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2006-11-18 - 9.30pm previous entry next entry
Horrible thing from the past (long)
Thank you all SO much for the lovely compliments on my littlest boo's photos!! :)
There's something I want to write about that isn't that cheerful and it isn't about the boys. It will take me AGES to write it allll down and I am dreading doing it. It's something from the past that has unexpectedly been brought to the surface again, just a little bit, and I'm not sure what to do about it. So I wanted to write about it here. But to do that, I should write the background so that it makes sense. I just trawled through a million posts at my old diary, the one I started in January 2001 to write about my life as it was, when I was housebound with M.E. I was hoping that I wrote about it there once, so that I could just post a link to an old entry and that would explain everything, rather than me having to churn it all up again. I can't BELIEVE I never did. I'm frustrated that I didn't because it makes it harder now, but not too surprised, because a) I did not like to talk about it because it was upsetting, and b) I wasn't sure what to mention and what not, since there were legalities involved. I did find an entry with some reference to it, which I'll put a link to in a bit because it might mean I get to write/think less about it for this entry. But I have this horrible feeling that once I start to talk about it, I'm going to not want to stop till I'm all purged. Ugh. And that will FILL hours with difficult-to-think-about stuff, and I don't want my whole child-free evening used up with that, but I DO want to write about it today. So I am starting now - it's 4.20pm and Matthew is having what I presume will be a short nap - just for a little while, so that I might have less to write later and thus some time to do something cheerful at the end of the evening. I hope.
I know it sounds like I REALLY don't want to write about it. I don't. I hate even thinking about it. It will stress me and upset me and throw up feelings that I buried years ago and stamped on for good measure. But somewhere deep down, I probably DO want to just clean things out a little, and getting this down at last after all these years at my diary will probably help that. Or something. At least if I ever need to talk about it again, I can quickly refer to this entry! Tsk. I wish I had done one already, years ago!
Anyway. If you've read me for YEARS (as in, from the sheepdip diary days) then you may know about it already. But I didn't talk about it much or in any depth.
In February 1998, Neil and I got engaged. We had been going out for 18 months, but I knew I was going to marry Neil for a couple of months before we even started going out! Heh. Also in February 1998, I turned 22, and I started a 3-year nursing degree that same month. It was my path to midwifery, since the local university didn't do a direct entry midwifery degree course at that time. They do now, and I had previously completed one year of three on a direct entry midwifery degree course at a university in Central London, but I had to defer (and eventually didn't go back) because I was suffering from long-term depression and was kind of suicidal by the end of that year. So I had to have a break and go on medication.
I wanted to study and live at home with my parents but NOT have to do the horrible commute into London that I had been doing before. I was quickly accepted on the nursing degree course in my hometown two years after I dropped out of the midwifery degree, and it started in Feb 1998. Obviously you guys probably know that I never finished it (sigh, another unfinished qualification), but this time it was because I got M.E. I was married in August 1999, halfway through my degree, and in September I started having the symptoms that turned out to be M.E. It got worse over the months, and then a hefty bout of particularly horrible influenza in December meant that by February 2000, I was completely housebound by my symptoms and had no choice but to drop out of my degree course. Part of me hoped to go back when I got better, but with M.E. you just don't know how long it's going to last. It could have been a year or so, if I was very lucky. Or ten years. Or so. It was a scary and horrible time. The other part of me did not want to go near nursing ever again, even if I did get better fast. The reason for that, and indeed the trigger for my M.E. in the first place (well, that plus a couple of viruses), is what I want to write about tonight.
Matthew is awake and so I will have to have the joy of writing about the crappy stuff later. I had better save this to Word. I will SOB AND CRY if I get it all written and lose it all to some freak internet blip as I'm writing the last sentence! Back later, once the boys are asleep for the night.
