From Joe
I saw my wife at the “hospital” yesterday, Tuesday. The doctor was supposed to have started her on lithium. I learned that he was unable to do so, because he needed to run a pregnancy test first. I’ve had a vasectomy, and I am 99.99999% sure that my wife has not had an affair, so why did the doctor think that my wife could be pregnant? Because of a dream she had.
She told me about the dream over a week ago. She said she had a dream that she was pregnant. It was so real, that she almost believed she was actually pregnant. She told the doctor about her dream and about my surgery and stated the fact that she did not have relations with another man. The doctor asked whether she knew how babies are made. She laughed and said, “Of course I know how babies are made.”
Still, the doctor felt there was a need to run the pregnancy test before giving my wife the lithium.
She has been in the “hospital” now since Saturday afternoon. As of Tuesday night when I saw her, she was still not receiving the lithium. Even so, she did seem better. She was taking Risperdal morning and night, which seemed to calm her, and Ambien to help her sleep.
I expressed my concerns to the nurse about the fact that my wife had not received the lithium she was supposed to be getting. I told her my wife is not pregnant and they need to start the lithium immediately. She said she would try to find the results from the pregnancy test (they had apparently misplaced the test results), so they could start the lithium. She would also leave a message for the doctor, so if they could not find the test results Tuesday night, the doctor would know of my concerns in the morning.
I will call now, to see what is going on.
LATER: I made the call. The nurse said she could not talk with me, because she did not have a release on file signed by my wife. I became very angry. Why could the nurse talk to me on the phone yesterday and not today? I asked to talk to my wife. The nurse said she would have my wife call me.
About 5 minutes later, my wife calls to inform me that she had signed a release for me upon admission. I asked her to sign another one. She also told me that immediately after I talked with the nurse this morning, the pregnancy test results magically appeared (negative) and she would be getting her lithium. This is madness.
wow- hopefully now things will start going better for your poor wife. Perhaps once she is stabilized then you both can go on a very needed vacation together! Take care.
Hi. I just wanted to let you know that you have a new reader and supporter. Please keep updating – you are helping others in your struggle. Thank you for your honesty.
Sending you both hugs and positive vibes,
Tara (bipolar II and GAD) 🙂
Hi — dealing with hospitals and people who are supposed to know what’s going on is very challenging, Joe (who posted the ‘immaculate conception’ story.
My sister, despite assiduous care in taking her meds (I watched her every time for months) had a break, and ‘ran amok,’ as we call it. Once I got her to a large, pretty good regular hospital, with assistance of the local police, the hospital LET HER GO OUT THE DOOR in stocking feet, with no ID other than her two packs of cigarettes, and her lighter. This despite the fact that I talked to the social worker, who called my sister’s psychiatrist, who urged the social worker to admit my sister. This, after I spent about a half hour talking to the head nurse for about a half hour, trying to convince her that my sister was really ill, and needed her medications. So, I ran after sis for another couple of hours, begging 911 cops for help, finally got her to a decent facility.
Good luck.
Jenn
Jenn–
That sounds about right. The first time I took my wife to the hospital to get her checked in, they led us to a room where we were instructed to wait. During the 30-45 minutes of waiting, my wife wandered out of the room about 10 times… looking for a bathroom, looking for a vacant bedroom so she could lie down, talking to some guy in an SUV outside, etc. etc., and then wandering off to a grassy break area where she took an umbrella from a picnic table and settled into her own shady place on the lawn.
The security guards kept telling me to keep her in the room. Finally, I asked, “What do you want me to do, tackle her?” I guess they expected me as the husband to be able to control my wife. What a joke.
Finally, a very competent woman who was handling the check-in was able to coax my wife back inside the building. Unfortunately, later in the evening, my wife became very upset over something and had to be forcibly escorted to another more secure “ward.” I heard it took three security guards. They did manage to keep her in the building, though. That would be a nightmare to find out that a loved one was wandering around in such a state with nothing more than cigarettes and a lighter. It’d be even more of a nightmare to find out that she had a credit card.
I’m afraid, after reading the above, is that folks forget that 98% of all people, regardless of their intelligence and training, are, essentially incompetent boobs. unfortunately, some of these folks run hospitals.
you, and you alone are your wife’s ONLY advocate. I don’t say ‘primary’, ‘best’, ‘complementary’ ONLY ONLY ONLY.
my wife has numerous medical conditions; I’m the BP one. after dealing with more doctors than you can shake a stick at, i’m firmly convinced that the only reasons we have doctors and hopsitals is for (in this context): a) ability to get prescriptions for drugs that WE OURSELVES have researched and vetted; b) legally able to restrain our loved ones.
i’m afraid that in order to secure our spouse’s interests we must be 100% vigilant at all times. I don’t know what else you could have done other than hide outside the ward where she had been kept, but that might have done it.
i wonder if hospitals overseas have the same idiotic rules/etc.?
well. i’m just glad that my BPII isn’t quite that bad. Yet.
Peace.
Hey, Seth…
Well, I agree with most of what you wrote, except for the part about being my wife’s ONLY advocate. In the context of full-blown mania, you’re right, but what I’ve discovered is that my wife often winds up in full-blown mania because she fails to effectively advocate for herself in the early stages OR she fights anything I or her doctor recommend she needs to do to short-circuit the manic episode.
Many times, I feel as though I’m trying to negotiate (referee?) between the doctor who’s trying to tell my wife what she needs to do and my wife telling her doctor how to do his job. They’re like two stubborn brats, neither of whom will budge one iota to remedy the situation. In the meantime, the whole thing spirals into another couple months of hell for all involved.
Hi Joe,
I empathize with you and your wife, having recently gone through this same ordeal wih my grandmother. She was committed to the local hospital’s “behavioral health center” after months of severe depression hit rock bottom and she started claiming it was her time to leave this world, that she couldn’t handle it anymore.
My frustrations with that hospital ward are too many to list here, but let’s just say I about lost my temper a few times. She’d been in there for four days and still hadn’t seen a psychiatrist or received any medications! Not to mention that the joke “group therapy sessions” were run by a different “nurse” every day who admitted they had no experience whatsoever in mental health and were brought from other wards because nobody else was available.
I am Bipolar, and after much frustration with doctors, medications, etc… I have decided to just forgo medical treatment for a while and see how I can do on my own. Ill-advised, yes, but so far I’m fairing better than while seeing psychiatrists and going on and off medications. I just need a break from all that for a while.
Also, I want to say that you are a wonderful husband, helping your wife through all this. My husband does the same for me (though luckily I’ve never had to be hospitalized, probably should have). I know how difficult it is for my husband sometimes to live with my erratic mood swings and volatile behavior – I imagine the same is true for you.
The world is a better place thanks to the men like you, my husband, and my grandfather – who help their loved ones through difficult times.
Thanks for this blog too!
Dear Joe, I agree that it took too long to get test results, but it was the weekend so that’s always a delay. After 35 years of having bipolar disorder, I can tell you what happens on my side of the coin, not the caregiver who is my husband of 25 years. We need to be able to sign releases ourselves if possible and decide who our visitors are for our own protection ( you can surmise why.)Though the med staff took too much time to get the results of the med staff, thank God that they knew they should take one cause it wouldn’t be the first time a pregnancy occured in your circumstances. I appreciate your angst. Lisa