Bipolar Diaries pt. 16 - Return to Tinley Park Mental Hospital Part 2 - UNEDITED VERSION (pre-novel editing so you get the raw deal) - Originally written in November 2010

Immediately the doctors at Tinley park decided that I should not be on Klonopin AT ALL so they cut me off of it.  Anybody who takes this knows you are supposed to gradually wean off the med as it can kill you if you just plain stop taking it.  They significantly reduced my Paxil and my Lithium.  This change messed with me so much that after about 6 days I started yelling at the staff and the other patients when they pissed me off.

I had been here before so I already knew how things were going to go and how everything worked.  I also remembered how horrid it was last time because the nurses are bitches (and that’s putting it nicely) and at one point I ended up having to take care of one of the patients because they ignored her.  She didn’t belong there anyway, she needed to be in a nursing home.  I expected it to be just as bad this time, but for the most part it wasn’t.  The nurses were the same but the people were different.  Things did get a little ugly towards the end though.  I'll get to that in another post......

Before I go any further, it must be noted that this place is a state run facility.  It was a wonderful crap hole.  Like I said there were rubber beds and rubber pillows.  The food was horrid and on top of it I’m a vegetarian but the last time I asked for vegetarian meals what I got was rice with salsa on top.  So I just ate what was given to me and I ate everything on my plate so I wouldn’t be so damn hungry all day, plus they watch to see how much you eat.  Ro Ro made a comment that “this is just like Girl Interrupted.  It’s life imitating art imitating life”.  It was very true that we were almost living out the movie.  That place even reminded me of the bit in The Changeling when Angelina Jolie’s character goes to a mental hospital.  It’s a bit creepy really.

Before my groups were set up I waited anxiously for meals as we were always starving.  I was more anxious about my visitors.  Even though they came daily they always seemed to be late and I always cried when they left even though I knew they would be back the next day.  At one point they were running so late I thought they weren’t coming and started to have a panic attack.  When I asked for something to calm me down they refused.   Thankfully Mum brought me clothes and  I asked my fiancée to bring me a shirt that smelled like him and some pics of him too.  Last time I was there I was in the same outfit for days and stinking like hell because even though the facility has clothes for people who don’t have anything to change into, I couldn’t get anybody to help me get anything until 4 days before I left.

I went to all the groups just to make the time pass and in between I spent time with K, J, Ro Ro, and the Serbian stripper.  They had a library there so we got to pick out movies to watch on the weekends.  I had books and word finds that Mum had brought me too.  J and I would sit in our room talking and marking our word finds.  My last weekend there we played Jenga in the rec. room, but there was so much noise I started to freak out.  The groups were boring but I put my two cents in to participate and make things look good for me.  The only issue was when I confessed that I have a fear of going out in public and the person conducting the group pointed out that it was all in my head…as I know this because our mind is everything we are, fear and do.  Not to mention my disorder is a mental illness - a sickness of the mind.  So I know all too well it’s in my head, I just don’t know how to stop it and I really did not appreciate the insinuation that I was being ridiculous.  Ro Ro understood what I was trying to say and was defending me, but the group leader persisted so at that point I yelled out “I’m done talking just move on!”

The Serbian stripper was quite an interesting, and beautiful, creature.  I was quite enamored with her, even from the start when she came into the place like a bat out of hell.  I don’t remember what she was yelling about but she was yelling at the only male technician there.  He had surly demeanor at times and always seemed to be annoyed with the patients and he couldn’t be bothered with us.  So we all watched in awe as she went ballistic on him but we also felt slight gratitude towards her.

© Nina Allen

Bipolar Diaries pt. 14 - Return to Tinley Park Mental Hospital pt. 1 - UNEDITED VERSION (pre-novel editing so you get the raw deal) - Originally written in November 2010

(SIDE NOTE: Tinley Park Mental Health Center has since been shut down by the state but it is well worth googling because that place was pure hell for many of us and we were rather mistreated)

I started writing this entry in the middle of October...shortly two weeks after I got out of Tinley Park Mental Health Facility which was on September 28th.  I was in there for nearly two weeks.  It took me until four days ago to finish the first part of this.