Okay, 7.45pm, the boys are asleep and I just put a chicken in the oven to roast and the potatoes are peeled and ready to roast a bit later. Neil's going to put them in at the right time and do the veg so I can just keep on with this till I have to go and serve and make the gravy. I heart roast dinners!! :)
So where was I? Oh yes. So my nursing degree. In... hmmm, let's see... February 1999, there began a block of practise placements in one long lump for several months. We had to cover all the different areas of nursing in these placements, before progressing to the second half of our degrees, specialising in the field we had chosen. I had chosen general adult nursing, because that's what they ask for if you're going on to do midwifery. Each different placement was a four-week block. First I did four BLISSFUL weeks of midwifery, on the labour ward for two weeks (at Big London Hospital, oddly enough, where I went on to have surgery at 36 weeks pregnant with Arthur, to remove that horrid noggin in my nose! And where my brother and his Sarah will have their baby, since it's their local hospital), then two weeks on postnatal.
Then came 4 weeks on a surgical ward, which mainly specialised in gastro-intestinal and vascular surgery, but also had a few amputations and other more medical cases (strokes, cancer, etc) that there were no beds for on the wards that specialised in those things. I had The Time Of My Life on that ward! It was hard hard HARD work and my feet burned all day with how rushed we always were and how I never got a second to sit down! But the work was wonderful. The sister was wonderful. The staff were wonderful. The patients were lovely. I hated the early starts and the hideous twelve hour shifts that had just come into play on that ward. But it meant more days off each week - three days on and four days off, or something like that. Or was it four days on and three off? I can't remember. Anyway. Those things sucked. But everything else was just so fab. I loved it so much that I even started to consider surgical nursing instead of midwifery, and that is REALLY saying something for me! I have wanted to be a midwife for a long time. I got to go with patients I had cared for and watch their surgery, standing right there next to the operating table. That was awesome. Surgery only made me feel odd if I remembered the person. So long as I zoned in on the actual surgery and viewed it as "surgical technique on leg" or something removed like that (!), I had no woozy feelings and enjoyed it immensely! Sometimes a patient was conscious and going through keyhole surgery with local anaesthetic. So then I had to be fully aware of the person, but it was different because they were as nervous as heck and it was my job to keep them reassured and okay with everything. So long as I had a job to do that was okay too, and I enjoy putting people at ease so I felt good about that part of my work as well.
I learned sooooo many things, and I know I did them well, and the rush from doing all these new skills WELL in that kind of environment was just sooooo great!! I just had such a good time working there. That was the last time I enjoyed anything about nursing, so I'm glad it was such a GOOD experience.
Right after that placement came my mental health placement at a different hospital. Let's call it Sucky Care Hospital, since obviously I can't name it, and it's a fitting name for it. I was placed on a ward for "elderly long-term care", which they basically explained as, "they have deteriorating mental conditions which won't go away and they're here until they die". Some of the patients had varying types of dementia and some had Alzheimer's. They were all elderly, obviously. Because there weren't that many mental health wards in the area, they put two students to each ward for placements. Thank God they did, because I could not have endured it without L. She was from Ireland, and she had THE most confident, assertive personality that I ever came across. She didn't take any nonsense! I bet she's a sister already, somewhere out there! ;) She was just a BORN nurse.
Anyway. Ohhh I don't want to talk about it. Now that I try and think of details, I can't remember as many as I thought I would. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough. But then maybe the details are best forgotten. I have done my utmost to push them HARD out of my memory, so maybe that is paying off at last? It took us all of about a day to see that the patients were not being well cared for. The staff didn't care one jot for them. They seemed to even dislike or hate some of the patients. None of the patients could do anything for themselves. Most made no sense at any time. Some needed help getting about, or going to the toilet. Many needed help eating and getting dressed and stuff.
We saw that there were no organised activities for the patients at all. They were dragged to the day room and sat none-too-gently in the chairs that were around the walls. We were pretty appauled, but things got WAY worse. As the days passed on our placement, we saw patients being taunted till they cried or screamed out hysterically - such was the nature of their condition. The staff got a kick out of what they were doing. It looked like they were bored out of their skulls and picking on the patients was something fun to do. Otherwise they pretty much sat and ate biscuits in the staff room thingy. L and I sat with the patients and tried to do stuff with them. It was hard to talk to them about things because we had no clue about working with people with severe mental health conditions and who were confused all the time. I felt shy and nervous about being amongst them at all. I didn't know what to say or how to act, and there sure as heck weren't any role models amongst the staff. We didn't get taught or shown anything. We got assigned a staff member to "mentor" us but nothing actually happened between us and them - it was just a word to write on our various forms and papers at the end of our placement.
