Saint One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Lawrence Part I

My first stay in a psychiatric hospital game in 1990.  The place was Saint Lawrence Hospital, the only hospital in town with a psych ward.  Let me tell you it really was like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  The staff alienated the patients and the patients returned the favor.  The staff was horrible to the patients.  Open hostility reigned supreme between the two groups.  I have no idea if it has improved since my last hospitalization there in 1997.  Staff may be more responsive to us crazies.  Who knows.  But the place was a literal looney bin and was the last place I needed to be to get help.  I was in the isolation unit for a week.  The diagnosis was bipolar and self injurious behavior.  I cracked my head so often I looked like I had broken my nose.  Black and blue and a popped blood vessel in one eye.  I looked like hell, and the other patients felt free to tell me that.  One "gentleman" who was there in lieu of serving a prison sentence for repeated DUIs and had a glass eye from an automobile accident, followed me around every where and felt free to come into my room to harass me.  And when I complained to the staff about it they told me I should handle it myself.  I did one night, yelling and screaming at him as I was afraid he was going to assault me.  Of course the yelling and screaming only served to keep me in isolation longer.  But he did stop bothering me.  He bothered the staff instead and kept taking his glass eye out to terrify the nurses. I had a roommate who was a cutter.  She when into the community room in lock down and while staff was holding a mirror so one of the men could shave, she seized the mirror, broke it and proceeded to cut herself.  They just bandaged her up and that keep her in isolation for a while longer.

One of the men there was a schizophrenic gentleman who I recognized from the library as a patron.  When he was on his medication he was a graduate student in English Lit.  When off he would be at Saint Lawrence in the isolation ward.  The staff went ballistic one night when he tried to flush his dirty sheets down the toilet, which of course plugged the toilet up and caused a flood.  You could hear the staff screaming at him to behave.  But mostly he was a gentle soul who was trying his best.  He died a few years later, discovered in his apartment, off his medication and basically dead of dehydration. 

I was allowed visitors and when Gastric came the above mentioned patient, Jerome, would had her his overcoat to hold.  I don't know why but he did.  My Ex came to visit only occasionally, preferring to spent time with a new love interest.  The Ex was not quite yet an Ex but I hung on to the illusion of togetherness and I believe now  the Ex convinced me to go to the hospital to facilitate the liaison.  Along with the Soul Sucker, who is still good friends with the Ex, they got me admitted after some false starts.  I was crazy, bruised and lost all track of time.  I missed the UofM/Ohio State game and spent Thanksgiving on the isolation ward.  Some of my true friends came to visit: Gastric came often, along with JB, LAD, and the late Dianne.  But not so much my not so soon to be Ex.

And I think I will leave you hanging with this retelling of my time in the isolation ward.