Quiet Confessions, Episode 39: Psychiatric Hospitalization Part 2

After returning from my first hospitalization, realizing I was not any better, I took a leap of faith. In this episode, I recount the whirlwind that led me from my home in Vermont to one of the few specialized perinatal psychiatric units in the country: UNC Chapel Hill. 

I discuss the crushing guilt of leaving my family, overcoming a lifelong phobia of flying, and the magical thinking that convinced me this was the place that would finally fix me.

Key Points and Takeaways

• The Gap in Care: I realized that standard inpatient stays were not enough for my perinatal mental health needs.
• Specialized Resources: I focused on the rare specialized units in the U.S., specifically the one at UNC Chapel Hill.
• The Logistics of Crisis: The rapid process included booking flights, securing a bed, and the emotional toll of a 24 hour turnaround.
• The Physical Environment: The UNC unit featured weighted plastic furniture and communal day rooms, though it was under construction at the time.
• Spiritual Crisis: I wrestled with magical thinking and the heavy question of why these struggles happen. 

If you are in immediate mental health crisis, call or text 988 for assistance from trained professionals.

This episode discusses topics that may be triggering for some individuals. Please check the show notes for more information and be mindful of your own mental health and comfort levels.

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Transcript

Chelsea Myers (00:39)
Hey, welcome back to another Quiet Confessions. Some time for you and I to spend together and just hang out and catch up. I'm gonna continue, I decided, my series on my psychiatric hospitalizations, at least for now. It's been a little tricky to think about how I want

to format these and how I want to release them because it's all so tricky to talk about. And I did say in my first episode of this series that I'm happy to talk about it, and I am, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't come with some big feelings. So with everything going on, there's a lot going on in the world, in the country, in my home state.

and in my home. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed, but I'm also determined to carry on. I also wanted to let you guys know that I have talked to my husband and he is going to give his perspective for each of these time periods that I was away under psychiatric care again.

We're not sure what order those will come in, when they will come out. But we want to be as transparent as possible. And we want to share this so that families can understand what it looks like, what it can look like, and the perspective from both sides, right? From the person receiving care and from the caregiver. So when I left you last, I had just come home.

from my first psychiatric inpatient stay where I had left knowing that I was not any better, but I was not going to get any better in the environment that I was in. And I came home that night, I did not sleep. I was up all night. And the next day I just

was in tears, I was inconsolable, I was not myself. Again, that feeling of detachment. And I had never heard of Postpartum Support International at that point. Well, that isn't true. I had heard of them, but all I knew about them was their online support groups. And I knew that I was beyond that. But I had because I have OCD, which I didn't know at the time.

I had been hyper fixating on treatment programs specific to perinatal mental health. And at the time in 2022, I knew that there were only three in the entire country. One was in New York, one was in North Carolina, and one was in California. The one in New York, I didn't really get a good feel of and I couldn't really tell if it was specifically inpatient or if it was

partial hospitalization. I didn't really understand it. The one in California I knew there was no way I could fly across the country. And again, their website didn't offer a lot of information at the time. The one in North Carolina was what I honed in on and it was UNC's Chapel Hill perinatal inpatient psychiatric unit.

At the time, it was under construction. So even then, it was not exactly as described on the website. But I narrowed in on that. And I thought, this is the solution. This is where I need to go. This is where I need to be. They're going to know exactly what's wrong with me and exactly how to fix me and get me back on track. So after a night of no sleep,

The next morning I got in touch with my therapist, my wonderful, wonderful therapist who immediately reached out to UNC. So if you, again, if you're new here, I am in Vermont, UNC University of North Carolina, not close, but she reached out and she called me back.

very quickly and this is a very small unit. They only have five beds or they did at the time. I don't know what the program looks like now but she called me back and she said, Chelsea, they have a bed. This is the information that they need. I'm gonna send them everything that I have and these are the steps that you need to take. How soon can you get there? And I was flooded with

Too many emotions and thoughts to really summarize. But the biggest things were I had a wave of relief initially, like, my gosh, they have a bed. Here comes the magical thinking. I was like, this is a sign. This means this was right. This is where I need to go. They're going to help me. And then overwhelming guilt. I have to leave my family. I have to leave.

my baby, my older daughter, my husband. I'm leaving my family. It's almost Thanksgiving. So the two biggest things were, okay, this is where I need to be. I'm convinced of it. And also,

How horrible am I that I am just going to like leave the state and leave my family, especially around the holidays. Also, important to note, I had for my entire life an incredible phobia of flying to the point that even being in an airport would put me into a panic attack.

