just one thing, and it honestly never was).

Now that I had recapped you on what led me here, the song switches beats and I bring you back to my present thoughts, in the depths of my despair.

I basically think that things will only get worse before preceding to rephrase everything I had said in this song and the one before it. Then, I do what I always feel inclined to do when I'm left with no real options: I ask for help. I mean, I'm in a psych hospital, what other help would I need? Well, in order for all the measures the hospital puts into place to work for me, I needed guidance; I needed glue. I needed something to believe in, I think in hindsight. To me, that something is who I call God. To others, it could be the universe, fate, deceased loved ones, psilocybin and other psychotropic drugs, anything outside power you may believe in enough to help you out of stuff (that's why I said 'somebody' in the song). I ask for guidance and for God to take away my fear, and lead me to taking my life back; not just just in the short term, but in the long run, too (writing this right now is a part of all that).

I was really inspired by the work of Halsey on her first two albums. Badlands and Hopeless Fountain Kingdom cover a very similar time in her life, where her bipolar symptoms were still wreaking havoc on her life and well-being. Both of those albums helped me by comforting and haunting me by giving a voice to the forces in my head, so I could hear them, and eventually communicate with them (if you're suffering through severe mood symptoms and/or any type of personality disorder or psychosis, let me just say that it's never an exact science, but it's totally possible to learn how to speak with your demons, I mean symptoms).

So you sent a word out. You lifted your hands, and asked for a higher entity to lift you up from the bottom of the hole you find yourself in. What happens next?

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tendance-news · 7 years ago

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Beka told me about her self-care plans for the day of her final divorce hearing as we were getting pedicures. Her two daughters sat between us in child-size pedicure chairs, chattering away and paying no attention to our conversation.

“I scheduled a facial, a massage, and lots of drinks beginning at 2 p.m.,” she said. “I’m going to need this. We know half the attorneys in town, and I bet we’ll see someone in court. Watch it be one of the loudmouths.”

We both laughed and sipped our wine.

Beka is my boyfriend’s wife, and the girls are their children. I met her husband, Josh, the summer before, on Mother’s Day, which coincided with their 12th wedding anniversary. Beka had shooed him out of the house to host a mother-daughter tea, and he appeared in the seat next to me at a neighborhood bar.

He says it was love at first sight, while I thought he was just another sexy married guy — strictly off limits.

Over the next two months, as I cycled in and out of tumultuous relationships, he kept popping up. Occasionally we would wave across a coffee shop or exchange a few words on the street. One day he took a seat next to me at another bar, where we joined in the happy-hour conversation about politics and sex.

Continue reading the main story

When he left to pick up his children, I wasn’t surprised when he said, “Can I see you again?”

I thought: “Just another creep trying to fool around behind his wife’s back.” But I agreed to meet him again, mostly because it was easier than explaining why I wouldn’t and because I was certain I would never have an affair with him.

I was wrong about Josh. He wasn’t a creep or even a cheater. He was a man who loved his children more than anything. Josh and Beka were a powerhouse couple — affluent, attractive, highly educated, generous — and the backbone of upper-middle-class respectability developing in my bohemian neighborhood.

They had married in their 20s because they got along, had a lot in common (both are lawyers) and the timing was right; many of their friends were tying the knot. Twelve years in, their marriage seemed to be compatible and right. But it was a union of practicality more than passion, and Josh was miserable. He didn’t think he had any right to be miserable, but he was.

I didn’t understand why Josh was willing to break apart everything he had to be with someone like me. I was a struggling academic recovering from a messy divorce, deliberately childless at 40. My devotion to my students and my love for my dogs served as a stand-in for stable and nurturing human relationships.

After many years of struggle, I recently had learned I had bipolar II disorder, which meant I finally had the right medicine. But I was wrestling with shame as I realized how many of my spectacularly bad decisions had been influenced by mental illness. I had to learn how to trust others and myself, and at times it felt like I would never get there.

Josh said he liked me simply because he did. “I am married to a wonderful, successful, beautiful woman,” he said. “By any calculation, I should be happy. But I’m not, so I have decided that I am not going to calculate anymore.”

