Psych Wards and the Police

In all three of my psych ward stays, I've encountered the banter between patients about our situations. Patients, or rather 'inmates', discussing the 'jailers' (nurses and HCAs) and the 'prison' (the ward) in a jokey manner. But underneath the jokes, there is a small degree of truth in the banter.

My Final Psych Ward Update

As you may have guessed from the title, I am being discharged from the psych ward soon. In fact, I'm being discharged this Tuesday (17th). It was a bit of a shock to be told last Tuesday (10th) that I would be discharged. My regular psych was off on leave for a few weeks and on the Monday before he came back (2nd), I was told by the psych who was covering him that I could stay in hospital until I got a place of my own. So when my psych came back the week later and told me that I was being discharged, it really did surprise me.

How I'm Doing, Truthfully

Today's ward round went well, I went in hoping to get five hours of leave so was pleased when they gave me six hours. My meds are staying the same - 800 mg of quetiapine and my body is starting to tolerate it, meaning that I'm not so drowsy anymore. It's been all positive steps today.

My Experiences with Visual Hallucinations

A common symptom of schizophrenia that I've not really written about before is visual hallucinations, AKA seeing things. I've written about auditory hallucinations (voices) numerous times before and even created a YouTube video on the subject, which can be found here, but never really touched on the visual hallucination topic before.

Why I'm in Hospital, Partly

I put some tweets out last night explaining the basics of why I'm in hospital. There may be triggers in this for some. Please be careful. So for those not on Twitter, the tweets were this:

What a Difference a Day Makes

So yesterday, I blogged here saying about how I wasn't 100% happy with my leave being unescorted, how I wanted to stay on my section and that I was going to move into a flat of my own. Those three things have changed overnight. (Having support worker sessions and the medication issues are still the same.)

Today's Ward Round

Just a quick update as to what happened at ward round today. My leave has gone to two hours unescorted again (as in, I can go by myself), which I'm not 100% happy with, but I did manage to go out for most of the two hours today by myself. I'm still on the section at my request and my psychiatrist is saying that when I'm ready to come off it, I'll be off it straight away.