One Who Flew Into the Cuckoo’s Nest

Last Saturday was my snapping point.

I had been inside Grant Searcey’s studio, enveloped in cool air conditioning, when he received a text from my wife asking me to call her.

I went upstairs and stepped outside into the scorching sun around 3:30 in the afternoon. It felt like I had been hit by a hadouken because of the summer time heat waves. I called my wife, she was frantically buying excellent seats for The Tension Tour (Nine Inch Nails) coming to Atlanta in November so I talked to her for no longer than five minutes.

Afterwards, I went into the store next to Searcey Underground and bought a drink to cool down.

I went back down to continue my visit with Grant. After a few minutes I noticed my thoughts were racing again. They kept racing for the rest of the day.

On Sunday morning my thoughts were still rapid firing. I called the Georgia Mental Health Crisis Center to ask what I should do. They told me that if in a few hours my thoughts had not calmed down that I should visit an emergency room.

So around 3pm I couldn’t get my thoughts to slow down so I asked my wife to take me for a car ride towards the hospital with two goals in mind. 1. I was praying that by riding in a fast moving car, my fast moving thoughts would counter react and slow down, and if that failed than 2. I would end my car trip at the hospital that I knew I needed to visit. I ended up in the E.R. after all.

After spending time in seclusion at the hospital I was given 2 options:

1. Call and make an appointment with my psychiatrist as soon as possible, but continue to deal with the chaos in my head. It was the option that I wanted to do.
2. Go to Laurelwood Mental Health Hospital to be evaluated and have my medicines reconfigured, on the site, while I stayed for at least 72 hours. It was the option that I needed to do.

I choose to do the right thing after making a quick phone call to my wife and conferring it with her.

I stayed at the Hospital from Sunday night until Friday afternoon.

I slept the entire day on the second day I was there, as well as the two last days. I would only wake up and take part in the mandatory groups, getting my vitals checked, having my blood drawn, and going to breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

On the days I was awake however I had a pretty good time. It’s amazing how easy it is for me to make friends with any type of person when they have hit a similar bottom line that I have. The food at the Hospital was also some of the best tasting I have had in a long time, and they make you eat three times a day. I had the world’s best meatloaf while I was there.

It seemed to help in going to Laurelwood. They took me off of 3 milligrams Invega and put me on 20 milligrams Geodon, The Geodon raised my Depakote level to over 100 so they dropped me down to where I now take only 1500 milligrams of those.

When I came home I took a quick nap with my wife and daughter. When we all woke up and after we ate dinner my wife went to fill my new pills at our pharmacy. It turns out that the Geodon I was prescribed isn’t covered by either Medicaid or Medicare which are my only forms of insurance. The generic price for what I was prescribed costs around 400 dollars, I bring in only 800 a month in disability and I have a wife and daughter to take care of. So now I am stuck waiting until I can get a hold of my psychiatrist to hopefully help me obtain the pills, or choose a similar pill that is covered, that I can afford.

Kinda how I felt leaving Laurelwood

This Blog entry may not be up to par with my usual style. It may seem more harsh and rushed, and to be honest I pretty much just wrote from the heart and only reread it one time. I only added one word after reading my draft, and didn’t really spellcheck. Believe me my next blog will stand up better, but I just want to blast this one out to let my few followers know that I am still going to continue writing this Blog and that I hadn’t stopped. On the flip side I am thinking about starting a fiction novel, probably dealing deep in the Post Apocalyptic meets Steampunk world.