Quiet Confessions, Episode 41: Psychiatric Hospitalization Part 4

In this "Quiet Confessions" mini-episode, I continue my deep dive into my almost month-long stay at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill. Covering November 23rd and 24th, 2022, I detail the physical and emotional exhaustion of being "fresh" into my second hospitalization. 

From a jarring midnight maintenance visit that made me question my own existence to spending my baby's first Thanksgiving in a psychiatric unit, I explore the themes of detachment, the search for "normalcy" through pop culture traditions, and the struggle to find a physical cause for my mental health crisis.

Key Points

• The Reality of Inpatient Logistics: I experienced a distressing incident where maintenance workers entered my room at 12:30 AM without warning to fix the heat, highlighting the feelings of invisibility and lack of agency I often felt as a patient.
• Physical vs. Mental Symptoms: Exhausted from weeks of crying and unable to eat anything but Ensure, I underwent medical evaluations to rule out physical causes.
• Holiday Isolation: Spending Thanksgiving away from my seven-year-old and my new baby, I used the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and FaceTime as tethering points to remain connected to my family.
• The Therapeutic Journey: While the overall experience was "literal hell," I felt that the UNC facility ultimately was the safest environment of my three hospitalizations, despite the initial "bleak" outlook. 

This episode discusses topics that may be triggering for some individuals. Please check the show notes for more information and be mindful of your own mental health and comfort levels.

Visit our Patreon to help support our mission to normalize the conversation and end the stigma surrounding PMADs!

Transcript

Chelsea Myers (00:01)
Hey, welcome back to another Quiet Confessions, little mini episodes where I catch you up on what's going on with me. And lately we've been on a journey together, going through the timeline of my three postpartum psychiatric inpatient experiences.

It's been a little bit. I'm sorry I took a week off there just to give you a very quick update. I did have a little bit of a health scare you know, some challenges that come along with that. But being disabled and chronically ill, you never really know when those things are going to hit. So I appreciate your understanding as I navigated

I've slowly been coming back to life. But I'm okay right now. And I had a little time and I wanted to spend it with you. So here we are. And we're gonna we're gonna keep going. We're gonna keep going. UNC, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

where I left you and that of all three of my hospitalizations was my longest stay. It was close to a month, just a little bit shy. And in my last two episodes I sort of covered the first two days there and today I'm gonna.

I'm gonna try to condense a little bit more time. Otherwise, this series could go on for a while, you guys. And again, if you have specific questions, I am more than happy to answer them. for sake of getting us through what felt like eternity, I'm gonna combine things. And some of it is gonna come directly from my journal and some will come from...

the kind of muddled memories that I do have. I'm going to cover November 23rd and November 24th of 2022 UNC. And those two dates stick out in general for me

Because November 23rd, I was still really, really.

fresh ⁓ into this experience, I was still just a mess, crying, constantly confused, sick, not able to eat. And again, we'll get into specifics, but there were things that happened that in the wee hours ⁓ that kind of made me question.

Again, that space that I was in. ⁓ If you remember the chaos of my first hospitalization here in Vermont ⁓ and then knowing that I needed to get out and then a couple of things happened we'll get into it. That just made me, it's like, this, is anybody gonna help me? And then the next day was Thanksgiving. So I spent Thanksgiving in a psych ward. ⁓

So let's get into the 23rd a little bit. I mean, main theme.

Throughout the entire day, no matter what we were doing, I was crying and I was so exhausted. And I was exhausted for a couple of reasons. One, because I had been crying for days and weeks and I had been sick and I hadn't been able to eat. I was essentially living on Ensure That was the only thing I seemed to be able to keep down.

Every now and then I would be able to eat something, a little something, ⁓ but at this point I was still pretty consistently just drinking and sure. I don't know if it was my purely my anxiety that was making me as nauseous ⁓ as I was, or if it was also some medical reason, but so I was exhausted from crying. I was also exhausted because if you recall,

My room was so cold, the heat was broken. And my husband ⁓ has worked in HVAC for, ⁓ it's been like maybe close to 15 years now. And he's now a supervisor in

in that area. ⁓ But when he went down there and noticed that the heat was broken, he immediately he also works in a hospital, ⁓ university setting as a supervisor. And he was like, Okay, who's on this? Who do you have on this? I'm like, I'm not even paying attention at this point. Because like I said, he was only there briefly to say goodbye. But he left knowing that the heat in my room was broken. And among all of the other

crazy things going through his head. He couldn't get that out of his out of his brain. And when we would talk, he would ask me if they'd fixed the heat yet. And like, no, it's still really cold. So I think he was calling the hospital to check on what they were doing about it, because he was like, I, this wouldn't I wouldn't do like, this would be unacceptable where I work. they did come to fix the heat. But

