Children's Pt One.
Sunday, November 23, 2008 at 05:36PM When: 1991
Where: Children's Hospital Psychiatric Unit
I was admitted at the age of eight. How the hell an eight year old manages to be admitted to a psychiatric facility and be sent back to live with their parents still amazes me. It shouldn't really, how many times does a person have to be failed in order to understand that the system sucks to recognize that they didn't have a chance in hell? I remember most of this time as if I were watching a movie so I cannot gauge how accurate it is, but I did read bits and pieces of my progress notes from this time and as much as I can tell my recollection tends to be fairly accurate.
I was admitted for many reasons however the primary concern of my treating physician was that I was malnourished, and after admission a ton of other reasons kept me on that unit for a little over two months. I was weighed upon admission with the dangerously low weight of 38lbs and the average for an 8 year old is 61lbs. My heart was beating very slowly and due to a heart attack a few weeks prior I was considered medically unstable. I had also attempted suicide a month and half before all of this and had plans to attempt again. I had not yet learned the ropes of mental health professionals at this young age and due to my attachment disorder I would confide in almost anyone that paid attention to me. The following is a recollection of events during my stay.
I was presented at intake very early in the morning and I remember smelling breakfast and feeling terribly nauseous. My court appointed guardian signed me in for evaluation as my father and I waited in dark green chairs that were too high for my feet to touch the ground. My father, dressed in his working Navy uniform sat next to me reading a magazine. I perched on my chair to reach over and spin the silver eagle above the four gold stripes. He swatted my hand away and suggested I read too.
"Daddy, why do we have to stay here?"
"Because everyone is worried about you." he says not looking up from his reading.
"Why worry?"
"You won't eat."
"But Daddy I'm just not hungry!"
"You are telling fibs. Just sit still and wait. Besides, it's fun here."
I shifted in my chair and picked at the flowers on the tops of my black mary janes. Daddy had dressed me up special for today which was unusual. He had picked out a pastel pink skirt that had some strange design around the ruffle. I remember that the ruffle was scratchy against my legs. He had me put on a white shirt with a large collar that also had disturbingly uncomfortable lace around the collar and then put on a black sweater. He told me the sweater helped to hide my chicken bones. My Dad usually told me not to wear dresses or skirts because I'd scratch up my knees playing and I assumed that because of his clothing instruction there would be no playing where we were going.
"Sir, we are ready to see Tempy now." said a lovely looking woman in green scrubs.
My guardian came over and held out her hand to me. I looked at my Dad and he winked at me. He stood up and shook the hand of the nurse as they moved towards a locked door.
"Be a good girl Tempy, I'll be back later after work." he said as he walked towards the moving glass doors. He didn't look back at me as I stood in a state of confusion. Not at any time was I informed that I would be left in this place without my Daddy. I opened my mouth to protest but remembered that protesting was not a part of 'being good', so I looked up at my guardian and she smiled. Her perfume was loud and her hair always stayed in place. I didn't trust her for shit but her hand was warm and my Daddy was gone. We followed the green scrub lady down a long hallway that had murals of colorful things on the walls. She swiped her card at a door and we entered. It was a big room with two small tables that were just my size and there were lots of colored plastic boxes with blocks and crayons lined up against the walls. My guardian led me to one of the tables and sat me in a chair. She put some paper in front of me with some markers and told me I could draw and that she'd be right back.
The room was bright and it seemed like it should be a friendly place but I was not convinced. I had no interest in drawing so I scanned the room looking for a way out. There was only one door, two windows and a gigantic mirror. I got up too fast and felt dizzy as I worked my way towards the door with the ground spinning under me. I touched the cold metal handle and pulled down but nothing happened. It was locked. I walked over towards the window but it was too high up and didn't appear to be a window like at home. I resigned to being trapped in happy-land and sat down on the floor next to a large stuffed bear that I judged as entirely too happy to be trapped in this dumb room. I curled up into a ball and only moved to kick the bear that was too close to me. The door clicked and opened. In walked a nurse with pink pants and a top with tweety bird all over it.
"Hi Tempy! I'm Rita and I am going to be your own special nurse today! How about you and me leave here and go visit your room?" she said way too enthusiastically.
Something about 'special nurse' made me feel uneasy so I didn't budge. I just looked at her feet wishing I had more energy to run out of the room. She moved towards me slowly and kind of hunched over I suppose to try to get some eye contact out of me. When she was about 3 feet away she stopped and sat down in front of me with her legs crossed.
"It's probably scary to be here. But I can promise you that we are only here to help you. There are lots of other kids here too and you'll get to meet them soon. There is even another little girl here that is your age and I bet she will love to have someone here to play with. Now, why don't you and me go take a look around?"
