The Big Pink Plastic Water Mugs

I hadn't planned on saying anything about the big pink plastic water mugs, being so insignificant in my overall experience at Ward 3A, but when an idle Google search yielded the exact model of mug used by the hospital, I knew I must share them with you, my gentle readers.

The Thermo Insulated Travel Mug from China Wholesale Town.

Just imagine the mugs in a strange, pinkish-gray color, like if you took a pink shirt and washed it a million times over the course of twenty years, and that's the patient water mug.

About the best example of that pink I can find is this:

Pretty hideous, right? Why pink, of all colors? Blue or gray would make so much more sense. I guess pink was cheaper? I wouldn't be surprised if the hospital buys these mugs in bulk from that very website. With so many patients coming in and out every week, they'd have to buy them wholesale to keep cost down.

Every patient is allowed one of these standard-issue, over-sized mugs for water (or ice water, if you muster up the courage to ask one of the Nurses or Therapists for ice). But the mug is not simply given to you upon your admission. Oh no. You have to ask for the mug, hence why I never got one. I'm incapable of asking people for things out of an irrational fear of being an imposition or inconvenience to others. I just stuck with my Diet Coke bottles.

So I never got a giant pink plastic mug, but I liked looking at everyone else's mugs, because in getting a mug you were required to write your name and room number on the mug with a carefully guarded Sharpie brought out for that purpose and that purpose only. Watching someone sip on their water through the huge straw, I was able to see the extremely personal detail that is how a patient writes his or her name.

Patient L's name was done in a large, gangly scrawl, the "L" looping wildly with reckless abandon. Patient S's name was a delicate cursive, slightly slanted upwards toward the end. Patient Na's name was in clear, direct block print, unmistakably legible. On Patient K's mug, the tittle of the lone "i" was replaced by a heart.

In an environment filled with identical hospital gowns and impersonal identification wristbands, it was nice to see a little self-expression and individuality. In those moments, I could believe that these patients were real people.

Those mugs were damn ugly, though.

Cast of Characters, Part 2: The Perv

From Getty Images, by Tristan Paviot.

Perhaps my favorite patient of the whole motley crew was a young Hispanic male who was present in the ward before my admittance and remained past my discharge (i.e. he had issues that kept him there past the average five days). We'll call him Patient X.

He spoke only Spanish. It's hard enough trying to communicate with psychiatric patients in the same language; add a language barrier on top of that and it's next to impossible to convey even the simplest idea. The staff really struggled to treat him. There was occasionally an interpreter for Patient X, but not always. With or without an interpreter, he had to be watched by a staff member at all times.

Why, you ask? Well. Patient X was a pervert.

He would come into female patients' rooms while they were changing and give inappropriate hugs. Physical contact between patients isn't allowed anyway; a lingering hug with a hand drifting toward a boob is definitely not allowed. Thankfully, outrage is an emotion easily conveyed across all languages. Patient L frequently threatened violence, and he seemed to get that.

Patient X was strange in other ways. The staff always referred to him as "confused." I'm not sure why he was in the ward (The Big Three, schizophrenia, bipolar, whatever). Even when he had an interpreter translate for him during groups, his comments weren't entirely coherent. Something about "healing his wounds". Nice and poetic, but doesn't actually say much.

When he wasn't watched, he'd move mattresses from room to room, rearrange the furniture in the TV room, or just crawl on/under the furniture. During an evening wrap-up group, without warning, he did an army-crawl under the coffee table and had to be escorted from the room. Another time, during a morning community meeting, Patient X climbed on top of a chair, peeled an inspection sticker off a ceiling tile, and ate the sticker. Things like that. Therapist Hard Stare yelled at him, "[Patient X name], down!" -- like he was a dog. It's easier to get through to a dog than it was to get through to Patient X. I suppose when you're particularly frustrated with the failures of communication it's easy to devolve into such base methods. Down, boy!

He also made a complex tower of Jenga blocks in one corner of the unit. For someone who crawls all over the furniture, I was impressed by the detail and care that must have been put into the two-foot-tall skyscraper, complete with window arrangements and a lightning rod. The staff summoned the interpreter to ask Patient X about the tower (for it was truly unusual behavior for Patient X), but they couldn't get a coherent answer from him, Spanish or not.