The manner in which they did so was not okay, in my opinion. And I'm gonna say that with my full chest because it's not, the doctors were not in charge of this. The people who were working with me and with the other patients were not in charge of this. So I don't hold any blame ⁓ in their direction. But what ended up happening was got a roommate that

the night, the day before or the night before. So it's she and I, she was not a perinatal patient, but she was kind of grouped with us and she was lovely as much as I can remember. She'd been going through a lot, but we were both cold and we were both woken up abruptly at about 1230 in the morning. No, nobody

tapped us on the shoulder, nobody gave us any sort of warning, nobody even talked to us. Our door was opened, maintenance people, two men came in with a ladder and tools and just set up shop in our room in the middle of the night. And like I said, didn't acknowledge us. At one point, I think they

had my roommate get out of her bed because they needed to reach an access point that was above her bed. But for a lot of it, we kind of just silently like looked at each other and didn't move and then pretended not to know. We didn't know what we were supposed to do. I can't tell you how long the maintenance workers were in the room, but I can tell you.

with complete certainty, they were not quiet. They never spoke to us. I believe this is hazy. I believe there was a nurse stationed at the door. I would hope so. I really think there was, but my memory is really hazy, but having two men in.

a room of a psychiatric unit with two people just in general, ⁓ especially in a perinatal and women's psychiatric needs unit alone would be just that. Not assuming that they would do anything. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying policy-wise.

If there was not a nurse there, that would not be okay, but I'm fairly certain there was a nurse positioned at the door. But yeah, they worked banging around, talking to each other on their phones, in and out, ladder open, closed. Like I said, I think they had my roommate get up at one point and then get back in bed. But they never addressed us, never gently said, hey, maintenance is coming in. Do you want to go sit in the day room for a little while? Do you want to bring your pillows?

Nothing. were, it was like we didn't exist. Am I thankful that they fixed the heat? Yes, I am. ⁓ Because it was getting more and more challenging to sleep with how cold it was.

But the way it was handled made me, I mean, I was already questioning reality, right? I was already so out of it and so detached from myself. then having this experience made me feel, I'm like, do I even exist? Like, what is this? And it did make me question, is this a safe place for me to be? Is this gonna be therapeutic?

I very quickly want to follow that up with my husband called UNC again after I talked to him and let him know I didn't like call and complain. He just asked me about the heat and I told him what happened and he was irate. And me and my roommate, I believe they spoke to us, like the staff spoke to us and apologized.

for the way that that was handled. They didn't have any control over the timing. I mean, that was all a completely different department. ⁓ But I don't have a lot of memory of that because again, it wasn't something that stuck out to me. ⁓ What did stick out to me was that day I was tired and I couldn't eat. And the sense of detachment was even stronger. But

We still did the normal daily routine. I did meet with the psychologist that day and spent the whole session crying. This time was different. It's different than meeting with the psychiatrist because this was more of a therapeutic session. So even though I was crying, I was being validated in a different way. ⁓ but I can't recall what we spoke about. I could tell you common themes, but

I just know that I was out of hope. I was out of energy. I was out of any sort of ability to envision a future where I felt like myself again. I also met with the psychiatrist and the other doctors and they recommended a medical evaluation to see if there was something.

that they were missing, they did have a doctor come up and ask some questions and did some blood work, not the panels that I would later find out that I really needed if you really wanted to get to the root of the problem in terms of like checking for thyroid issues or checking for, ⁓ there's a whole panel that I get.

done like all the time now. I get my blood drawn so often that I have a scar on my arm where they always take the blood from. ⁓ But anyway, they did a workup. They had this one, I remember the doctor saying like, this condition is really, really rare. And I don't think you're experiencing it. We're just going to run some routine labs and otherwise you seem

physically okay. And that was that. And so the psychiatrists sort of ruled out anything physical as the cause of everything I was experiencing, which was everything from nausea to lightheadedness to constant panic attacks, racing heart, ⁓ whole body shaking.

The medications I was taking were causing like facial twitches. just, I was a mess physically and mentally, constantly in panic mode, constantly questioning everything. It just felt like on a loop. ⁓ But it was physical and it was mental and it was literal hell every waking moment of the day.

So it was discouraging. I wanted them to find something physically wrong with me because I thought that if they did, then they could just fix it and that I would go back to normal, normal, quote unquote. But just that one exam and a little bit of blood work and they determined that it was not that. So those were the things that stuck out about that day.

I don't remember a whole heck of a lot else. I mean, you can go back to my last mini episode and you can figure out what the rest of my day looked like because every day kind of felt like it was on repeat. ⁓ But the next day was Thanksgiving. And that carried a lot of weight for me. I am not a person who really enjoys Thanksgiving. I never have. And I'll tell you, it's for all kinds of reasons.

