The Medical Paper Gown

I recently got an email from a reader that included this bit:
I just left the hospital last night after a small cut needed 7 stitches. Nothing big, just obviously a self inflicted wound. The nurse tried to force me to put on a gown in the middle of the ER while no other patients were [...]

I was so proud of her

I saw a patient the other night with a ton of psych meds in the ER for something unrelated. She was neither young nor old.
(Incidentally – definition of “a ton of psych meds” = more psych meds than me.)
And she was totally normal. If I hadn’t read the list of meds, I never would have [...]

Self-harm from the doctor’s point of view

Edit added at the bottom.
First of all, this is going to be detailed, and if it might upset you, please do not read.
I’m going to leave the details of the story pretty generic to be sure to protect patient identity, though it was a pretty typical self-harm story, I guess, the kind that is seen [...]

Another psych patient. Could the signs be any clearer?

Another psych patient just fell on me last night. (Not the two other cases I didn’t write about.) We had split the night up and gone to bed – two hours and twenty minutes for each of the three of us on call. Two patients came in on my watch with abdominal pain. One was [...]

What is the universe trying to tell me with this?

As far as how I’m doing, it’s close to an exact copy of this post, so I won’t go into it. I had a very nice call night, though, now that I’m feeling slightly better. Actually, it was a horrific call night, in that patients kept coming in nonstop for the whole night. The volume [...]

The Emergency Room Visit Guide for Crazy People

I’ve been doing a lot of time in the ER lately. Today I saw a girl after an intentional overdose (she was ok).
I hope I treated her in a way that didn’t make her feel uncomfortable. I don’t know the shrink who was on duty, don’t know if he was any good. I would have [...]

Today something happened to me that never happened before.

I got reprimanded at work.
I apologize for the quality of this post ahead…I’m too tired and my brain is too fried to write well. Here’s what happened.
The last few weeks went surprisingly smoothly, the anger was under control, I was performing ok, and things seemed to be moving along reasonably considering being off all meds. [...]

Physical Versus Mental Illness

In an unpublished email, Milo wrote this comment to me:
Personally speaking, i passed a kidney stone last year, and being dead honest here, i’d  much rather the physical illness than having a paranoid episode… i really really do. i tell you one thing Sara, the pain was absolutely horrendous, but no one laughed at me. [...]