I had no fear whatsoever approaching this trip. We could barely afford this, but my husband was dedicated and wanted to help me get better. So we immediately booked a flight. We got all of our paperwork together. We got a hotel. We knew what this would look like and it all happened so

quickly. so again, I came home from my first hospitalization, did not sleep, called my therapist. She said they had a bed. The next day, we got on a flight to North Carolina. I waiting to get on the airplane, no fear, part of that could have been

that I was taking Ativan at the time. I'm gonna do a separate episode about my medication journey because that is too complex. But that could have been part of it. I had no fear boarding the plane. I had no fear flying. I think the only thought in my head was I need to get there. I need to get to this place. I need to be better. But we were fully aware that this was gonna be my husband and I.

flying to North Carolina, getting in late, spending one night in a hotel. He was gonna bring me to UNC. They were gonna do my intake and then I would have to say goodbye and he would have to fly right back home. All within the span of just over 24 hours.

I am going to let him speak on that experience from his perspective when the time comes, but I cannot imagine what he was thinking, what he was feeling. Everything happened so quickly, especially with me just being home for two days and then I was gone. I was in a different state. We wouldn't be able to see each other.

except through Zoom calls, but I'm getting ahead of myself. So we catch the flight. We get to North Carolina at like 9 p.m. It's a very long day. Get to the hotel. able to eat a little bit of food. I record some messages for my older daughter

I just try to sleep as best as I can. hyper fixating on, tomorrow I'm going to this place. This place is gonna know what's wrong with me and these doctors are going to fix me.

I don't think I slept a whole heck of a lot. But that next morning we were on our way to UNC Chapel Hill. Intake was quick, they were expecting me. It was still COVID times, especially there. It was interesting the difference between.

how they handled things here in Vermont and how they handled things in North Carolina. just, they had different kinds of guidelines. And like I said, we found out that the unit was under construction, so it wasn't being housed where it usually would have been, which was a private unit just for perinatal and postpartum people with very unique setup. It's supposed to feel very homey.

You're supposed to have lots of opportunities to sort of like get fresh air and your family can come visit you and your baby can come visit They can visit you as much as possible but they can't stay with you. But that wasn't the case. We were sharing a unit with what they called the

I think they called it the gentle crisis unit. and a few things struck me about that, but I don't think that came until later. So initially I met with intake. They brought me upstairs to the locked unit and I would need to isolate in my room until they could run a COVID test. They

They had to, they bent the rules a little bit for me. And I'm not sure why typically, especially if you're from the area, if you're not coming from out of state, you have to go through a different process. You're, you are, you spend some time on a different unit, you get cleared for COVID. And then you're brought up to the psych unit, but I went straight, I went straight to the psych unit.

They ran a rapid COVID test while I was in my room and initially they were not going to let my husband in and I lost it. I said, I can't, I can't not say goodbye to him. Like this isn't, he can't come visit me tomorrow. He can't come, like he's flying back north. So they did let him in. They let us say goodbye. That was one of the hardest goodbyes of.

my life, I didn't know when I was going to see him again, and I didn't know when I was going to see my kids again, but also still hyper fixating on this is where I'm supposed to be, this is where I'm supposed to be. To give you kind of an idea of the room, it was much, much bigger than at my previous

hospitalization. It was a shared room, so there were two beds. At the time, there was no one else in this room, but that did not last long. Huge windows in every room. Again, big plastic weighted furniture, very sparse. This room did have big plastic rocking chairs though, which was actually really nice because one of the

coping mechanisms I developed over this time was rocking. So that was a nice addition, but I had pictures of my kids and I put them up in the, chose the bed near the window. There was a bathroom in the room. It reminded me of what I would imagine a prison bathroom to be. I've never been in a prison, so I'm not sure. But yeah, very like there's nothing.

No, Everything's like childproof. So, but in this case, again, I, I waited for my rapid COVID test. It was negative. So from there, it was a much different experience and then I still had to go through a strip search and I had to have someone go through my belongings, but it was done in my room by a nurse who was incredibly kind.

She talked me through the entire process. She even said, I think I had like three sets of pajamas and we were only supposed to have two. And she was like, well, we can just, we'll count this as lounge wear. And I was able to keep my toiletries, not with me, they would be kept at the nursing station or the nurses station.

But I could have my toiletries that did not include, you can't have razors or anything like that, but I could have my own shampoo and conditioner and body wash and hairbrush and hair ties and deodorant and so all of those things like comforts from home. I thought I was gonna be able to have my own pillow on the website. It said you could have your own pillow, but maybe because we were in a mixed milieu with the Gentle Crisis crew, I was not allowed to have my pillow.

as a unit, we were separated by the giant day room. The giant day room was big. had couches lining all of the walls. Huge, again, huge windows, so much sunlight, tables, cause that's where most of the people ate, two TVs, a coffee station, games, art.

supplies, needed permission to access those things, but and snacks. But on one side of that day room was where they were housing the perinatal and postpartum people. And then on the other half, which was a much longer hallway, was the general gentle crisis. ⁓ And when I say gentle crisis, what I would come to learn is it was people who were

experiencing depression or experiencing maybe a relapse in a mental health crisis because of mismanagement of medication nobody was in a place that required the type of intervention that I had experienced in my first hospitalization.