I don't eat meat anymore, but at the time I never liked turkey, so I was like, I don't like turkey, I don't like the food. ⁓ Family has been an interesting and evolving journey for me throughout my whole life. And also having divorced parents means multiple holidays, so navigating the complexities of...

doing holidays over and over again in one or two days or more sometimes. But so Thanksgiving was never my favorite to begin with. But this was my baby's first Thanksgiving and it was my older daughter's, I don't know, she was seven at the time. So I'm not with my children, I'm not with my family, I'm not with my husband. I'm in a completely different state. I'm in a hospital, I'm in a psychiatric ward.

I am already feeling like not a member of my own life, like a stranger in my body. And I just remember the day being so strange, because it was a holiday, right? So we weren't going to be meeting with the psychiatrist. ⁓ They did have a special meal, quote unquote, that you could order for dinner. It was chicken, I think.

⁓ I did not get it. I think I got meatloaf and mashed potatoes and collard greens because I'd always wanted to try them. you're from the South and you enjoy collard greens. I learned that I like them mixed with my mashed potatoes. But I like veggies anyway. That's off topic. I remember desperately

trying to make that day as normal, quote unquote, as possible because I needed to find ways to ground myself. And I was asking other patients, right, like if I could do these things, because this is all a shared space, but like getting up in the morning and asking if we could turn on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade so that I could watch it and then later when I FaceTimed with my kids.

And my family, I could talk to them and said, did you see Bluey? Did you see whatever? Even though I'm feeling so sick, I needed to have something to connect with them about. So we watched the parade. Again, I don't think I was able to eat breakfast that morning, but I sat in the big day room with everybody. And we watched that.

And then I think that evening, if I remember correctly, it's not in my journal, but I think everything switched to like Christmas. So I think maybe the Grinch was on that night or something. And I really wanted to watch that. So a lot of the things had to do with like centered around TV shows pop culture things.

that you would typically do on Thanksgiving. And there was a big football game, I think, as well, because this is UNC, and the stadium was right across from the hospital. So there was a lot going on outside, and we could see all the commotion and stuff. And I did, I called my family, and I FaceTimed, I think, I don't remember if I just FaceTimed with.

with my husband or if I actually talk to my family members, like my mom's family and my dad's family. That was another thing that we'll get into as we go along, but I really isolated myself. didn't really talk to anyone besides my husband and maybe sometimes, very occasionally, my mom.

But I really don't remember if I talked to them on Thanksgiving. I feel like I did only because I feel like I would have felt an obligation to do that. But it was challenging. It was challenging.

My journal says, I'm talking about how I really miss fresh air because we couldn't go outside. They didn't have staff to be able to bring us outside. I was reading, I was reading Girl with a Pearl Earring, which was something I'd read in high school and picked back up again. I was having a hard time just trying to distract myself. And

My mission that day was to make things feel real and to do that I felt like I needed to connect with traditions that I was familiar with growing up, whether they were painful or not. ⁓ And certainly seeing my girls and knowing that I couldn't hold them or be with them was painful.

But the staff, the nurses, people who were there on a holiday, who, I mean, I always feel for essential workers or anyone who has to be away from their families on the holidays, but knowing that they got to go home at the end of the day, knowing that other patients could have family come visit them.

Every day, every day, but especially on a holiday and and I was the only one on this entire floor who was I was far far from home, so I was not gonna have any visitors I was not going to be able to hug my loved ones Even even though I felt so sick and that wasn't really something that

I was prioritizing, ⁓ it just felt like another failure.

Yeah, I'm getting, I mean, I'm getting to a point where...

things are feeling heavy. ⁓ But I knew that those two days in quick succession and in following the timeline were days that stuck out to me. And so I figured I'd share those today. And again, these are just my experiences. And things are going to evolve. You'll hear as we continue. Not everything at UNC was bleak.

⁓ And not every psychiatric unit is the same. I learned that. All three of mine were vastly different.

And even the time that I spent at UNC evolved several times. So, and I've said it before and I'll say it again, I regard UNC as the safest I felt in a psychiatric facility. ⁓ But it came with its own challenges and we'll hear more about those as we continue in the timeline. But because that was a lot and I'm starting to feel a little aimless in a little bit.

overwhelmed. I'm closing the journal for the day. I'm going to put us on pause and I'm going to take care of myself. And I really hope you do the same. If this series is helpful for you, or if there are things that you would like to know more about or get a better understanding of, please, please, please reach out. I am active on Instagram.

threads, Facebook sometimes. ⁓ You can email me, Chelsea at quietconnectionpodcast.com. Sign up for my newsletter on my website, quietconnectionpodcast.com, and you can get updates on things like this. My latest newsletter had a feature about the series that we're doing, it's because of you guys. It's because you requested it. So you have an impact here.

You don't have to be a guest on the podcast to have a seat at the table and have a place in my story. So until next week, do something kind for yourself and please, please, please know that you are not alone.