On this day in 2018, I informed ChristianaCare hospital intern Dr. Crystal Kucuk through the patient portal that Lexapro she had prescribed a few weeks earlier, “makes me very drowsy and lethargic. When I take it in the morning, I feel super woozy in the afternoon. If I try to take a short nap, I can’t wake and end up sleeping for 3-4 hours, then have trouble falling asleep at night. When I take it in the evening, I do sleep better at night, but I have a very hard time waking up in the morning. I feel drowsy and foggy until late morning. This does not work for me.”
I also told her that before I began the Lexapro, I had some feelings of hopelessness and giving up, but in “the past weeks, I started having suicidal ideations which have increased in frequency and depth to the degree that every day I am picturing my death and the peace it would bring.” Dr. Kucuk called me, and when I answered her question about what the SI was like, she firmly advised me to “stop taking that pill and never take it again,” and go to an emergency room for psych evaluation ASAP. Dr. Kucuk could have referred me to the mobile crisis unit instead, but that’s not how the industry works. She didn’t tell me that going to the ER would put me in an even worse position.
The Wilmington Hospital ED was not prepared to care for a traumatized patient. They held me overnight in a cold room with nothing but a chair. I was re-traumatized when staff subdued and sedated another patient who was screaming, “Get off me! Get off me!” just like I was the last time I was pinned down by an abuser. Of course, this gave me a horrible flashback! I was crying and shaking in terror. Afterward, I told an ER staffer how badly I was triggered, and he looked at me like I was speaking gibberish. Notes say, “Plan: #1: 1:1 sitter,” but there was no “caregiver who provides patients in need of supervision with companionship and care.” NO CARE.
A doctor there–might have been a psychiatrist, I don’t know–came into my holding pen in the middle of the night and convinced me that inpatient care would be helpful, “a gateway to services,” like art therapy and a psychiatrist on the outside. I told him I was afraid. He asked why, and what I thought it would be like. “Cuckoo’s Nest,” I said. He assured me it was not. But, as Buzzfeed Investigative Reports reveal about Universal Health Services (UHS), which owns the Rockford Center for Behavioral Health, it was! ChristianaCare funneled me there.
ED staff could have refrained from trying to talk me into going to Rockford and telling me that I had a plan instead of inactive SI. They could have given me care instead of incarceration. IF they had even one staffer trained in something as basic as Mental Health First Aid. But they didn’t. It’s ChristianaCare, which, in my experience, does. not. care. And I’m left to deal with the mess they made of my capacity for well-being. That ain’t healthcare; it’s betrayal.