As we spent more time together, everything about our relationship felt natural. There was no imbalance in our love for one another, and we shared the same values and sense of humor. It turns out that Josh’s refusal to calculate — and my distrust in my ability to calculate — led us to the best decision of our lives: to do what it would take to be together. But that meant inflicting undeserved pain on others.

On a sticky Sunday in August, when Josh and Beka’s children were staying with his mother, he asked her for a divorce. At first she refused to believe he was serious. Then she grew so angry that she shook.

A visibly upset Josh met me after she told him to leave the house. He was ashamed, relieved and almost physically sick with sorrow.

“I could handle her anger,” he said. “And I agreed with everything she said. It’s unthinkable for me to dismantle all we’ve built. But I fell apart when she started to cry. She put her head on my chest while she cried. I’ve never felt so horrible in my life.”

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About a month later, he told Beka about me. This time, her anger was not tinged by sorrow; she was furious. After hours of shouting, however, she began to feel better than she had since Josh first mentioned divorce.

“It makes more sense for the divorce to be about another woman,” he said. “Many of our friends are going through divorces for the same reason. And I’ll admit, she felt a lot better when I told her you’re four years older than she is. She assumed you would be about 25.”

Then Beka surprised us both. Through Josh, she invited me to dinner.

“What?” I said. “Seriously? How is that going to work?” I didn’t see how a dinner could be pulled off without the whole thing erupting in open conflict or stalling into awkward silence. But, again, I was wrong.

“I had to meet you,” Beka said as she opened the door. “Josh wants you to meet our girls, but I need to get to know you first.”

Her smile seemed genuine, her eyes kind. She was small and beautiful, somehow elegant in casual shorts. Although I am short as well, I felt huge and ungainly next to her.

Josh was practically disabled by anxiety during that three-hour dinner. As Beka and I got to know each other, he drank nonstop. But Beka made sure I felt totally at ease. Our conversation ranged from trivial matters and uproarious stories about neighborhood matters to serious acknowledgment of our unusual situation.

After we all had hugged good night, I thought, “This won’t last.” I braced myself for the wrath to come, but it never materialized. Instead, Beka introduced me to their adorable children, and my immediate bond with them made me silently rejoice that I didn’t have children of my own. It was as if I had been saving my maternal love for Rose and Alice, who were then 7 and 3.

One day they brought tears to my eyes when, after a raucous game of me holding them upside down and tickling them, we snuggled on the couch to watch a movie.

“I love you,” Rose whispered. “I’m so glad you’re part of my family.”

Beka was the one who worked the hardest to make me part of the family. She invited me to birthday parties and smoothed the socially turbulent waters by introducing me to friends who had been indignant on her behalf. Afterward, we giggled at the shocked faces people made when they met me.

When Josh moved out of their house into a duplex, we had family dinners and celebrated holidays together to ease the transition for the girls. While friends and family shook their heads in bafflement, we forged our relationship based on mutual respect, empathy and an overpowering love for those two beautiful children.

The one thing I don’t know, and may never know, is whether our bond is genuine affection on Beka’s part or the result of her sheer will to make this work, to avoid falling prey to bitterness, to refuse to be a victim.

It isn’t my place to ask such a thing, and ultimately it doesn’t matter.

I am in awe of the grace and maturity she has displayed throughout what I suspect is the most traumatic event of her life. She even liked this essay, telling me after reading it: “I’m so glad you get it. I wish more divorces ended up like this. It’s better for the kids and the parents.”

I have silently mourned with her, though I suspect she wouldn’t appreciate that. She never breathes a word of anger or resentment to her children, and they have never reproached their father or me for the immeasurable disruption we have caused to their lives. She and Josh and I have done everything we can to shield them from the anger and damage so common in divorce.

Every now and again when I have thanked Beka for an invitation to a family event or gone out to get medicine for a sick child in the middle of the night, she has texted me words of gratitude that I treasured even while feeling I didn’t deserve them.

166COMMENTS

“The girls adore you,” she wrote. “And you truly treat them like they’re your own. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

And I can’t tell her how much this family we all have forged means to me.

#IFTTT #Blogger

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usnewsaggregator-blog · 7 years ago

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‘I can’t breathe!’ A nursing home patient called for help. His nurse left him on the floor.

