Good evening @OscarJones @outlander @FloatingFeather @maddison @TuxedoCat @Sirius @hanami @Shaz51 @Faith-and-Hope @Appleblossom @MDT @TAB @Snowie @Rhye @tyme and everyone here joining me in the jungle. Thanks!
I’m currently away on holiday in Echuca and have been since last Thursday with my housemate which is great as I’m relaxing and having a pretty good time overall. However, I couldn’t help but remember that it’s a year ago today that I had my first psych ward admission over here in Melbourne which was brought on by psychosis because I was in yet another lockdown because of coronavirus issues that had been happening at the time such as movement restrictions and a 9pm nightly curfew with heavy police presence to match. I had experienced psychosis since 24/8/21 and had struggled to get help besides that of my psychologist at the time and limited help with the area mental health team despite my housemate speaking to the team about my symptoms and related physical and mental health issues. It took 3 attempts for me to finally be admitted to hospital and when I did get admitted to the ward, I was a very sick person. I was scared, frightened, anxious, the lot and struggled with life on the ward with my psychologist getting regular emails and me writing in my journal whereby on the night of my initial psychotic episode in August, I wrote down what I was experiencing and sent a copy of it to my psychologist so he could read it to understand what I was going through which did help in the end.
I was in hospital for 9 days with my meds being changed but several bad experiences happening to me on the ward as I struggled to get well and learn the mental health psych ward patient code of conduct and a 14 day stint at PARCS afterwards to great success with the PARCS stay. I did return back to my house a better person who was much healthier mentally with lots of little lessons learnt such as realising that I’m a strong person who can handle life with psychosis and that knitting is a wonderful craft to have as I started knitting myself a blanket on the ward. The blanket is still not completed and has been put away to be looked at a later time possibly as though I’m thinking of leaving it in its present state as a reminder that mental health recovery is a journey and not a race and therefore it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t get finished. I’ve had several relapses since this admission including another psych ward admission in July and a PARCS admission in June because of needing changes to my psych meds and a bad period of 3 months leading up to the PARCS admission which didn’t go down the best with the treatment I received both at PARCS and on the psych ward. I’ve since released that I’m better off avoiding being admitted to hospital because of the restrictions to my knitting as a perfect example and due to how things are done in hospital such as 5pm dinner and lack of freedoms over doing certain things. I’ve also accepted that PARCS may also no longer be suitable for me due to changes in the organisation that now operates the facility which I don’t like so I’m trying to find ways of dealing with my mental health on my own with what resources I have at my disposal such a case manager for the time being and my GP with limited access to a psychiatrist whilst I’ve got case manager. I’m also limiting my dealings with my psychologist as I’ve got limited sessions left with him on my mental health plan and haven’t been in contact with him since early July with no intentions to either as I can’t see any major issues that I need to speak to him about that could take an hour.
I’m going to go now as it’s getting late and I need some sleep. Thanks for reading this entry and spending some reflective time with me in the jungle tonight. I just thought I’d do this entry as a reminder to myself and to others that you can get better after a psych ward admission and that a psych ward admission doesn’t need to define who you are as a person. Yes, it can be scary and awful but hospital is there to help you get better whilst you are sick and that’s all there is to it. It’s okay to not be okay and that’s important to realise and accept. Chances are I’ll probably look back on this period again later after I get back from holiday so look out for more information on this period of my psych life.
Take care and stay safe!
Judi9877☺️💐
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