AtypicallyRecovering

Photo: online search from capefoxfcg. com

After a great six weeks working as a cabin counselor at my favorite camp, I had to face returning to the University of Illinois. I wanted to go back, but I didn’t realize how unprepared I was. My mom had also been diagnosed with breast cancer, and had started radiation, so i had to return to campus about 2 weeks before everyone else, so her radiation schedule could proceed. It got dicey fairly quickly.

Being in the nearly empty dorms was kinda creepy. I was on a different floor than my previous semester. Getting there on a Saturday made it all that much more ‘dead’. It was the female’s side of twin 12-story towers, and there were 1-2 other people on my entire floor (usually there were over 100 students on each floor). I was used to being alone at home, but not in a building that had been so bustling and full of life the previous (shortened) semester. I ended up going to campus bars even though I was underage to be served alcohol, and got plastered most nights before stumbling back to the vertical vacuum of a dorm. I wasn’t a drinker by a long shot. But I needed to numb my brain over my nervousness about being back in school after being removed the previous semester, and my former dorm mates knowing that I’d been in a psych hospital. My mom’s cancer didn’t really enter my mind, which sounds awful, but I think it was a form of self-protection.

My roommate showed up when the official dorm arrival time finally came, and we got along well. I was still technically a freshman, and it was her first semester in college. I look back now at how young we both were. But we were ready for the upcoming semester, though I tried to hide my anxiety. I continued to go to the bars most nights during freshman orientation week. I’d already been to that a year earlier, so didn’t attend those activities. I was glad to be back, but I was in over my head emotionally. Then classes started, which was a relief and terrifying. I still had academic probation rattling around in my head like a judge, jury, and executioner.

I was still on antidepressants (they never worked, but I was doing better because my eating disorder wasn’t as intense) and sleeping pills, so drinking was definitely not a smart thing to be doing. But I needed the ‘numb’. I didn’t have any thoughts of suicide. I was stressed out and not sleeping well, but was still focused on doing well in school. The time being alone before everyone else arrived wasn’t good, but it was the only option at the time with my mom’s radiation schedule.

I don’t remember a lot about the events that nearly took my life, but I do have bits and pieces, and wrote to my roommate later to ask her what had happened. I’m sure that being a teenager, as I was, it was traumatizing for her to have to deal with what she did with me.

I remember it was a Tuesday evening. I had on a red gingham short sleeved cotton shirt and denim overalls. I was exhausted. Classes were in session, and I was trying to settle into the routine again. I needed sleep, and went out to one of the bars again. I didn’t get sloshed, but I was more relaxed when I got back to the room. I was coherent enough to hold a conversation with my roommate, as well as do some homework, but mostly I was thinking about getting a decent night’s sleep.

I had a bottle of soda, and was sitting at my desk, with my back to the rest of the room. My roommate was reading on her bed behind me. I got my bottle of sleeping pills- there were ten in the bottle. I do remember taking those, but not to die. It was almost an out of body methodical and rhythmic taking a pill and putting in my mouth, then washing it down with soda. Swallow, repeat until the bottle was empty. I’m sure my roommate didn’t see anything. Not long afterwards, I went to bed.

In the morning (Wednesday), my roommate wrote that she tried to wake me up for classes, but I said I was too tired. I don’t remember any of that. When she got back from classes later that afternoon, and around 20 or so hours after I took the sleeping pills, she couldn’t wake me up. She went to the dorm floor where I’d been the previous semester to find someone who knew me then, and one of them came down to the newer room with my roommate. That student immediately got an ambulance called, and I was taken to the university student health center, who sent me on to a trauma center.

My blood pressure ‘numbers’ were nearly meeting in the middle (70/60 territory), which is NOT good, and I wasn’t responding to any stimuli. My Glascow Coma Scale score was 3… next step is dead. When I got my chart later on, and after having worked on a hospital neurology floor as a nurse, I knew what I was looking at. I was lucky to be alive at all. My stomach was pumped, which also included being intubated. I don’t remember taking the bottle of antidepressants, but the bottle of 50 remaining pills was empty, and there were pill fragments in my stomach. I was sent to ICU, where they kept my blood pressure going, and dealt with variations in my heart rate. I have a vague memory of someone pulling an oxygen mask away from my face and asking if I’d overdosed, and I said no. I really didn’t think of it as an overdose at the time. I just wanted to sleep, so I’d do better going to classes.

The next clear image was when someone went towards my crotch with a syringe. I knew nothing about catheters, or having them removed, but that’s what the nurse did. I asked what I was wearing when I was admitted, because it helped me know what day I’d last remembered- I’d remembered the farmer get-up being what I’d worn on Tuesday. I also didn’t know about the charcoal they gave me to absorb the toxins, but knew exactly what impending explosive diarrhea felt like from months of laxative purging, so unplugged the leads so I could go to the bathroom. I didn’t know that doing that would look like something bad was going on via the EKG monitors at the nurses’ station, so was very surprised to see several people hurrying into the room as I was getting to the bathroom door. I got out of the bathroom, still kind of confused, and asked what day it was- and it was Friday evening. I’d been unconscious for 3 days. The red gingham shirt and overalls gave me a frame of reference for time, weird as that seems in the midst of what had gone on.

Very early the next morning (Saturday), I was helped to get cleaned up and put in a chair in front of the Saturday morning cartoons- and not really being able to follow the plot of Bugs Bunny. I knew that wasn’t right, but didn’t know why. Everything was fairly uneventful until I saw my parents out at the nurses’ station. I freaked out. I didn’t want to leave school, was too spaced out to understand the gravity of what had transpired, and was horrified that my parents were there. I’d messed up again. My university therapist was called, and she came up to talk to me, even though she was on bedrest for a blood clot in her leg during pregnancy. She kindly explained that the university couldn’t be responsible for someone who might kill themself, whether intentionally or not. I had to leave. There were no other options.

My parents had already cleaned out my dorm room, and put me between them in the front seat of the car to take me back to the psych hospital in Des Plaines, IL. That was a long 3 hour trip. I felt like a total failure. We got to the hospital, and checked me back in. At least I saw familiar staff faces, which helped a little. The next morning, my psychiatrist from the previous hospitalization came in and told me i was lucky to be alive, and that it was incredible that I didn’t have any brain damage with what I’d taken, and how long it was before I got to the trauma center.

Later, as a RN, I’d hear other nurses complain about overdose patients. They felt they needed harsher treatment in the ER if they were at all awake, to deter them from doing it again, as if it was a personal affront to the nursing staff. But I never heard one of them ask the person why they’d done it, or if they even wanted to die- not caring about what had brought that person to that point. I didn’t have thoughts of dying. I was young, did some stupid drinking, which dulled any common sense regarding the sleeping pills, and made a huge mistake. I never meant to cause the hospital folks any trouble. I certainly didn’t want my folks involved, or to leave school. My folks never asked why I did it, either. Ever. My mom had another 21 years to ask me, and my dad had another 34 years to ask, and nothing. That amplified the shame.

Things like ‘suicide attempts’ and overdoses aren’t attention seeking when they’re highly lethal without intervention. They’re a response to overwhelming stress and emotional pain. Why add to that? Being punitive is never productive with emotional crises. Compassion is free, and can change the course of someone’s life. And compassion is why I became a nurse, because of the kindness of a student nurse during the hospitalization after the OD. Change someone’s life for the better. Don’t make it about you.