New Post has been published on https://usnewsaggregator.com/i-cant-breathe-a-nursing-home-patient-called-for-help-his-nurse-left-him-on-the-floor/

‘I can’t breathe!’ A nursing home patient called for help. His nurse left him on the floor.

The cries began shortly before 5 a.m., echoing down the almost empty corridors of United Medical Center’s nursing home. From his bed in Room 704, Warren Webb’s moans cohered into words: “Help! I can’t breathe!”

A registered nurse appeared and adjusted the height of his bed. But the nurse quickly began arguing with Webb’s wheelchair-bound roommate, who was pleading for her to do more to help. Webb rolled out of bed and landed on the floor, his diaper coming loose.

Webb, a 47-year-old AIDS patient, would lie on the floor in his own waste for approximately 20 minutes while his nurse quarreled with his roommate and then conversed with a security guard. When he was finally lifted back into bed, his caregivers could not find a pulse. Just after 6 a.m., he was pronounced dead.

Webb’s death on Aug. 25, reconstructed through a time-stamped audio recording of the incident obtained by The Washington Post and interviews with three eyewitnesses, is the latest in a string of troubling incidents at the District’s only public hospital.

[At the city’s only public hospital, consulting fees rise, along with trouble]

The Washington Post obtained audio of United Medical Center patient Warren Webb complaining that he couldn’t breathe. Webb rolled out of his bed and lay on the floor in a dirty diaper for about 20 minutes. Soon afterward he was pronounced dead of a heart attack. Editor’s note: This audio was edited for brevity. (The Washington Post)

UMC staff members do not appear to have followed what medical experts described as basic and potentially lifesaving protocols in their treatment of Webb immediately before his death.

In the aftermath, hospital officials fired one of the nurses involved but failed to report details of Webb’s case to regulators that would have triggered an outside investigation. Webb’s relatives say hospital staff members misled them about the events that preceded his death.

A spokeswoman for the D.C. Health Department said that the nursing home had filed an incident report concerning Webb — who, according to his death certificate, died after a heart attack — but that the report “did not contain any information that pointed towards injury, neglect or abuse.”

After learning new details about Webb’s death from The Post, the Health Department is launching an investigation, spokeswoman Jasmine Gossett said.

The Joint Commission, an accreditation body that visited UMC in September, was not aware of any patient-safety concerns related to Webb’s death, a spokeswoman said. She said the commission would now review the incident.

Hospital officials declined to answer detailed questions about Webb’s case but issued a statement asserting that the incident was handled properly.

“The matter was investigated and based on the findings, appropriate actions were taken,” the statement reads. “Timely notification to the appropriate regulatory and licensing bodies was provided and they are conducting their respective investigations. Due to resident/patient and employee privacy regulations, as well as the other ongoing investigations, we are not at liberty to discuss the matter further. However, we continue to cooperate fully.”

Warren Webb, standing left, when he was 15 years old. Webb may have died as a result of medical errors at the United Medical Center Nursing home. (Family photo)

‘Nobody cared’

Questions about Webb’s death come as D.C. elected officials are intensifying their oversight of UMC, which is struggling with deteriorating finances and growing concerns about patient safety. Since last year, the city has been paying a politically connected consulting firm, Veritas of Washington, $300,000 a month to run the hospital.

Vincent Gray, a Ward 7 Democrat and chairman of the D.C. Council’s health committee, plans to hold a hearing Monday on whether UMC needs new management.

[Consulting firm managing UMC ousts CEO]

The city’s largest medical facility east of the Anacostia River, UMC has for decades drifted in and out of financial turmoil while serving its poor and predominantly African American patients in Southeast Washington and Prince George’s County, Md.

On Aug. 7, regulators closed the hospital’s nursery and delivery rooms after discovering dangerous medical errors in the treatment of pregnant women and newborns.

[Dangerous mistakes led to closure of UMC’s obstetrics ward]

The Post reported last month that the consultants managing UMC had delivered about a tenth of the $9 million in extra revenue they had promised to generate even while collecting $5 million in taxpayer dollars.

[A man died at UMC. It took his family a week to find out.]

