May Her Memory Be A Blessing
On Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024, Becca Arielle Pava, age 35, passed away peacefully at home due to complications from an...
Shock of Carrying Trauma Alone
The next morning, Haley ventured out of her room for morning meds instead of waiting for Kim to come get her. She was in shock when she returned, and the door to her room was locked. Thinking it was a mistake, she went to find Kevin, another Mental Health Tech.
“In morning rounds staff had a discussion and decided that because you are ignoring the groups and lying in bed all day, we have to keep you out of your room.”
“That’s not fair,” argued Haley.
“We want to make sure we help you as much as we can. Part of that is making sure you go to groups and learn better skills in dealing with problems. Lying in bed all day is no way to deal with your issues.”
“I’m not just lying in bed in there,” Haley told him.
“Staff do checks every fifteen minutes, they see you,” Kevin told her in a calm even voice.
“I know it looks like I’m just lying in bed, but I’m practicing mindfulness,” Haley told him, looking at his name tag because she was too moral to lie to his face.
Brain Tumor: We’re Playing With Hormones
I remember every detail of what I was doing when I got the phone call that explained a good 70% of what was currently wrong with me. By then Dr. Green, had been following me closely for over a year, but I’d spent my most of my childhood and the entirety of my adolescence growing up in hospitals. My parents ignored all the positive test results and just insisted it was all in my head. Over and over they told me to snap out of it and just start acting like a normal teen. They never imagined I might have a brain tumor.
About two weeks after I finished the 24-hour urine cortisol, I was sitting in a recliner next to the nursing home hospital bed my grandmother was lying in. She was in rehab after she missed the bottom two stairs going down to the basement and fell, fracturing her femur. I was playing with the flip sequins on my unicorn shirt.
“Are you hanging in?” I asked her.
Life Support For The First Time Around
As I hugged my daughter Destiny, I tried to get her to tell me what was wrong. But she couldn’t get words out through her downpour of tears. At the same time, Joanne was trying to get my attention. It took me a minute to respond to Joanne, I was feeling annoyed with her and whatever she had done to upset my child to this degree. I never imagined that she had upset her so much she would be on life support after a suicide attempt in three weeks
“What?” I finally asked Joanne once Destiny’s cries died down to sniffles and she was sucking on Blinkie, her stuffed lamb’s special blanket.
“I need to speak to you in my office. Alone. All of this,” Joanne gestured toward Destiny and moved her hand up and down. “Is Destiny manipulating you, and she is a master manipulator.”