Editorial Note (09/12/2016)
I didn't take any notes directly during this day, however I did have more text-based conversations with people... this entry is composed entirely of my half of the conversations.12:14 AM
I would like to know what the lead threshold is in my body and whether or not it's been passed.
8:14 AM
I can speak. The pressure inside my head feels like it's mostly controlled right now. The tinnitus is very faint.
Feeling a bit dazed / shell-shocked to be honest.
I never imagined that I'd have to go through this kind of cruelty in a hospital setting.
If MGH will take me as a walk-in, I think I just want to wait until my next Fiorcet (a barbiturate) and Ativan (a benzodiazepine) treatments, check out, and head over there while I am physically capable. I am not going to be treated without prejudice and condescension here.
Editorial Note (09/12/2016)
Throughout the course of the day, I began the process of purchasing my new domain name--my old one is being squatted and held for ransom for $345--and setting up this blog.
I also had a chance to speak with Neurology, who told me that my scans came back normal. I asked to see the scans for myself, and when I started asking specific questions about the formations and proximities of the different brain regions, I was denied and the doctor walked away from me. Anybody who knows me knows how such rudeness gets under my skin. As she was walking away, I shouted out to her, "Get over your ego and do your job!" (She'd already been insisting for a day that the issues I was experiencing were purely psychological in nature, and she used one of her religious beliefs to justify her argument. I lost complete respect for her after that, but not before explaining to her how firewalking actually works using physics--NO BRAIN MAGIC REQUIRED!)
As the day came to a close the nurse who was assigned to my bed told +Rachel that she had to leave. If you've been following along, you may guess that she has been my best advocate during my stay at the hospital, and without her, I'd be much worse off as a result. So, naturally, I resisted. I didn't have a roommate. There was literally no reason to kick her out other than to give us a hard time. We asked why, and she said it was because I was going to have another male roommate (I'm genderfluid, mind you) and females weren't allowed to stay in male rooms overnight. I demanded to see the written policy that stated she was not permitted to stay overnight with me, in a sleeper next to my hospital bed. The nurse told us that she couldn't stay because I was going to be receiving a new male roommate. (Mind you, I'd already had two male roommates prior, and Rachel had slept next to me for two nights already without any fuss from staff.)
After a short argument about requiring a written policy, as I hadn't consented to a situation where she would have been disallowed to stay with me, the nurse left the room and returned with the nursing supervisor. The nursing supervisor was an older woman, wearing a white coat, holding a piece of paper curled up in her hands. Perfect! A written policy I never signed! The nursing supervisor was accompanied by two security guards. I said I would not be speaking to anyone with a security guard in the room. I will not succumb to scare tactics. I just wanted to read the written hospital policy.
She proceeded to tell me a different story: Having a guest spend the night would violate HIPAA policy with another patient in the room. (I had no roommate at the time.) Once again, I demanded to see the written policy. I didn't trust these people for their word; they'd already proven without a doubt that they were dishonest. I needed to read written policy with my own eyes, and I assumed that's what she was holding in her hands.
She had refused to show me anything in black and white. Instead, she gave an ultimatum: Rachel leaves now or she will be escorted out. I responded that if I stay, she says, and if she leaves, I leave with her. I was not willing to spend a night surrounded by untrustworthy people to whom I was expected to entrust not just my safety, but my life.
Then, the shit hit the fan: I wasn't permitted to leave. She said that Rachel could leave, however I could not. My response? Sure, I could. I could put on my walking boot, put on my sneaker, and hobble out of here with my cane. Easy enough.
Not so fast! If I attempted to leave, security would restrain me and put me back in my room with a detail outside my room.
That's when the panic set in. I wasn't a patient anymore. I was a prisoner. I had been passively kidnapped.
Within seconds, my panic exploded into a complete autistic meltdown. I didn't consent to anything that would have led to what essentially amounted to imprisonment! I was a grown adult! I was a sovereign human being! They had no right! They had no right to detain me!
"You cannot keep me here! You have no right! I will be packing up and hobbling out of here, and you will stay out of my way!" They wouldn't hear any of it. "You want a brawl on your hands? Stay out of my way or you will have a brawl on your hands. Who the fuck do you think you are?"
(Mind you, I'm autistic so I'm prone to say things that reflect the level of my anger, without being literal. Everyone knew this. I'm also, for all intents and purposes, a cripple. I need my cane just to shuffle to the bathroom. A baby could probably crawl faster than I can walk right now.)
The bald security guard retorted, "You do that, and you'll be sent to jail!"
Jail seemed like an upgrade from this place by now. If Tufts Medical Center isn't Hell, it's at least the gateway to Hell...
He wants to play Mr. Tough-Guy with me? He wants to try to intimidate me with his puffed-out chest and his bravado? Alright, I'll play, prick. "Shut the fuck up! I didn't ask you for your opinion. Get the fuck out of my room!"
The whole contingent later returned with a doctor from Psychiatry to finally explain to me the grounds for detaining me. Accompanied by yet another big, burly security guard standing way too close to my bed, trying his hardest to look tough and intimidating.
I was livid. I said I wouldn't be speaking with anyone until Meathead took two steps back away from me. He eventually did after I stared him down long enough. He started mouthing off at me. I responded, "I didn't ask you for your opinion." "Well, you're going to hear it anyway." "Go talk to yourself. I'm not listening."
Then we got to the actual talk. What was the real reason my health aid couldn't stay with me and make sure I wasn't neglected? I needed my closest ally by my side, and she wanted to stay by my side of her own volition. Why was I suddenly a prisoner? I'd done nothing to warrant imprisonment in the hospital. I was being kept against my will.
The psychiatrist told me that the visitor overnight policy was variable and unwritten. He downplayed the words "detained", "prisoner", and "kidnapped", however he did agree with me that I was being forced to stay at the hospital against my will. I would face jail time if I tried to leave the hospital of my own volition. He said he needed to make sure I wasn't a threat to myself or to others, so I was "sectioned" earlier in the day.
(Did they ever bother mentioning this change to me at all during the day, to give me a chance to process, adapt to, and transition into this new lack of personal freedom? Not at all. They sprung it on me as a tool of aggression. If I hadn't insisted that my wife, my advocate, my everything, stay by my side, I would have been none the wiser. They should have known better.)
Rachel did eventually leave after we had a brief discussion about remaining calm, and intentionally acknowledging that this situation is only temporary. Of course, before our important conversation about immediate strategy was finished, Big Bad Baldie kept forcefully interrupting the conversation and demanding that she leave NOW. And every time he did, I shot back at him to "shut the fuck up and stop interrupting the conversation; it's wrapping up and you're just making it take longer at this point." I pointed my finger in his face. "Stay the fuck back!"
After Rachel left, a nursing technician came back into the room and wheeled the empty patient bed belonging to my non-existent roommate out the door. I wasn't surprised. A ruse, just like everything else in this shithole.
Staff members took shifts sitting in the room with me for the remainder of the night to watch me, supposedly to make sure I wouldn't do anything destructive or try to escape the room. They stayed until Rachel returned the following morning.10:00 PM
I don't show people respect who don't deserve it.
Editorial Note (09/12/2016)
I spent the remainder of the night meditating, processing my new life, my freedom robbed from me for reasons I still don't fully understand. I started a Periscope broadcast so that friends and family could check in on me, but also so that I could have undeniable proof of anything that may or may not be done to me during the night. With the events of the past few days still swimming around in my mind, I didn't trust anybody in the hospital except for the techs and most of the nurses (the ones who didn't have bad attitudes, anyway).
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