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.”
Psych Unit #22: The End of the Line
Haley finished writing her ninth poem of the day and flopped down on her bed. She stared through the barred windows and sighed. Then she hid her pencil under her pillow. On the Adolescent floor of Crane Hospital, patients weren’t allowed to have pens or pencils in their rooms. The ever-creative patients might use them to hurt themselves. Haley knew this rule. She had broken this same rule at all the hospitals she’d been in. She was a pro at breaking rules and getting away with it.
This hospital was hospital number twenty-two for fifteen-year-old Haley. She knew she was at the end of the line. Now she was in DCF custody. No foster home would take her. She would be forced to live in a residential treatment center for mentally and emotionally disturbed kids.
Residential treatment was like a horror story spoken about in hushed voices with chills running down your back to kids in psych units. It was the end of the line and the last place she wanted to go. Every time Haley got out of the hospital, she would promise herself that this was the last one. But then the hallucinations would start winding her up and reality would start to crumble.
Lie to Me: When One Door Closes
“Oh?” asked Dr. Fowler as if Haley had just told him she made toast for breakfast.
Haley drew her knees up to her chest and dropped her head into her lap.
“Who did you kill?” asked Dr. Fowler, even though he’d already read her records and knew she’d been involved in a fatal car accident and that her mother had been killed on the scene. He knew exactly who Haley thought she’d murdered. However, he also knew that his young patient had to express herself and get it off her chest. The only way for him to help her see the accident was no more than an accident was to verbally and emotionally process it.
Haley had started crying again and her whole body shook with each sob.
“I don’t understand,” Dr. Fowler repeated, “Who did you kill?”
“My parents,” Haley whispered.
The Goldfish in a Jar
swung my Disney Princess sneakers back and forth hard in Joanne’s waiting room. Blinkie, my stuffed lamb who goes everywhere with me, bounced violently on my lap.
My mom put a calming hand on my shoulder as she used the flashlight on her phone to look into my eyes.
“Are you having a focal seizure?” she asked me. “Do you need Valium?”
A horrifying mental image of my mom gloving up, yanking down my pants and underwear, and sticking a gel pill up my butt in the middle of the waiting room flashed through my head repeatedly, like someone had pressed the “replay button” on my brain’s TV.
“No just nervous, got a lot going on in my head,” I told her.
“I know,” she smiled at me sadly. “You’re always filled with anxiety. It must be like grand central station between those two curly red pigtails.”
“It is,” I told her, thinking about how she didn’t even know the half of it.
When One Door Closes
Haley finished writing her ninth poem of the day and flopped down on her bed. She stared through the heavy mesh covered windows and sighed. Then she hid her pencil under her pillow. On the Adolescent floor of Crane Hospital, patients weren’t allowed to have pens or pencils in their rooms. The ever-creative patients might use them to hurt themselves. Haley knew this rule. She had broken this same rule at all the hospitals she’d been in. She was a pro at breaking rules and getting away with it.
This hospital was hospital number twenty-two for fifteen-year-old Haley. She knew she was at the end of the line. Now she was in DCF custody. No foster home would take her, she was too “disturbed” and “mentally unbalanced” She would be forced to live in a residential treatment center for mentally and emotionally disturbed kids.
Residential treatment was like a horror story spoken about in hushed voices with chills running down your back to kids in psych units. It was the end of the line and the last place she wanted to go. Every time Haley got out of the hospital, she would promise herself that this was the last one. But then the hallucinations would start winding her up and reality would start to crumble.
I have very Exciting New for You
I have created a new option for to enjoy. It’s The Newsletter Option. For a meager $6.50 a month you can receive a Newsletter from me. What will the Newsletter contain? The Newsletter will contain a free chapter of the first book of “How To Save Our Daughter”, a complete book that I am currently searching for a literary agent. To mix things up it may contain one of the first three chapters of Mindful Chapters, a book that a literary agent has picked up. It may include excerpts from my novel…
My Low Potassium and 2 Other Deadly Medical Mysteries
Following Dr. Green’s advice; I had been to the ER multiple times in the three-month gap between my second and third appointments. She had instructed us to go there every time the top number (systolic) of my blood pressure went over 200, or my bottom number (diastolic) went over 110. The thing was every time I was at the ER they would order blood work and my low potassium would force them to admit me to the hospital at least overnight to get me replenished.
Because my low potassium would be critically low and because it wouldn’t respond to oral potassium, they would usually have to admit me. I would either go to the ICU, critical care step-down unit, or a telemetry unit. That’s because potassium affects the heart and can be deadly if not immediately treated. It can cause fatal heart rhythms. A couple of times endangering my heart. Low potassium can be very serious if not properly addressed. It can cause fatal arrhythmias. A couple of times they caught me going into v-tach . I would feel like there were butterflies in my throat trying to rise up and the heart monitor would start going off like crazy. Then there would be the sounds of running footsteps and people racing into my room pulling a crash cart behind them.