That's what I call what happened to me shortly after I posted the last installment of the Corvette Cruise trip. On November 8th I was feeling pretty well. I had enough energy to write and to put pictures in the post. The treatment for pneumonia, from Group Health Urgent Care, was working. But things started to go south soon after that. I had finished the last of the high-powered medications my doctor prescribed for what she thought (wrongly) was Legionnaires Disease, not just pneumonia. The doses were very high, way higher than recommended for simple pneumonia. But she was sure enough that I had that disease to call the Public Health nurse, who called to interview me about where I'd been and when symptoms started, etc. We'd been on a cruise ship back from Hawaii when I started to get sick, so to my doctor and to the Health nurse, that was suspicious.
As it turned out, I didn't have Legionnaires. When I drove down to have a follow-up X-ray on November 24th, I was clear of pneumonia. But I shouldn't have been driving. I couldn't remember how to operate the heating system in the car! About half-way to Silverdale I realized I'd better really focus, because something was wrong. I went to an Alumni lunch on the 20th, but I was in a fog. Maybe some noticed, but I don't think they did. By the time Thanksgiving came I could barely function. I couldn't make decisions about tiny choices let alone big ones; I couldn't sleep and I began to cry. According to my husband I was crying 3 times a day. He thought I was sleeping long hours, but I wasn't because my mind was racing. I remember going to a Corvette club meeting where everything seemed "wrong". I couldn't hold a conversation with anyone--I couldn't remember names or incidences that everyone was talking about. By the end of that week, the first week in December, I had come to the point where I had trouble dressing myself. My husband was getting very, very worried. He called my friend, Kay, who is the person I've been closest to in my life, and who is also a therapist. She came to see me and thought I might be in a "deep depression".
On that assumption, Michael took me back to the doctor. I lay on the examining table in a fetal position, crying, while Michael told the doctor what my behavior had been. When the doctor finally got me to talk to her, I was sobbing something about my mother. She diagnosed me with PTSD and increased my prescription of anti-depressants instead of sending me to the behavioral center.
Michael arranged a session with Kay. All I did for 1 1/2 hours was cry. Kay started to question her original thoughts about depression. Why, she asked herself, would Chris, who has never had much more than a mild depression, suddenly be acting this way? She asked Michael if he'd be okay if I stayed the night with her and he agreed and suggested she try to get me to take a shower, something he'd been unable to do in the last few days. I stayed there that night and I took a shower and enjoyed the cozy bed. But the next morning, I thought Kay's house was my house. And when we got home and I got upset about something, I demanded to "go home". I was shocked and confused to find out that I was already home.
That's when the paranoia started. I'm not going to go into great detail about that, but one of my paranoia stories was that my husband was a burglar in the house and a day later when he took me to the emergency room at Harrison, I thought he was someone the police were after and that I was part of the plan to capture him. They did every test in the book on me that night--MRI, EKG, brainstem tests, urine samples, more X-rays, looking for something that might explain my behavior. All tests were negative. I was unaware of all the tests except the MRI. The machine looked like a wooden construction to me. I thought someone was playing a joke on me. The nurse sounded like a woman in our Corvette club. I don't remember anything about the trip to Emergency or the trip back home.
Michael was starting to talk to his cousin, Mary, in Greece. She is a pharmacist. In Greece that position has much more responsibility than in the States. She can prescribe and dispense medicines and has owned her pharmacy for many years. She wanted to know what medications I'd been taking and when she heard about the huge doses of Zithromax (Azithromycin) I'd taken, she was extremely alarmed. Within the next few days I went even further downhill; I didn't open my eyes, I had to be told to come to the table to eat, Michael made all the meals, had to tell me how to undress for bed, had to tell me how to dress in the morning. He tried to get me to exercise, thinking that might help the meds get out of my system, but finally I was too far gone to reason with and he took me to Group Health Behavioral Health Center in Bremerton to get help. Michael told them the story of the Zithromax and two doctors tried to talk to me; I wouldn't/couldn't talk to them. They finally told Michael he should take me to the Emergency Room of Harrison again while they tried to arrange a bed in a psychiatric hospital. After 3 1/2 hours in Emergency a bed became available at Northwest Hospital right next to the U of W Hospital, in the
Geropsychiatric Center. Michael kept calling it the Psych Ward, which conjured up images of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Nurse Ratched.
