My Hospital Stay - BPD??

Yep, so I ended up  (voluntarily) in the psychiatric ward... it was my first time in. That's why I haven't posted in a while... there was no internet in there. I was there for less than a week, thank goodness because I didn't cope very well with the environment in there.

Well shall I tell you the story, starting with how I got admitted?

If you've been reading my previous posts, you've probably realized that I've been increasingly depressed and suicidal for some time....
Well, I guess I finally lost the plot and made 'plans' to overdose, started writing suicide letters etc. In the meantime I cut my arms a lot. Well Mum dropped round to visit me, and found my crying hysterically covered in blood. Then my housemate walks in on top of it, takes one look at me, tells me not to worry and it's alright, and calmly goes to get some bandages etc to dress my arms (he's awesome). Anyway so I end up pouring out everything to Mum, my suicidal plans etc, and she said: "hunny, I think you might need to go into hospital for a little while."
So I ended up at the ED, crying my eyes out at the poor psychiatric nurse (well I guess she's used to it). There were no beds available, so they told me to sleep at Mum's place for a couple of nights and they'd call when there was a free bed. When I went in, I was insanely depressed. My roommate, however, was amazing. She was legally blind, was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and Asperger's, and was a self-harmer like me. But she helped me so much, it was like she knew exactly what to do and say when ever I was upset ... I wish I knew what to do to help other people like that, what a gift! Unfortunately she left a couple of days after I got there. There was another lady in the ward, however, who I really liked. She reminded me sooo much of my friends Mum (also bipolar) who died a couple of years ago. The likeness in personality was amazing! I reckon she got me through that week. We did art and drank coffee together a lot. I tried very hard to treat other people well and help them as much as I could.
My mood however, was all over the place. As I said, I've been depressed for months, and I went in suicidal. Well within a couple of days I was in what I would normally call a mixed or "dysphoric" state, with wild mood swings from euphoric hypomania to hysterical crying and depression all within the same day.
I had a particularly bad night in which some of the psychotic patients started fighting with each other and it made me extremely anxious and agitated so I went to bed and put my headphones in to try and calm down. Anyway, a very nasty and irritable nurse came and snatched them from me... because apparently I was not allowed any "cords" in my room. This made me cry even harder and become more hysterical. I think I was shrieking "I WANT TO GO HOME!!!" lol. But by the next morniing I was euphoric and manic again. and so it went on....
I also self-harmed while in one of my distressed states. I found a bit of an aluminium packet (like that pills are put in) in my pocket - okay I admit I put in in there on purpose before I went - and I opened the healing cuts on my arms... so a nurse found me covered in blood and crying again.... And I was threatened that if I SH'd again I'd be put in the locked ward. This freaked me out even more. The entire place and everything about it freaked me out majorly, to be honest.
This crazy swinging between opposite moods and the self-harm lead to both Drs telling me I had a lot of Borderline Personality Disorder traits, and saying I needed to talk about that with my normal pdoc, and think about therapies in that direction. Have to wait another week now though to get an appointment with her. Now I'm confused. Have I really got Bipolar Type 1 Affective Disorder as my pdoc has always said?? or am I actually Borderline? Or both?? I have no idea... but I suppose it would affect treatment?

Well I wanted to finish on a funny note, so I wanted to add that there were some really fun moments in the ward also. There was a manic lady who liked to dance in at morning tea/coffee time and yell "FRUIT-CAKES FOR THE FRUITCAKES!!" (they always gave us wrapped fruitcake like you get in aeroplanes). One morning she also pulled out all the plants in the vegie patch, claiming to the wailing patients (who normally attended it so carefully) that she was simply "re-arranging it" because she was the gardener. I also stayed up late one night with her and another boy doing "yoga" out of a book she'd brought into the ward. The same boy wrote me a love letter which he gave to me when I was discharged. I'd known him for two days.

SO, that's the latest drama.... I am so relieved to be out. I feel good, actually surprisingly really good. I feel exactly the way Sylvia Plath describe the "bell jar" lifting from you so you can breath. I'm very behind at uni now, but have emailed my lecturers hopefully to sort something out. Tonight I hung out with some friends....
one of them was off to a halloween party, so we painted him as a skeleton with white body paint!! He has dark skin, so he wore nothing but his undies and a loin-cloth, and he looked awesome once painted! haha....

Well, at least I can't complain that my life is dull!! Who knows what will happen next??

 ~Tam~