Eight days.

I've been debating back and forth, up and down, and back again, about whether to blog about the past eight days of my life. But you know what? Where I was and why I went there is nothing to be ashamed of, so here it goes.

Psych ward.

My psychiatrist switched some meds around recently, and as the old ones had word off but the new ones had not yet kicked in... I was one anxious girl. My head was SO foggy, and everything was scaring me. The moments of IT (see older post) were more and more frequent, and in those moments, I'm not exactly sure what I might do. I asked my mom if I could be at the hospital, just to be safe until the meds started working. It took some pushing, since I hadn't made a suicide attempt. How ridiculous is that? Unless I had actually MADE an attempt, my doctor said that it wasn't necessary. How about let's stop things before they get there?!

So, I went. I was incredibly well taken care of while I was there. It gave the SSRI time to kick in, and my Buspar (for anti-anxiety) got tripled. The doctors completely failed to address or even to acknowledge the IT attacks... the times when I am angry, frustrated, anxious, out of control and not at all myself. If I were ever hurt myself, someone else, or someTHING... that would be when it would happen. Not in a million years when I'm normal me. So, I agreed to spend the next 4 weeks (MWF) in a partial hospital program. I am hoping that the doctor there will give some new meds a shot to help those times... maybe a mood stabilizer or anti-psychotic. Those are scary words, aren't they? But those times scare me so much, and I want them to stop.

I'm frustrated that autism is being treated as strictly psychological. Doctors kept telling me that I "can't" have autism because I can speak, because I'm not sitting in the corner flapping my hands, because 'they know autism when it walks in the door, and you don't have it." Then, they get frustrated with me when I can't tell them how I'm feeling. Ughhhh. These doctors, who I saw for 5 or 6 minutes a day. I know-- they can't know. But I do feel pretty invalidated.

I see that a lot has been happening in my blog world since I was gone... I am not ignoring you! I read all the comments and will get back to you all in the next few days.

So, the past eight days have been sometimes terrifying, sometimes hilarious, but mostly reassuring. The people who work there are incredible. I was safe, and I was somewhere that med changes could be made more quickly. All in all, I'm very, very glad that I went. And now, I'm very, very, VERY glad to be home with my kitty!