A month or so ago, I made a post about how my VA doctors are trying to kill me with all of the medication that they are giving me. I then made the decision to stop taking a lot of my mental health meds.
That decision was made because of blood work that consistently showed that my kidneys were beginning to fail over the years since I started taking all of the medication that they were prescribing me.
I was doing pretty good until I started weening off of my last mental health med. I was dealing with the withdrawal symptoms of the first few meds just fine. I was getting brain zaps and other weird feelings, but nothing that really affected my mental health.
The whole coronavirus thing was starting to take its toll on everyone at work. We were overworked, understaffed and stressed. I manage the receiving and stocking team for a large store and we were constantly getting two to three times the normal amount of freight and having to deal with it with less people.
I knew that I was not going to be able to ween off of my last mental health medication when I started to hate everything about my job and everyone at work, so I decided to take a week off while I started those meds up again and balance things out.
When I started taking those meds again, my mental health was all over the place. Some days I wouldn't mind going in to work and then other days, things would happen at work and I would snap and want to just quit and walk out. More and more often I felt like just quitting and leaving the job.
Well, that day came on Monday. I had had enough and ended up clocking out, going up to one of my supervisors and handing over all my stuff and telling them I am done, then I just walked out.
Most of my issues had come from the time I spent in the military or as a law enforcement officer. I took the meds to help cope with the experiences that I had been through, and now without that coping mechanism, things began to spiral out of control and I was not able to wear the mask of normal face anymore.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was on my way to the emergency room and telling them I did not feel safe and that I may end up hurting myself or taking my life.
They ended up transporting me to the VA Hospital and admitting me to the psychiatric unit. When I got to the hospital, I did not know what to expect would happen, but ending up it the psychiatric unit was not what I had planned.
I had worked in the psychiatric until when I worked in the prison, so it was very different for me to be on the other end of things. At least I wasn't in prison though. But when I asked to leave the next day, they told me no and then it felt like I really was in a prison.
I spent my days eating shitty food, talking to nurses and doctors, and not really doing much else. I was in there with people that had been there for months, and that really messed with me because it made me unsure of when I was going to be free again. I started wondering about what I would do if I was out and things got bad again and not wanting to seek out help like this again because I didn't want to be locked up.
The first day was the hardest because I had no clue what was going on, I only had an hour or so of sleep and they put me in the wrong wing. I was in an area where people that had been sent instead of going to prison, so I was with violent people and drug addicts. I talked to the doctor and asked them why I was in this part of the hospital and she let me know that they made a mistake and were going to move me, so after they let us go outside for our 30 minutes of "recess" I was sent to a different wing.
It was a lot quieter there, and I started to settle in and try and make the best of this situation. I started to read and finished a book in less than 24 hours. The first night on the new side, I slept about 10 hours and woke up feeling pretty good. My doctors had changed a few of my meds around and had done some blood work as well because I let them know about my reasons for coming off of my meds in the first place.
My blood work came back and they let me know that my kidneys were normal now, so I can only assume that the reason that they were declining was the meds that I had stopped taking. The new meds seemed to be working better than the old stuff and they said that I would be able to leave Thursday if I was doing well on the meds.
So I just had a little bit left in there and I had an end goal in site. I participated in the group therapy sessions and really didn't do much in between. The coronavirus had caused sessions to be cut back a lot, so there was only like one session a day. The rest of my time was spent waiting for meals and the two snack times. The food was always cold and gross, so I felt that I didn't really eat much, but that is fine because I didn't do much other than sleep or sit on my bed reading.
The day came for me to leave and I still felt pretty good. I am hoping that these new meds will work out for me and not mess up my kidneys. I am taking a lot less pills each day than I was originally, so I think it should work out. As far as my job, I still have it and I am being moved to a different area when I get back. I am taking two weeks off work this time, instead of just one, while I adjust to these meds.
Looking back now, this whole experience was not too bad, because I was able to be in a place where I could be looked after and get things balanced with my meds. It was also nice to not have any outside stress other than just being able to focus on my healing. I am glad to be out though and be with my family again.
In the US, at least 22 Military Veterans kill themselves each day and I am glad that I reached out and didn't become one of the statistics. Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings in this post. I hope that at least some of it made some sense.