Oh God it was awful. The way the poor patients who couldn't feed themselves were fed by some of the staff.... They were handled roughly and you could walk past open doors and see half-naked patients on the toilet calling out for help. There was more, there was so much more, and some of it is starting to come back into my head as I write this, but I need to stop writing about it. That last sentence about the half-naked patients just seemed to do something in my head, or somewhere inside me. The rest I typed as fast as I could without really feeling anything. That sentence made me SEE it as I typed it, and maybe it doesn't sound like much to see someone like that and just think to yourself, "My goodness, that poor person! This place is crap!" and it might seem like I am over-reacting emotionally, but after you saw that, you would then see twenty other things like it throughout your long day on that ward with nothing else to do but watch it happen, and perhaps anxiously ask a staff member why they were doing such-and-such. I felt so scared to question the behaviour I saw, in case someone was mean to me or made life hard for me, or something. I had three more weeks to get through, and it was clear that the whole staff were on the same "team", so to speak. L was much more upfront and did most of the questioning. But we got answers like, "Because she deserves it" or "Because she's irritating me today" or even, "Oh she's fine, we just leave her there till she calms down" etc.
Ugh, I can't do this. I am shaking right to the pit of my stomach and that is making all my ribs quiver and my breathing shake and my stomach feel sick. It affected me so badly because, well, try seeing it day after day after day, and then try being someone (most people are, but I guess not all) who begins to develop attachments and compassion towards patients after being with them a few days, and THEN watch them continue to undergo this awful treatment.
We both found it so hard to cope with being there day after day, and we would ask to spend a day on this specialist ward (for the "experience" or that community day centre, etc) just to get away from it. We spent our free time just being shocked with each other and talking about what we saw, and trying to think what on earth to DO about it. I asked advice from two friends who weren't nurses. They both said not to get involved. To this day, I can't believe they gave me that advice, even though I love them and trust them and they have always seemed like compassionate, loving people to me, and still do. But how could I ever live with myself if I just ended my placement and wiped my brow and said, "Phew, thank goodness that's over" and walked away and did nothing? We both felt we had no choice.
I can't even remember how the next stage happened. I am pretty sure it was L who started it. She spoke to someone high up - I am not sure how she arranged it, but she did. And they approached me with her allegations, asking if I agreed with what she said. And I did. Our placement there was cut short by one week, but for our last week there, I was just completely terrified all the time, because we had been advised to document everything we saw happening that was not right, and I felt sure that there would be some "leak" from the high-up person and the staff would find out that we had made these serious allegations which might ruin their careers, and oh I don't know, maybe they'd kill us or something?! I don't know. I was really scared. But I stuck it out. That week I suddenly developed hayfever for the first time in my life. I never had allergies like that before then. It was an incredible strain on me, physically, and I had never known emotional strain that affected me so physically before.
Hate this shakiness - why after all these years?! I am only writing about it, it's not like I am having to DO anything to do with it again! I am not writing anything else about what I saw. I just want to finish writing about the whole thing. There is stuff to write about yet that was more upsetting to me, so urgh. I just want to get it written before dinner. Then I can try to relax again and eat, and I won't have to think about it any more. Sort of.
We went off to our next placements - more mental health but a different type of placement. I had four weeks on my own in a community home for young people with physical and mental disabilities. It was lovely! I had fun things to do and the people were so nice, and it was OUT in the community so I got to drive down residential roads in a nice area and spend my time in a lovely house that had been transformed for the needs of the people there. And go out with them to their activities, like art classes and gym and stuff. It was so nice and light after what I had seen. But everything seemed under a dark cloud all the time and I had to take time out from that placement on two seperate days to go and spent SIX hours solid at a table with L and a lovely guy who had been appointed chairman of the case that had been started by us, and tell him Every. Tiny. Detailed. Thing. that we had seen. We wrote it all down and went over it all again. We each wrote the incidents we had seen in detail. My handwritten account of the incidents I had seen filled 13 A4 sheets of paper, both sides. We had to convert them into official statements and sign and date a lot of stuff.