Webb’s treatment and the handling of his death could revive allegations that have dogged hospital officials in recent months: that UMC staff is sometimes dismissive of or disrespectful toward patients and that hospital supervisors are slow to acknowledge and correct mistakes.

Webb’s father, Baye’ Webb, a 71-year-old resident of Lanham, Md., said nurses did not disclose key details when they explained his son’s death, such as his repeated cries for help or the extended period when he was left on the floor of his room.

“We totally felt like they were misleading us and the facts weren’t forthcoming,” he said. Of the new information about his son’s death, he said simply: “It’s agonizing.”

Warren Webb was born in the District and — although he spent some of his teenage years in South Carolina and as an adult lived in Georgia — always considered Washington his home.

A cinephile who organized movie nights at his apartment complex in Southeast Washington, he jokingly called his mother “Mommie Dearest,” a reference to the 1981 film that depicts actress Joan Crawford’s tortured relationship with her daughter.

That sense of humor helped him weather difficult stretches in his life, including his HIV infection, his diagnosis with a form of bipolar disorder and a period when he used crack cocaine, said his mother, Tujuana Bigelow, a resident of Glenarden, Md. In late July, he was admitted to UMC’s skilled nursing facility for rehabilitation after being diagnosed with a brain mass that caused strokelike symptoms.

Bigelow, a 66-year-old Prince George’s County school bus driver, said she visited her son almost every day. She quickly became alarmed by what she saw as his nurses’ inattentiveness.

When her son was admitted, she said, he could still walk to the bathroom. At UMC, they immediately put him in diapers. She said his nurses were slow to respond to the call button in his room and would sometimes leave him in a soiled diaper for hours on end.

“Nobody helped. Nobody cared. It was so sad,” Bigelow said.

After being notified of their son’s death on the morning of Aug. 25, Webb’s parents met with his caregivers at the UMC nursing home. Bigelow said they gave a halting explanation of what had happened: A nurse recounted that she “slid him to the floor to clean him up” after he had a bowel movement and then sent him to the emergency room when she noticed that he wasn’t breathing.

“What they were saying didn’t make any sense to me,” Bigelow said. “Why would you take a patient out of the bed and put him on the floor to change him?”

Bigelow said she suspected hospital officials were withholding information. “You could see it the way they were stumbling every time I asked a question,” she said.

A plea and an argument

Several hours earlier, Webb’s 58-year-old roommate, Gregory Gary, rolled up in his wheelchair to the nursing station on the hospital’s seventh floor.

At the nursing station, Gary asked Peter Offor, a licensed practical nurse, if he could send someone to change Webb’s diaper.

In an Aug. 31 written statement describing the incident to hospital officials, Offor said he sent Webb’s charge nurse to the patient’s room. In an interview, Offor identified the charge nurse as Christiana Ekwue.

Gary said in an interview that when he returned to the room the charge nurse was there, and Webb, who had become contorted on his bed, was complaining that he couldn’t breathe and calling for help to sit up.

Gary said the nurse pushed a button that dropped Webb’s mechanical hospital bed to its lowest setting. Webb then “rolled off the bed onto the floor with all the mess and stuff all over,” Gary said. “She didn’t give him any assistance to try to better the situation. She didn’t make no attempt to help him sit up to where it would allow him to breathe better.”

Ekwue repeatedly declined to discuss Webb’s death when reached by telephone but confirmed that she is still employed at UMC.

In the recording obtained by The Post, Webb can be heard crying out at least 25 times during a three-minute period that begins just before the nurse enters his room. Many of his cries are inchoate, but he clearly gasps out his complaint:

“I can’t breathe!” Webb says. “Help me up! Please!”

In the recording, Gary also urges the nurse to help Webb. “He can’t hardly breathe,” Gary says. His pleading grows more urgent as Webb rolls out of his bed. “You ain’t helping him!” Gary says. “You ain’t doing s—!”

“Mind your business,” Ekwue says on the tape.

Mary Uwemedimo, a certified nursing assistant, entered Webb’s room shortly after Ekwue. She said in an interview that when she arrived Webb was lying on the floor and that she placed some linens around him to soak up the urine and feces from his loosened diaper.