I started writing this a month ago.  I should have written sooner when it when it was still out-of-the-package fresh.  I think I was afraid to write it and kept putting it off.  Not for fear that my family will read it because they already know.  Perhaps because I didn’t want to re-live it.  THE RETURN TO TINLEY PARK MENTAL HEALTH CENTER.  Or as I so affectionately call it, Hotel California…thank you Don Henley.

I had gone another night without sleeping…PERIOD.  Then I got into another argument with my fiancée as I caught him “e-cheating” again.  As I sat and bawled on the couch he reassured me it was nothing but I knew he was full of it.  He and his mother left for his appointment and for the first time I was alone in the house.  They figured I was going to be fine alone but being a recovering cutter, I knew I wasn’t going to be.  In fact I had planned to eat all of the Vicodin I had left and then slit my wrists.

Then I decided I just wanted to talk to a psychiatrist as I was having an anxiety attack as well.  Considering the last time I called 911 and went to the hospital for it and didn’t get committed, I thought this was a good idea.  I was wrong.  First of all I told the 911 operator the truth AND while I was on the phone with her I was slashing my arms open with scissors.   This landed me in the worst hospital in my area where I was put into the suicide room.  Except for the first 30 min that I was in there, nobody paid attention to me.  Later a social worker from the hospital came to talk to me….I didn’t tell her the whole truth for obvious reasons.  Soon after that a rep from Will County Mental Health Department was there to do my paperwork….to send me to Tinley.  He was an asshole in attitude only.  He treated me like dirt.  One: I cannot stand men treating me in an unfair manner in any way shape or form thanks to my ex.  Two:  I cannot stand authority figures treating me as if I am a nuisance to their day and I am just a dog in the dirt.  SO I was a bitch right back.  There was nothing I could do to get out of going to Tinley at that time so screw it.

I had called my fiancée’s mother and she was going to come see what was going on but she got an even more frantic call when I found out I was going to Tinley.  I had a panic attack after the call and the nurse came into my room, looked at me square and said “you’re just doing this to yourself”.  My fiancée’s mother fought tooth and nail so that I would go someplace other than Tinley, although I later learned that once you have been in Tinley you will go right back there.  So another ambulance came and carted me off to Tinley Park.

There I was again in this smelly room with rubber couches waiting to be admitted.  At least this time I had clothes…last time I went there all I had was a hospital gown on.  For the 50th time I was asked what was going on.  Then I saw an admitting psychiatrist who asked about my meds and then proceeded to tell me that because I take 2mg of Klonopin and Vicodin for migraines I’m a drug addict.  This is very untrue.  I do not take Vicodin everyday, I don’t do street drugs, hell I don’t even drink anymore and I used to be an alcoholic.

Blah!  It was time for them to send me off to my bed now.  It was 5am when I was able to get a bed so I slept all day and all night, waking up to blood tests and what they call breakfast.  I don’t remember much of my first day there, but I do remember meeting K.  I knew she was gay from the second I saw her.  We started talking about that and we soon discovered that my roommate, J, and the girl admitted at the same time I was were also lesbians.  So we’ve got a handful of lesbians and almost all of the girls in the unit had Bipolar Disorder as well….that’s what helped to get them there.  K was a self check in…crazy loon.

I spent 12 days there and they all seem to blur together.  It’s the incidents and the people I remember most.  The place is cold and dirty with rubber beds and rubber pillows.  Even though my fiancée and his mother came to visit me everyday, I was still going crazy in there.  Most especially with boredom, yet the people there did provide some entertainment and a temporary distraction from a place that was making me even more depressed.

As I frantically write this I promise I will return with interesting stories about the people and my own explosions....and how Tinley managed to badly screw up my medication and treatment.
© Nina Allen