Ugh, I feel sick :(
The hearings took their sweet time in arriving, and were hanging over us always as something that could happen at any time. We were kept informed by the chairman. They finally happened in September 1999, five months after our placement. During that time we were not allowed to talk to anyone about it, which was REALLY hard. We had to keep taking days off, and the other students and staff were kind of funny about it but we couldn't tell them why. We had a WONDERFUL teacher who was assigned to be our "university based" support, and she was filled in on everything. After that, if any placement staff member asked questions about why we were taking time out without explanation, she would simply say to them that there was a good reason and that was that. It was a big help. She was a senior nursing tutor and what she said carried a lot of weight - people were happy with her authority over it.
We had to carry on with our studies and our placements, and do essays and meet deadlines and study for exams. And then in August - would you even believe it?! - both L and I got married, on THE SAME DAY!! Her in Ireland, of course, and me here. We both reeeeally did not need the stress of the Sucky Care Hospital abuse case hanging over us during the time preparing for our weddings and studying. We only had August off - students doing a nursing degree do not enjoy the humongous holidays that other university students get! We got four weeks over the summer, and we both used that time to get married and take a honeymoon. Even on my honeymoon I got a call from my dad who needed to tell me that the chairman had to tell us that the dates for the hearings had been changed to ONE WEEK after we got back from honeymoon! Yuck.
So. The hearings were just the most awful thing I ever want to do again. Face to face with the staff members that we'd accused. Tense and serious atmosphere. Sitting to wait for our turn in there, in a cramped little office or box room (depending on the location for that day's hearings). Sue, the lovely tutor who had been assigned to us, came with us and sat the whole day in that box room waiting with us and for us while we were in the hearings. The hearings lasted two weeks. The staff lied. To our faces. They said we made those things up out of vengeance because of some incident between us and a staff member that was totally fabricated. It was our word against theirs, and they had lawyer-type-persons next to them who did what lawyers do and stood and challenged us over our very existance (or so it felt), and suggested what they think had happened, and made us out to be horrible, lying people. I tried to fight back when they did that, but you know how they are. I got cut off mid-sentence a lot and my words got twisted and used against me.
In the second week, I got some fluey virus that made me feel really ill and weak, and the doctor - after listening to my long account of my involvement in the Sucky Care Hospital Case, which he had some outside knowledge of, but had not known that I was one of the "whistle blowers" - was wonderful and so supportive, and told me I should take time out from the hearings and wrote me a note to say so. But it just seemed like that would complicate and prolong things, and I wanted to get it over with. So I went. Sue dosed me up with decongestants and painkillers and stuff, and I did it. I had no voice but a tiny raspy squeak one day of the hearings, and that was a day that they were particularly hard on me in there. All that time I had just sat there meek and frightened and tried to do as I thought best, to answer questions and defend myself a little if I felt under fire. But I wasn't very good at that I think. On that day, I finally snapped when they were angrily questioning/accusing me. I told them again and again what I saw and they kept on suggesting that I didn't see what I saw - it was something horrible that I don't want to talk about - and finally I just yelled and shouted. I had been told not to lose control in such a setting but I couldn't help myself a moment longer. I can't even remember what I said. I think I said again what I saw and how horrible it was to see that, and how much I was being harrassed at this session and did they really think I was going to put myself through all of this for something I'd made up? Etc. My voice didn't really go the distance of my entire outburst, and when I had finished, I just stood there shaking and the room was silent and everyone was looking at me, and nothing seemed to happen for an ETERNITY, and so I just burst into uncontrollable tears and stood there feeling overwhelmed by my anger and grief (not sure why grief, but it was definitely what I was feeling) and hurt and just too many feelings to squash down any longer. I felt like being swallowed up by the floor because of how I HATE to get emotional in front of people, and the room was full of strangers in a certain setting, and they were all looking at me, and nobody was doing anything to take my embarrassment away and the room was silent except for the horrible sound of me doing THE loudest sobbing and crying ever. The type that just racks your chest and you can't stop it. Urgh. After about 50 thousand years, the person leading the hearings said that I should "take a moment" and called for a break, and I was led out by someone who treated me kindly. The secretary, I think.
It was. So. Awful.