“I was shocked to see him lying on the floor,” said Uwemedimo, who later resigned for reasons she said were unrelated to Webb’s case. She said the charge nurse told her she had lowered the bed so Webb wouldn’t hurt himself if he fell off.

A security guard arrived — it is unclear whether he was making routine rounds or responding to a call about the argument — and spoke to Gary about his alleged hostility toward the nurse. He then spent several minutes at the nursing station talking with Ekwue and Offor.

About 5:10 a.m., Ekwue can be heard asking for help at the nursing station to lift Webb off the floor. Offor said in an interview that when he entered the room Webb did not appear to be in distress, but that after they lifted him back into bed, they could not find his pulse.

About 5:23 a.m., Offor can be heard in the recording calling for a “crash cart,” a mobile stand that carries emergency lifesaving equipment.

Offor and Uwemedimo said a night supervisor was called. In the recording, the supervisor — who is not identified — can be heard entering the room about 5:26 a.m., asking what happened and demanding a stretcher so Webb could be moved to the hospital’s emergency room.

A delay ensues, however, as Uwemedimo returns almost two minutes later and says she cannot find a stretcher. “Get one downstairs!” the supervisor orders in the recording.

Uwemedimo told The Post that the stretcher usually kept on the seventh floor of the hospital was not in its normal place and that she believed nurses from another floor had taken it. She said she went downstairs, got a stretcher and returned with it to Webb’s room.

Webb was pronounced dead in the emergency room at 6:01 a.m. His cause of death: a heart attack.

‘Minutes count’

Death certificates for low-income nursing home residents are notoriously imprecise, said Jonathan Evans, a Charlottesville specialist in geriatric medicine and past president of the American Medical Directors Association.

But if the principal listed cause of death for Webb — myocardial infarction, commonly called a heart attack — is correct, leaving him on the floor for an extended period could have affected his chances of survival, Evans said.

“If he had a heart attack, that time delay could have had a significant impact on whether he lived or not,” he said.

Tammy Slater, an acute-care nurse practitioner and instructor at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, said a complaint of shortness of breath from a nursing-home patient should trigger an immediate physical assessment, including measurements of heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure and blood-oxygen saturation.

“A quick, fast assessment — I’m talking minutes — should occur, because this patient could be having a life-altering scenario,” Slater said. Trouble breathing could be a sign of two potentially deadly conditions that require immediate treatment, Slater said: a heart attack or pulmonary embolism.

In both situations, she said, “minutes count.”

Slater said a patient rolling out of bed onto the floor — even if only a short distance — should also have been treated as a fall and triggered a prompt assessment for injuries.

It remains unclear what steps hospital officials took to investigate after Webb’s death. Uwemedimo said her supervisor asked her to provide a written statement about what happened on the morning Webb died but that nobody has interviewed her.

Offor was fired after Webb’s death. In a September letter explaining Offor’s termination that was obtained by The Post, nursing home administrator Stephen Gbenle wrote that “Warren Webb was yelling for help, saying ‘I can’t breathe’ ” and that Offor “did not get up from his seat to assist the resident.”

UMC Chief Nursing Officer Maribel Torres also filed a complaint against Offor with the District’s nursing board. It is unclear why Offor — who was the first person to realize the seriousness of his condition and attempt to save his life — was targeted for punishment.

Offor said that hospital officials “refused to carry out the corporate investigation” of Webb’s death that should have been performed and that nobody interviewed him about what happened before he was approached by The Post.

Gary left UMC in October to move into an apartment in Southeast Washington. He said that Gbenle approached him about a week after Webb’s death to discuss the incident but that he wasn’t feeling well and asked him to come back later. No one ever followed up, he said.

“You have some people who come here that’s compassionate about their job,” Gary said of the UMC nursing home. “And you have a lot of them come here that’s not.”

Julie Tate and Daniel Mich contributed to this report.