It was not loud. It was not chaotic. There were not people being restrained. There were not people being sedated. There was only one night when one person got very upset. And I don't know why this person got upset because all of us on the perinatal side, all, there was a small day room. The small day room was for us, was for the perinatal patients.

And it really was, it was just like a little tiny, it was like the size of smaller than a classroom, but it had two couches, a big table, some art supplies that you could get and a TV. And all of us sort of went in there and shut the door while this happened. But that was the only time anything like that occurred while I was there.

I'm jumping around a lot, but I'm trying to give you a visual, I guess. So like the central area was the nurses station and that was directly across from the giant day room with the big windows and all the sunlight and the couches. And then the smaller day room was across the hall from the big day room. And that was sort of our space. That was where we would have.

occupational therapy or where we would have art therapy or being part of the Bible Belt. There was a lot of spirituality and we would have, you know, I don't know what you want to call it, spiritual therapy. I am not a religious person, but I also am not opposed. would, I still attended those, those therapies.

⁓ I attended every therapy because I was desperate. But I'm jumping ahead again. I had said goodbye to my husband, this wonderful nurse did my intake. And then I was sort of on my own. Like, did I want to leave my room? Did I want to stay in my room? I didn't really know what to do with myself.

And I've been desperately trying to find the notebook that I had been keeping. And I know it's in this house somewhere. I just can't find it. But that would give me a clearer timeline of when things happened. So unfortunately, my memory is a little bit hazy. What I do know is that I ordered my lunch and dinner for the day.

And because you can't eat those in your room, I did leave my room and I did not go to the giant day room yet, not on day one. I went to the smaller day room and I met two other moms. One was there and had been actually both. This was their second time being there.

One of them was currently pregnant and had another child so she was receiving some treatment because she was experiencing symptoms in her pregnancy. And then the other mother was a new mom like me. Her son was just a little bit younger than mine.

And she was experiencing some pretty severe postpartum depression. And this was her second stay. And I remember asking both of them, like, long were you here? How long is the average that you're here? And they both told me like, you don't know. You don't know until you know. Which scared me.

and

I did kind of immediately bond with both of them. One of them more in particular, the one with the mother with the very young baby. And she was very religious, which it was interesting to me that I gravitated towards her more. And I really don't know why we both were so outside of ourselves at that time. But I really gravitated toward her.

And again, with the magical thinking, I had it in my head, especially because the nurses and the staff and the other patients, like everyone's talking and just like God puts us in these situations for a reason or like, God bless you. So everybody is very heavily talked about and she

This mother was a person who was like reading the Bible or reading religious books. And I remember asking her flat out that first night, why would God do this to us?

And she said, I don't know.

And it fed into my magical thinking. I really did. I said, ⁓ I'm here because God is punishing me because I'm no longer religious. I was raised devoutly Catholic. And then as I grew up, I mean, even as a child, I was like, this doesn't feel right for me. So I got it into my head that I was being punished. God was punishing me. And so, yeah, when I asked her that, I said, why would God do this?

to us. She said, I don't know.

And that was really hard. I cried. I cried so much that first day, the next day. But I just remember I sat with those two women that night. And again, all the same things from the first experience, 15 minute checks, no privileges until you meet with the doctors. I mean, I had privileges to use the day room.

but I just spent the first 24 hours at UNC outside my body. I did some laps in the hallway with one of the moms and just cried and cried.

And that night I went to bed, you're only allowed to have one or two blankets. I think it's honestly only one.

This will lead into, this is going to be a several part experience, but it'll lead into the next episode. The heat was broken in my room, so it was very, very cold and I only had one blanket. So I did not sleep well that first night. But yeah, I just, I cried. I sat with them. I walked with them. Didn't really introduce myself to anyone else.

And that was day one of UNC. This experience, I think, is going to take a couple of episodes. So bear with me. But for now, that's where I'm going to leave it because that's where my memory kind of stops at the moment. And I'm still determined to find that journal. But.

Again, if this is heavy or if you've been there or if you know someone who's been there, you are not alone. Let's all collectively take a deep breath, drink some water, take care of ourselves. I am really, really going to try to take care of myself. And we'll pick this back up. If you have any questions, if you have anything specific that you wanna know, I'm on.

all the social media you guys. Instagram is where I'm most active but I'm everywhere at Quiet Connection Podcast or you can email me at Chelsea at quietconnectionpodcast.com. Our brand new website is up and running. It is still quietconnectionpodcast.com but it is all revamped so check that out. And yeah, I will catch you on the next one.