After the hearings were all over, and I finally threw off the virusy thing, I never quite felt well again. I got tired too easily, and I did not cope at all well with my next placement which started in October and lasted till Christmas. I hated it, and felt like I did not care to learn a THING about nursing ever again. I had to take a day off work because I just was too exhausted to go one day. And then the next week it happened again. And finally after I talked to Sue, she arranged that I would do the traditional "early" and "late" shifts instead of the gruelling 12 hour shifts, to make it a bit easier for me to recover from them. But it didn't make it easier. So she arranged for me to do 3 days a week instead of 4. I didn't really finish that placement. There were more things to do with the hearings - follow ons and stuff that I'd rather not remember, but nothing so ghastly as those hearings. I had time to make up after Christmas, but my health was going downhill so fast by then, as I'd had flu badly in December. By February I was behind in all my assignments and had not been able to attend some exams, as well as the placement that had to be finished, and another placement block was coming up. On my birthday, I walked into Sue's office after not attending the morning exam, and just sat and cried and cried and cried at her desk. I told her how I couldn't cope with anything and I was feeling so ill all the time and I had no energy and it was just getting worse and worse and I couldn't catch up with my assignments, and, and, it was my bi-r-rth-day (sob)!! She was sooooo lovely. She told me to see the doctor and take some leave and think about it all when I was feeling better. But I did not feel better, and within a week or so after that meeting I was no longer able to go out of the house at all.
So, you see that has been extremely hard for me. I feel sure that without the darn Sucky Care Hospital Case, I would not have lost two years of my life to M.E. I know the timing of that virus was probably the key thing, but I could have kicked that virus's butt if I wasn't stripped to the core over the stupid case. I felt so angry about it for so long. The only person to ever thank me for what I did was my GP. He even hugged me. Now I feel less "sharply" about it. In January that year, 8 staff members were suspended from the ward I had worked on. Three were later reinstated but they had to do some retraining first. I know the case has continued on, and the next stage was hearings to decide whether some of the nurses would be struck off the nursing register. The final stage would be criminal prosecution, but I don't know if it ever went that far. I couldn't cope physically (never mind in any other way) with any further involvement, although I felt guilty that I didn't, because that put it ALL onto L, and although she was fighting angry about it still and raring to go with or without me, it was still a lot to shoulder her with. And without that, the case would collapse I guess. Or. I don't know what happened.
One thing that happened over the next couple of years that I am IMMENSELY proud of, is that mental health care in my entire borough has been reviewed as a result of what we did for those patients. Policies have been re-written and changes were made to the ward I was at, to re-staff it and make it a nice place for those poor people to be. That is a huge relief and I'm glad to have helped bring that about.
The whooole point of me having dredged this up to explain it, is that today I finally got my referral through for my stress management course - the one I was waiting for after I was diagnosed with an ulcer-type-thing a few months ago. Guess where the sessions are being held?
Sucky. Care. Hospital.
I need to do the stress management. But I don't know if I can go back there again. And it's the only place on offer. It's group therapy and there's a long waiting list for being seen individually, but I have to respond soon and tell them what I want to do, otherwise they'll discharge me back to the GP. What do I do?! I feel all panicky and fidgetty about it. I hate that horrible place! I wish I had never gone there and seen what I did! But then, maybe things wouldn't have happened for those patients and more would have suffered. L would have prevented it though, even without me. I just went along with her strength and ended up all weak and crappity as a result. Ugh. I feel so much HATE and ANGER over what I went through, still. At nobody I can put my finger on, but still, it's there.
And now I feel so crap and sick and shaky and stressed, that I am going to put it all back in that little "under the carpet" box where I got it out from, and try to forget about it all over again. I did have some counselling but yeah. I just don't want to talk about it any more. I don't want to THINK about it any more. So I don't want to go back to the hospital again. But then, no stress management course....
I am going to make gravy while Neil carves, and then hope to goodness that Friends is on or something, because I need to relax and laugh now. It's probably not healthy, how I've handled the stress of this, but I can't bear to go back and change that now. I just want to make it all go away. I want to go and eat when my tummy relaxes a little, and laugh the tension all out, at some funny lighthearted comedy. And then read Little House on the Prarie. Or something. And revisit the decision I have to make tomorrow. Please help me know what to do. I just don't know!
I need a hug :(
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