Original Article:

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#breathe #called #floor #nurse #nursing #patient

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babysquirrelkat-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Introduction Post

It’s been a while since I’ve been back to Tumblr. Things got pretty good in my life and I didn’t need it as much. For several years Tumblr was my crutch. It was my way of fulfilling my human need for socialization and peer bonding. That might sound sad and pathetic... :/ I’ve been mentally ill since 2008. Although I suspect that my issues go much further back and on into my childhood. 2008, when I was 19, may have just been when my brain just finally blew its breakers so to speak. I was smoking a lot of pot back then. Did some coricidins, and went into psychosis. They originally diagnosed me with drug induced psychosis. I of course didn’t believe I was sick, and I kept smoking pot, which prolonged my psychosis long enough for them to diagnose me with schizophrenia. I lost all of my friends and even a lot of my family. I no longer knew myself let alone anyone else. I had to get to know my own mother again; learn who she was. Some of my family I never got to know again, because they demonized me for being ill.

For a while I didn’t leave my house, and if I did, I didn’t leave the car. A trip to the grocery store meant a half and hour or more waiting in the car because I was too frightened to go inside. My mom would get annoyed with me. Flash forward a year or so, I would leave the house, but every where I went was a panic attack waiting to happen. I would start feeling unsafe, my heart would start pounding, everything and everyone around me started feeling too close, too loud, too bright, and too threatening. I started feeling that the people around me where going to hurt me, imprison me, or kill me. My mom was constantly pissed at me for running out of restaurants to smoke a cigarette during a meal... and then just never coming back inside.

I slowly got better. Very slowly. I didn’t regain a social life or my own personality. I lost my liberal ideologies because of the catholic delusions I experienced during psychosis. I had no original or individual ideas. I was sorta an asshat. A nice asshat with as much manners as my anxiety could not interfere with, but an asshat.

I thought life was always going to be completely bland. I thought I was going to grow old in my childhood bedroom at my mothers house. I wasn’t going to marry or have children. I had a lot of potential at one time. I was beautiful, talented, creative, smart and passionate. The anti-psychotics had taken me from a teeny tiny 96lbs at 4′11″ to 238 lbs. I had acne all over my face. It’s riddled with scars. I never had acne before the medications. I stopped having periods. I had two periods that started on their own and maybe 3-4 that were started with pills from my doctor in the span of 6 years. 5-6 periods in 6 years. I felt broken. I felt less like of a woman. I had no confidence left. I spent all my time on Tumblr and watching my fandom shows. From age 19-25 I had very little contact with any one my age. I felt like I was old before I ever got a chance to be young.

In 2012 or so I was diagnosed with schizoaffective. Schizophrenia and bipolar. There was also PTSD, Primary O OCD, shit tons of anxiety and depression, and some slight movement disorders from the drugs.

In July of 2014 I took myself off all of the drugs. The CNP who was in charge of my case flipped out. She called me non-compliant and a liar. Even sent a nasty letter to my college financial aid. She didn’t believe mental illness was an excuse for the symptoms of those mental illnesses. I’ve ran into that a lot over the years. Even from the people who claim to be the most supportive. My mother thinks she is the champion of my mental health. Maybe she is in her own ways. But there are things she has never quite grasped. She could never understand why I couldn’t clean the entire house if being unemployed gave me all the time in the world to do so. Being on Tumblr made her think I was childish. She had even me convinced that because of trauma I was stuck at 16 years old and would always be a child. She treated me like a lazy bratty teenager instead of recognizing my symptoms. She had people in my family doing the same. Calling me to lecture me. Telling me I should be praying for the health of other people if I wanted to get better. My aunt told me that she has to force herself out of bed some days to get to work. As to say, you aren’t the only one who has depression. That I should be able to deal with it better and not complain. Other people had it worse. Well after 7 years in bed I finally forced myself out the front door, so to speak, so perhaps her argument almost had a leg to stand on.

After going off meds, I started to regain myself. I got a lot of shit. Everything I said happened to me during the day was still perceived with a lot of skepticism. If I said someone said something to me at the store, no matter what it was, or how believable, I was still asked, “Are you sure that’s what happened.”

In 2015 I met a guy online and we started dating. We were extremely happy. He helped me find who I was again. I started to remember myself. Which so happens to be a somewhat bitchy siren cunt from a feminist dimension on the other side of a portal that popped out of a earthy hippie chick’s mirror.... Or well something like that. Sometimes I’m a complete mother hen to my friends, I worry about them. I do things for them. I take care of everyone in my small circle. I stress and I panic and I cook and I drive a mini van. I get angry when someone threatens who and what I love and that anger comes out of me like a tidal wave. I even found out that I act quick in an emergency.