At this point I was feeling very threatened and wild. I wanted a way out of this place and it didn't matter how. I was thinking crazy thoughts about harming myself so that my Daddy would come back to rescue me. I decided the smart way to get a chance to run was to pretend to follow this nurse lady and once I got the chance I'd run the other way. I stood up with her and she took my hand as we headed out. As we turned the corner out of the room I took off in the opposite direction as fast as I could, I hit one door and it was locked so I practically bounced off and headed in another direction. Rita was following pretty closely and suddenly there were three or four versions of Rita boxing me in. All of a sudden I was on the floor with what seemed like hundred of hands on me, on pair had my arms, another had my legs and various other hands were on my head or shoving me into a burrito like mat. I twisted and turned but there was no moving inside this thing which I would later learn is the modern version of a straight jacket. In one swift movement I was in the air. Apparently this apparatus had handles! I was carried through some doors into a small room with padded walls, literally. I was face down on the floor and still fighting to free a hand or leg or anything. No one was talking to me really, just to each other. They eventually cleared out and I was left with Rita. She wiped my forehead with a cool cloth and spoke to me for a few minutes in a quiet and calming voice. I was begining to like her.
After my little stunt I was placed on the lowest level of observation possible. I was stripped of my clothes and made to wear a thin gown with little pink and blue dots all over it. I was kept in the padded room and only Rita stayed with me, well she was there during most of the day and then some woman that barely spoke english sat with me at night. A few big scary doctors came to visit my cell, er, uh, my room the first day. They looked at me, asked me stupid questions and left. A young guy came in and poked me for blood which he was suprised that I didn't seem to care much about and then eventually I was allowed to have a bouncy ball, a coloring book and some DULL crayons. I had decided at some point that talking was for babies and I was refusing to speak so Rita talked...a lot. She told me about her little boy and her dogs, she told me about some museum and then read a couple of books. She prompted me over and over but I refused.
At lunchtime some girl brought in a bright yellow tray. It had peanut butter and jelly, a cup of jello and a juicebox. I was repulsed by this tray of food happiness and I wanted to be as far away from it as possible. I could smell the peanut butter and it was turning my stomach so I quickly scooted to the corner in a ball and hid my face. Rita talked about how the food would make me strong and healthy and pushed it towards me. I recoiled and begin to hit my head on the wall. I had hit my head for many years until the point of knocking myself out. It was my way to escape from my insanity and it worked. In seconds her hands were between me and the way which sent me into a spiral of panic. The progress notes mentioned this episode and that is when I was placed in a helmet. The food was removed and so was Rita. I was so worn down by this point that I must have drifted to sleep...with my dumb helmet on.
I woke up to the sound of the door and I adjusted my eyes to the new light from the window. It must have been much later in the day. A young woman walked in and she seemed different from the rest of the people that had invaded my tiny quarters previously. She had on grey pants and wore a black sweater, her neck held in place a string of badges that clinked when she moved. Her hair was held up in a loose pony-tail and she was wearing tennis shoes. She didn't move close to me, she just shut the door while still facing me and sat down. She had a cloth bag with her that I couldn't make out it's contents.
"Hey sleepy head, how are you today?"
I didn't answer.
"I am going to take a guess and say that today hasn't been so great. I am sorry you are having a bad day."
Again, no response.
"My name is Dr. Fields, but since I call you by your first name you can call me Dianne."
I was more curious about her bag than her name and I was stretching to peek at it. I was wondering if it had more helmet like items or if there was anything more interesting in it.
"You see my bag? Would you like to see what's inside?"
That could be a dangerous question and I raced to figure out if it would be a good thing or a bad thing. Sensing my hesitation she opened it and out came a black and white pound puppy, some glittery stickers, a laminated chart, a small brown box ,CandyLand and a couple of tinker toy like items. She held up the pound puppy and told me I could have him if I agreed to answer three whole questions.
"Tempy, can you tell me why you think you are here?" she asked nicely.
I contemplated my options and settled on answering for the prize dog.
"My Daddy says it's cus I am sick and won't eat. My guardian says it's a bad thing to want to be dead and I think no one wants me. So I got stuck here." I say without a breath.
"Hmm. Can you tell me why you won't eat anything?"
"Food is bad when it gets inside and it makes you so big you can't move and it makes you sick and makes people not want you and then you have to go away with bad people or just because you want it bad things happen." again with no breath. I was SO close to having that dog.
"Ok. I see. Now, one last one and the doggie is yours. Do you want to hurt yourself?"
Ahhhh, tricky question. I thought I had the perfect answer.