While this "confused" behavior was entertaining (and frustrating), it wasn't nearly as interesting and funny as his more licentious behavior. I saw him drop his pants in the TV room in front of at least other three people, and when I told Therapist Verdigris about it, she just sighed and said, "Again?"

He also dropped trou and whipped out his dick at Patient Y.

While I was not a direct witness to that event, the heightened level of scrutiny over Patient X supports the validity of the story.

Strangely enough, Patient Y didn't seem particularly bothered by the flashing incident, despite being upset by things like Patient L's goth wardrobe. Alternatively, Patient L flipped out every time Patient X tried to touch her or come in her room. Guess you can't predict how people will respond to... "confused" behavior.

At least he wasn't dull.

From Getty Images, by Ghislain & Marie David de Lossy.

"Confused," indeed.

Upstairs Issues (i.e. Religion)

 A Priest Talking to a Sick Child.

That kid's pillow looks way too good for a hospital pillow.

From Corbis, by L. Kate Deal.

While in the hospital, I was always fascinated by a particular paradox: overtly religious people who were suicidal. Patient Ne and Patient D were both examples of this. My first roommate, Patient D, was one of these lost lambs. She would even read the Bible in bed. There are plenty of healthy Christians out there who've probably never actually read the Bible, and yet here was a woman who had tried to end her life and was reading the Bible at bedtime. Though I suppose it's typical for patients to take solace in the Word of the Almighty God. I hope it gave her comfort.

The reconciliation of the religion/suicide thing is an issue, though. Hamlet had a line about that in Act I, scene ii. Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd / His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! Hamlet's basically saying that he'd kill himself if it weren't against Christian doctrine. (And don't you English professors tell me that Hamlet wasn't suicidal. That line combined with the "To be or not to be" speech is solid proof.)

Suicide is just Against The Rules, plain and simple, according to the Judeo-Christian perspective. I almost want to call hypocrite on these people. Though maybe it's more an issue of falling short of the mark.

Of course, I'm a born-and-raised atheist (yes, seriously), so I wouldn't defend my knowledge of Christian doctrine in court or anything. After all, when Patient R used the phrase "Only the guy upstairs knows" in a group therapy session, my first thought was "What? The billing department?"

I can be a little doctrinally challenged at times.

Other than people hoping that religion will heal their wounds, the most prevalent presence of religion in the ward was in the form of religious visitors. Priests, Imams, Rabbis -- holy personages of any religion are welcome. I saw both a pastor and an imam during my week at the hospital. (The imam was holding hands with Patient B as he did his slow laps around the nurses' station. He was one of a handful of lap-walkers.) AND -- get this, men of the cloth aren't limited just to standard visiting hours (11am-2pm and 6pm-8pm). They can visit patients on the ward at any time.

They call it the Pastor Pass.

Original found at SmartDraw.com

Keeping Calm and Carrying On

As a welcome-home / birthday gift, a friend gave me a journal with the Keep Calm and Carry On poster on the cover. I've always been fond of this poster, and I always love a new notebook (it's filled with such possibilities!), so all around this was an excellent gift. It's also pretty good advice. Just... keep calm and carry on.

I took notes all through my stay in Ward 3A, usually on little scraps of paper, completely at random, no sense of order. I just wrote as I observed. Once I returned home and received the Keep Calm journal, I transferred all my notes into the journal, categorizing them as things such as Patient Life, Groups, Staff, Religion, Meals, Cast of Characters, etc. This organization ought to make writing new posts for this blog all the easier.

Anyway, the journal's cover got me thinking. While "Keep Calm and Carry On" is a good sentiment for a psych ward, what other posters of that ilk might there be? Parody posters are popular for KCaCO, so I thought I'd do one of my own.

I made this one just for fun, using a combination of the KeepCalm-O-Matic and my favorite image editing program, Micrografx Picture Publisher (sadly no longer available). I'm very proud of the line art of the pills at the top. But, upon later thought, I figured that "be less crazy" is a bit negative for a motivational poster. So I tried again.

That's more positive, right? It looks more like the original poster, anyway. I think I'll put this on my bathroom mirror or something. Not exactly an affirmation or even a necessarily motivational sentiment, but still a good reminder to take one's meds.