In August of 2015 I started having convulsions and an abnormal gait. A year and a half later I am doing somewhat better. I have found that the shaking and inability to walk is a manifestation of my anxiety. It only happens when my anxiety has been triggered, specifically during PTSD episodes. A loud noise could send me to the floor screaming and shaking. It made me feel scared at first. The life I had just regained was ending all over again. But it has subsided quite a lot.

My boyfriend was put in jail for a DUI on Nov 2 2015. My mental health deteriorated without him. I felt lost in a void. He got out Feb 25 2016 and I felt so far from him. He didn’t seem real. Where before he was the only thing breaking through my dissociation. I could touch him then and he was as far away as all the rest of reality. I still refused to start meds again. The meds kept me sick. I needed to be able to deal with this all on my own. I still do. The meds are not my answer.

My boyfriend was also having issues of his own. He was taking half his klonopin pills as soon as he got the bottles. He lost his job. He was awful on the pills. I finally told him it was the pills or me. He flushed them and it hasnt been a problem since. Although, I did worry he would resent me for it.

He and I have had a lot of problems here recently. We moved into out own apartment in September 2016. He has been working 2nd shift and staying up all night, sleeping all day. This has left me alone a lot. I don’t feel like he listens to a lot that I say. He’s constantly irritating me with sexist remarks. He’s constantly turning my arguments into his. I don’t let him. I call him on his bullshit every time. He will interrupt me talking about what’s important to me so he can talk about some random ass shit that had nothing to do with anything. Which wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t talk for half an hour. If I interrupt him to finish what I was saying for five seconds he uses that as an excuse to say that I’m the real problem. I suppose that’s half the time. The other half we get along really well. Like really well. Which is wonderful.

I still want to marry him. I want to have his baby. I want to beat him with a frying pan and then snuggle with him while we watch Supernatural. Did I mention we finally started trying to conceive now that I can have periods again. First month we tried was this last month. My cycle is 33 days. So I started testing like a crazy person 14dpo... everything has been negative. I’m now a week late on my period and my tests are so negative they aren’t even getting evap lines anymore( I test all the time even though we weren’t officially trying til this last month). My lady bits totally choked with 10 seconds left in the game.

So I’ve been pretty depressed these last few weeks. I’m stressed out. I’m a taxi driver for my boyfriends brother. Taking him everywhere, taking the boyfriend to work, driving my sister everyonce and a while. I’m in a play. Which only takes up about 9 hours a week. Yet, I have been so stressed out that I’ve not been able to take care of myself. I don’t have the energy to cook much, eat healthy, do laundry, bathe. I’m gaining weight from easy junk food and lack of moving. I mostly sit on the couch or in the driver’s seat. I don’t have much time with anyone outside of giving them rides or during the time they are waiting for rides. I get maybe two hours or less with my boyfriend a day during the week. On the weekend I’m lucky to get time alone with him between calls for my help to do things for everyone else. My need to help, it seems, always becomes expected by people. I offer assistance a few times and their lives become my responsabilty. I love them all, but I need them to understand that I sometimes need a break and they can’t call me for everything, without making them feel like they can’t call me for anything.

TL;DR So that’s sorta where I’ve been and where I’m at now. That was actually somewhat brief... O.o Basically, I’ve felt completely unimportant and without justification for my existence here lately and I’m back to Tumblr as my crutch for a bit. Somewhere I can feel like I have a mild place to call home; away from a life that seems to just be one giant mental illness prison following me around and stalking me for the better part of a decade.

(EDIT: Since being off medications, my schizophrenic symptoms have subsided. All that remains is the bipolar and multiple anxiety based disorders. Although I do hear voices occasionally, I know that those voices are simply my own feelings that weren’t quite addressed by my conscious mind floating up from my subconscious. For example I could feel a swelling of happiness in my chest for my boyfriend and hear a voice that says, “I love him.” )

If you got this far congratulations and thank you, here are some XOXOs for your trouble.

<3 Kat

#mental illness #relationships #feminism #ttc #bipolar #dissasociation #PTSD #convulsions #abnormal gait #movement disorder #disability

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