INSIDE THE INSANE - WEEK TWO

WEEK TWO

July 7, 2008

It’s week two and I haven’t felt the need to puke, which is good. I carefully turned by head in the halls to see if anyone was in the secluded cell and, thankfully, no one remained.
“Where is that woman from last week?”
“Abigail? I don’t know. She’s around.” Rebecca said like it’s Tuesday. Rebecca was a five foot nothing immigrant from Nicaragua whose family came to this county with nothing. She had a masters in social work and psychology and seemed to have seen it all.
“Oh.” I really didn’t want to know what Abigail was “around” so was relieved a bit.
“Becca, can I go home now?”
It was the same guy with the same shirt and the same tormented face with the same line.
“I put the paperwork in.” Rebecca said as she opened the door to the offices and closed him off.
“Here is your desk.” She pointed to a nightstand with a foot of space for my notebook.
“Robin sits here.” I was to share the hole with another social worker.
“She’s kinda stupid.”
“Great.”
We did some paperwork and then Rebecca went to visit Kimberely to see where she wanted to live in a voluntary facility.
“I can’t be near my mother. I will try and kill her and go at her with a knife if I’m with her.” You got to respect her honesty and so she settled on a facility on the other side of her demon.

July 8, 2008

Sang Pak. She was Asian. She was bipolar with a history of hyper sexuality. She was also a prostitute, twenty three years old, and was raped.

She walked along the side of the hallway and Rebecca approached her to talk to her about going to an IMD.

“Sang, hi, I’m Rebeca.” She stopped suddenly.
“Hi.”
“This is Erica.”
“Hi, how are you?” I smiled.
“I don’t know, good, I don’t know what to say.” She was nervous to answer how are you cause somewhere along the line it wasn’t said right and now was on the bench of uncertainty.

She stamped her right foot every few seconds and was my first Asian bipolar encounter, or Asian anything.

July 10, 2008

“Lamar. What are we going to do about Lamar? Any ideas?”
“We can open the door and maybe he’ll walk out.” The rounds were on the light side today, yet, beneath that remark was the truth that after all the treatment in the world sometimes you just don’t know what to do with a patient.

As a medical case worker it is my job to meet with the staff: doctors, nurses, social workers, and randoms that I had no idea what they did, and gather as much information about a patient possible to present them to the gatekeepers to find the right place for them on the totem pole of incarceration. It seemed like too much responsibility for someone like me, someone with zero medical experience. I was the one who read the chart, wrote a synopsis and then pass it over to the gatekeepers. It seemed like a go between job but so much seemed to appear between the cracks that could mean someone sits on a waiting list for months or gets in in a week. It all seemed so important yet at the hospital level they have one purpose: ascertain the client and get them stable enough so they can move them out, then pass them off to the next branch of the tree. I was the monkey swinging from branch to branch passing on information and who the hell trusts a monkey with information that help house a patient. Let me explain. Politically the hospital wants their patients out so the social workers job is to facilitate this so they tell me what they need to say and want me to hear to make sure this happens so if a patient is acute they may spin a tiny lie and say they aren’t. Yet I know from the rounds that the doctor says something else. So what I choose to write based on crossing input swings through the trees and files fall here and there leaving a MID with 13 beds open and waiting to be filled and no one in them cause the files are on the forest floor.

I sat in the common room while Rebecca spoke with a client about going to an FSP. A disheveled black man rolled himself into the room in a wheel chair. He had a dirty Afro, slouched shoulders and a mean frown across his face.
“Hi.” I was being friendly.
“Hi. I’m Lamar.” I recalled the meeting earlier that day and how Lamar was a dead end case and wondered why.
“How are you?”
“I’m pissed. I had a clean white shirt in my locket to wear outside and they take it. These assholes hate me.”
“I’m sure they don’t hate you. They are trying to help you.” I felt so stupid saying cause if I were him I could give a fuck if anyone was trying to help me when I just wanted my shirt to go outside.
“No. They assholes.”
I let it go.