A Very Interesting Day in the Psych Unit!

I had my third psych clinical Tuesday. I really had not been liking psych clinicals so far, but Tuesday was a lot better! Probably because my very odd instructor actually let us talk to the patients for more then 30 minutes at a time. I talked to three patients yesterday.

First, I talked to a woman who was in the unit because she attempted suicide, and she was depressed. She told me that in 1991 her daughter had a baby, left the baby with her, and then ran away and she's never seen her daughter again. In 2001 she was in an accident and paralyzed from the waste down. One of her children and two of her grandchildren live with her and are financially dependent on her. She said that all of the stress got to be too much, and she didn't want to deal with it anymore. She's doing a lot better though, except for the fact that a nurse the night before had given her another patient's medication with a high level antipsycotic which caused her to sleep most of the day! I won't get in to the very poor nursing care on this unit, maybe another time! It was hard to assess her futhur then what I mentioned before, because she was so sleepy. I did ask her how she was going to deal with the stress when she returned home. She said that she was kicking everyone out of her house except for her 17 year old grandson. Psych is so hard, because even though we are doing everything for her in the hospital: giving her a stable environment, working on her meds, allowing her to express her feelings, we can't control what will happen when she returns home...

Next I talked to another woman who is schizophrenic. She was so sweet and hilarious! First, after group therapy she came up to me and said, "You're Irish aren't you?"
Me: "Am I?!"
Her: "Yes, I can see it in your face, your hair, and especially your aura!"
Me: "Really?"
Her: "Yeah, what's your name?"
Me: "Jennifer Green"
Her: "Green! See, you are Irish!"
Then she just left the room. Later that afternoon during recreational therapy, she came up to me again and said I've seen you somewhere before.
Me: "Yeah, you saw me this morning in group therapy."
Her: "No, before that.... I think that you used to be married to my son."
Me: "No mam, I've never been married before."
Her: "Oh, well... maybe it was my other son!"
You have no idea how hard it is to have conversations like this with people and keep a straight face. You understand that it's because they're sick, but they can be so funny sometimes.

Lastly, I talked to a man who I had met during group therapy that morning. He told everyone in group that he was in the hospital because he's schizophrenic and had been hearing voices telling him to kill his sister, his nease, and himself. He had stopped taking his medicine, and he was hearing the voices enough that he really begin wanting to kill them and even had a plan. By the grace of God, he knew well enough that he needed to be in the hospital, so he had one of his friends from church take him to Carraway. It's a little scary to sit in a room with someone who was planning to commit murder, even if it is because they're sick. Later in the afternoon, I was sitting in the dayroom talking to someone else and he came up and sat beside me. I saw like, oh man... haha! I said hey to him and asked him how he was. The lady I was talking to started talking again, but then the nurse came and got her for meds.

So, I turned around to the guy to talk to him some. He asked me a lot about school and nursing first. Then he said that he was waiting for one of his friends from church to bring him something to eat. I asked him where he went to church, and he started talking about God and his church some. Not very soon he asked me, "Are you a Christian?" so we talked about different ways that God helps us in our everyday lives for a while. Then he started talking about schizophrenia and about the voices that he heard telling him to kill his sister and her daughter. I have never felt this type of sadness for a person before.

He told me that the voices he heard were so strong and so real, and they never went away. He said, it's not just someone talking to you, they're a part of you and a part of your mind. He said that they change your mind, and they really made him want to commit murder. He said that he wanted to kill them so they could all be close together in a pit... But he knew that Jesus didn't die on the cross for him and make him free, so he could go and kill someone and then kill himself. He told me that he still hears those voices some, but his mind is clearer now.

I do not understand hardly anything about psychiatric illness, and especially about schizophrenia. It is amazing to me, to have a conversation with someone about Christ, such a deep conversation, and then hear them talk about how they have voices in their head that almost made them kill someone that they loved. I both hate psych nursing and love it. It makes me so sad, but so happy at the same time. I love talking so openly with people, being a listening ear, and maybe saying something to make them feel better, but I also hate hearing about the chains that their mind have over their lives.