"No, I don't want to hurt myself. I want to be dead."
And then the dog was tossed in my direction. I scooped him up and petted him. My first present in a long time! Diane told me about the chart she had with her that I was supposed to eat things to get stickers on my chart to earn rewards. I would also get stickers for other things like talking and going to the bathroom. She talked some more about unimportant things trying to get me to participate. She tossed a ball back and forth with me and then she said she had to go but that she would be back again tomorrow.
Dinner eventually came and I eventually dumped the tray in a folded blanket. The dark came and I was tired again. My dog and the crayons were boring. I took to trying to scratch the alphabet on my arm which only landed me in some ridiculous mittens. I received a shot shortly after that which made my eyelids heavy and my body difficult to move. I retreated in my head to a place that I constructed the details of every night which I believe led me to sleep.
The next day I was informed of the 'rules' and the consequences of breaking the rules. I also was told about how I would earn my way out of the tiny room into the day area where I was told were toys and other kids. Breakfast and lunch came and went with me refusing both. Dianne came back just as she said she would, only this time she had a bag of carrots with her. She talked about the carrots being good for me and how they couldn't make me get big. She told me how eating them would give me a positive consequence of having the mittens taken off. I told her they were poison. After many go arounds of this conversation she told me that if I refused them it would mean that I would have to have tube put in my nose to feed me. She got up and a guy nurse came in. She said I would have to have the tube put in then. I didn't care at that point because the door was open. Mister Nurse and Dianne took me into a room with a stretcher and he told me nicely what was going to happen. I really didn't quite grasp the consequences of this tube thing and figured it was just like every other medical procedure I had done. I didn't fight the gagging as it went down and as he taped it to my face I just sat there staring at the door which was now blocked by a young blonde nurse. We moved rooms and I had an x-ray done. Then it was back to the tiny room.
I sat still as a pole with a bag of greyish brown stuff was attached to my tube. Dianne sat down with me again and asked me how I felt. I said that I was tired. She again said she would be back the next day. I laid down with my dog and went back to sleep. I woke up later with a weird and slightly painful swelling in my tummy. As I sat up slowly I recognized that feeling, and it meant I was full!!!!! There was POISON in my tummy! What the hell??????? I paniced and stood up looking for evidence of being force fed. Nothing was in my room but me, the pole and the damn dog. I remember frantically pacing in the room but being trapped by this damn thing in my nose attached to the pole. A nurse came in and asked me to sit back down. I did but when I did I looked at the bag on the pole and it was nearly empty. I did the math and realized that bag of stuff was the heavy feeling in my stomach. My mittens were off and I pulled that tube out as fast as I could which led to a lot of shrieking and 'hands on' by the nurse.
This time I was led back to the stretcher room against my will with mittens and helmet on. They held me down as they re-inserted the tube and took the x-ray. I lay in my tiny room in the safety coat and cried for hours until another shot led to another sleep-ful night. Dianne came to me early the next day and sat next to me, actually touching me while I was subdued in my burrito bitter at the world. My tummy felt as if it would explode. She placed my displaced dog next to my head against my cheek.
"Tempy, sweetheart, we are trying to help you get better. We think you are a wonderful little girl and we want to help you be strong so you can do everything you want to do. Can you help me help you?"
I turned my head away from her.
"If you will keep the tube in, I can let your arms out sweetie."
"I DON'T want my tummy full!!!! I just don't! Please take the bad stuff out! PLEASE???"
"Sweetie, the stuff in your belly isn't bad, it's just food to make you strong and your heart beat and your brain think. It won't hurt you. I promise."
"You just want me big and easy. You want me to be bad!"
"I don't think you are bad at all. I think you are sweet and kind and just afraid. Now, if I let your arms out will you please keep the tube in just so we can talk?" She turned off the pump on the pole and unhooked the tube.
"See, no more food going in. It's just the tube in your nose ok?"
I shook my head at her olive branch and she unleashed me. I sat up and felt my heart beat hard. I touched my swollen belly and felt ashamed and invaded. I wanted to throw up and I moved my fingers to my mouth because at that point I didn't care how messy it was and only that I wanted it out. Dianne moved her hands more quickly than I gave her credit for. She held my hands in hers and I knew I was defeated. I began to cry and sink into myself and she pulled me and the rest of my body from the burrito on to her lap and hugged me as I cried.
Life couldn't be much worse at this point, here I was wearing a dumb helmet, dressing in a polka dot gown with an invader in my nose. But at that point, I had nothing left to fight and Dianne felt warm and safe and I never wanted her to leave me. I was attached.
Eating Disorder, history, parts writing, past issues 