For me, it was a bewildering place to be. Since I was suffering from paranoia, my brain and I made up stories/theories of why I was there. At first I thought I was there with my writer's group and we were helping the staff teach new employees how to handle their elderly patients. In the interests of teaching them, I flung my cream of rice around, spilled my water on the table and banged my spoon on my tray. Someone asked me, "Are you ready to go back to your room, Christine?" They made a note, that I saw later, about my behavior that day. All day long for the entire time I was there, 7 days, I made up theory after theory. The rooms were labeled with papers inside plastic sheet protectors--Sue, Lorraine, Jack, Linda, Norma Jean (!). I thought Jack Archer was in the "JACK" room, but I didn't see him there. I thought the woman named "Norma Jean" was a staff person, watching me. For a time I thought ALL the other patients were doctors, observing me.
Thankfully, I had visitors while I was there, to give me support and break up the long days--someone from our alumni group visited nearly every day. Ralph, Marty, Vicki A, Jim Petersen and my dear, old friend, Anne. Others sent cards, first Christmas cards, then get well cards. When I was finally able to reason again, I was overwhelmed with gratitude for my friends. The visits and phone calls from friends and family, even one from London, filled the bleak days of confusion. I hated being stuck in either my room or the activity/dining room. I didn't have a bulletin board or any decoration at all until Kay stuck some cards up on the wall to brighten it a little. I couldn't read because I couldn't focus my mind.
There was a Christmas tree (fake) in the activity room, which was sort of nice to see at first. They played carols on the CD player and at night turned to a sports station on the radio. Since all of us were 65 or older, we enjoyed the old tunes and the sound of radio sports. There was a TV in the appropriately named TV Room where the women who had been there for awhile watched DVD movies, all of which I'd seen. But one night there was a Seahawks game and even in my paranoia, confusion and sadness I had a great time watching it and whooped and yelled just like I do at home.
I asked my husband to bring me some pens and a notebook and when I got those I started to write many times a day. I wrote what I could remember of what had happened at home--I wrote down some of my "paranoia stories". I wrote about changes I wanted to make in my life, I made lists. I tried to remember. My memory was fried. The first several days I didn't know who I was. I tried out theories of being my husband, my ex-husband, my son-in-law, my best friend, my son, my daughter-in-law. I don't remember how long it took for me to realize I was Christine. One day I was asked who I was, I said "Christine" and a woman said, "No. That's Christine over there in the corner, asleep", as she pointed at a man.
I was told later that the psychiatrist couldn't figure out how to diagnose me. He didn't come up with anything, ever. That's because I was suffering a strange reaction from medications, not the usual mental health or cognitive problems that usually brought people to this part of the hospital. So they just observed me--the nurses took notes that are in the record. After the first day I was a model citizen of the ward--I ate my meals (horrible gluten-free meals of dry salmon, dry chicken and dry pork, scrambled eggs and cream of rice); I exercised in the hallway, using the railing like a ballet bar, I made friends with another woman, I participated in all the groups (craft, sitting exercise, social work, goal-making), I didn't make any trouble like on that first day.
They let me go home two days before Christmas. The best meal I have ever had was the Topnotch burger on a gluten-free bun that I had at Silver City Brewery the night Michael brought me home. It was leaking hot, fatty juice, had some kind of delicious sloppy dressing on it, a beautiful slice of red tomato, a crispy piece of lettuce and even the bun was heaven. The juices ran down my chin and my arm and I was transported. I've never appreciated a meal so much. I took a shower as soon as we got home. I had taken two "showers" at the hospital, but the fully tiled shower room was fixed so that nobody could hurt themselves--hand-held shower with a short hose, too short to strangle yourself--water lever 2 feet away from the shower so you couldn't scald yourself, and liquid soap that wasn't soap. Maybe they worried someone would drink it.
Being home, being clean, full of delicious food and going to sleep in my own bed, with my husband there to keep me warm and protect me from the paranoia that still filled my head--
nothing could have been better. I still had a ways to go, but I was on the road back.
