Yes, every shred of detail is what I can remember happening...ugh, I so wish it hadn't happened!
Here goes, hope I don't freak you out...
I had a tourettic rage few nights ago and kicked out the bottom part of my bedroom window. My parents made arrangements and took off for the closest major hospital in search for something--anything at all--that would help calm the vicious tics I was having. During the hour-and-a-half drive, I cried, punched myself HARD, bruised myself, bit myself, and even when I managed to restrain my own hands by sitting on 'em, well, my mouth decided it wanted to be a seam ripper. I tore apart the (thankfully inexpensive, but I still really liked it) walmart t-shirt I was wearing. The left sleeve had almost fallen off, there were long strips of torn gray flowered fabric littering my lap and the car seat.
And that was just the begining. As soon as my parents got me in the wheelchair and inside, i was really conscious of all the vacant, puzzled stares. Then they put me in the triage room, and I had the irresistible urge to poke all human beings within my reach once I'd finished pounding on the glass door. Somehow in the ensuing scuffle, I fell on the floor and started kicking/screaming/shouting/crying/hitting/punching/biting everything and everyone. One thing you have to know about me: I DO NOT like being restrained, period, I hate it, it's like I've lost my final tiny spark of freedom when you tie me up... Then out of nowhere came five or six or four well, let's just say several--hospital security guards. The took over where my dad left off, and held me down, HARD. What did I do instictively but bite them, hit them, scratch them and try in general to get the heck out of dodge. But of course it didn't work. There were like four trained adult policemen on top of me--literally. They practically dragged me to a room in the ED and strapped me down with freaking restraints!!! The first set, I managed to worm one of my hands out from the cuff, but it was still too early, they were still standing there watching me and got another set that was too tight for me to get out of. I mean, I can see why they were a little alarmed, but gosh, what the h*ll did they expect, rushing up on an unarmed, harmless fourteen year old girl but to be beaten back because guess what? I hadn't broken anything or harmed anyone. I'd only poked the triage nurse just once on the shoulder. I swear, that's it! That's all my parents and I can remember that took place in the tiny triage room. So I'm screaming and crying and carrying on like some true lunatic from an asylum or something. And they would be too, I'm sure, if they knew one rat's behind about what being physically unable to perform tics is like. Anyway, I was seeing red and if I had a knife, I would have probably used it...to get out of the freaking restraints! and maybe to get my way out of the ward, I didn't want medicine anymore at that time, I wanted by then to go home! Another nurse came in and gave me a couple shots cuz I'd messed up the IV struggling with the thick rubber restraints. The last thing I remember was something about the drug Prolixin, my parents standing there and I'm half asleep, so drugged up but still letting loose shrieks of pure rage. I believe this: they had NO RIGHT TO TIE ME UP!!! The next thing after that I remember was maybe several hours later in the early morning being dumped off the gurney-thingy and laying down on this too-short dark green (freaking RUBBERMAID!) couch in a room about the size of two dog-pound cages pushed together. My mom was sitting in a chair somewhere in the room, and there were some blankets and a pillow lying strewn on the floor. Come to find out, my dad had spent the night on the cold, hard entrance-area-to-psych-ward floor! That was where we were-in a locked ward with unspeakably small rooms that had locks on the outside, let's say, 'just in case.' I was seriously POd. My parents went out numerous times into the even smaller waiting room, discussing ME with all these supposedly smart doctors who couldn't tell Tourette's from psychosis! They told me, that or I overheard them talking about...I was kinda fuzzy still from the prolixin...that they wanted to involuntarily commit me to some psychiatric hospital. At that point, it gave me back the desire to scream, and slowly I came out of the drug-induced haze and started ticking again. My parents threatned to call lawyers and I know they would have called the national guard if it would have made a hill of beans difference so far as getting me out of that horrible h*ll hole. There were some legitimately 'crazy' people in the same ward, different holes in the wall they call rooms...yeah, like I mean, really, 'crazy' kind of people--my dad stood between one of them and the door to the excuse we had for a room when the psycho tried to get inside. Yeah. We were at the funny farm. It took hours and hours and hours spent on cheap waiting chairs, phone calls around, different hands trading paperwork and a h*lluva lot of patience not to just make a break for it..but that wouldn't have worked, they'd just call those bulky security guards to tie my parents up too, I think. So after thirty hours at the hospital I am not gonna name, we FINALLY went home. My 'rents could've left me there in the hands of the wack jobs of the nurses (well, some of the nurses were nice, but I am still very, very BITTER)
My dad says it's all been one big misunderstanding, but in my eyes, it was liquid evil that drove all those people to do this crap to us. He said on the way home that night I'd drawn blood on more than one of those bumbling security guards...and I'm glad. It's my little tiny piece of spite, I hope at least one of them needed stitches!
But that isn't all.
The next day, wenesday I started grinding my teeth in all-too-familiar way. I was thinking: Please God, not again! Not dystonia! But it was. I chipped off the front part of one of my lower incisors, i ground them together so powerfully, and it hurt like all you know what. My mom popped me a couple cogentin, we knew what to do cuz I've had this before, but later that day, the teeth-grinding started again, then accompanied by the backwards-sideways posturing of my neck. I begged, unimaginably, to go to the ER again. But not the same ER, the one in our hometown, not the fancy hospital where they restrain TS patients! We waited over an hour, and the nurses finally gave me an IV for the dystonia. My mom knows it was from the prolixin. She'd specifically told the nurse at the nightmare hospital NOT to give me anything related to fluphenazine..and guess what? Prolixin, it turns out, is just another name for that drug that I have these reactions to. I'm sorry if it seemed overly bitter, but OMG, it was a real nightmare. In the past three days since the ordeal, I've randomly begged my mom to promise, NEVER take me back to the hospital they screwed me up at! I really, OMG-if they hadn't been persistent in their urging the doctors, I could be in a psychiatric hospital right now.
Shaken But Still Alive And Running...
-Voxina
........
Reading this, do you think they actually had the right too..ugh...had any experiences like this? I am just now really getting over it! No, I'm not psychotic, a psychotic person couldn't write this, no?
Feedback is quite welcome.
Tourette's, Big Misunderstandings and Rubbermaid Couches
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