As I mentioned in my last few posts, I have been thinking of going into hospital again. I am now in hospital. I spent a night in the emergency department as I was suicidal, and am now in a private hospital. I am grateful they got me in so quickly, but it hasn’t been easy. I was told the only beds available were in the “Intensive Care Unit” (a locked ward for patients most at risk of hurting themselves). I was going to be given an actual room in the ward, but then was told it needed cleaning, so I would have to spend a night in a curtained area. I was told the room would be cleaned the following day. I was in an extremely vulnerable way when I arrived. I could not handle noise or anything, and really needed a quiet room to myself. I had no door I could close and I could hear everything. I ended up having an autistic melt down, on top of everything else I was dealing with. I just about started screaming at the patients watching TV. Instead, I crumbled inwards. Everything felt like a dream, I couldn’t speak anymore and I felt like a little child. Even after the TV went off and I’d calmed down, it still took a while to regain my voice. I sat on my bed and started building a Harry Potter lego set. The nurse then took me into the interview room to ask me some questions. I brought my bunny with me and had to write everything down as I could not speak.

The ward took away just about everything. They took my toothbrush which they thought eating disorder patients could shove down their throats and make themselves vomit. They took shoes with shoe laces, pants with drawstrings, and even my good earmuffs which I use to block noise because they were made of metal. I ended up curling up on the ground of the bathroom that evening just to get some quiet. Finally I was given my earmuffs back as the doctor texted them back saying I could have them.

I had a headache, was nauseous and barely made it to the next day. I didn’t get much sleep as it was noisy throughout the night with one of the other patients peeing on the floor. The next day I asked about the room I had been promised, but I was told they were giving it to another patient! That was the point when I completely lost it. There are barely any rooms I can tolerate in this hospital, and that room would have been ok as it was further away from the TV, had no noisy air vent and I could close the door. I called up the bed manager and screamed at her. She told me this is no way to speak to a staff member. “No, you’re the one treating me like shit!” I screamed at her. How dare she turn it round on me; if she didn’t want to be yelled at, she should treat people right. I screamed and cried. I lay on the floor of the bathroom crying. I was told a bed had come up in another unit, so the nurse took me to look at the new room. It had a loud air vent. I was caught between a rock and a hard place. In the end I chose to move. It was right on 3:30pm when I had an appointment with my psychologist on Zoom, so she beared witness to all this. I was a mess and unable to talk with her, I just cried and screamed and threw things around the room. “I think you need some meds” my psychologist said. Two nurses came in (I’m not sure if they heard me screaming) and asked what was wrong. I told them I couldn’t handle the loud air vent. I was given some diazepam and an ice pack. The ice pack helped as I was very hot, and the burning ice sensation is grounding (sometimes ice packs can help when we want to cut ourselves). Eventually I managed to calm down enough to have a conversation with my psychologist. I told her I fucking hate being autistic and if I could take it away I could. Meltdowns and shutdowns are no joke. Meltdowns are most visible in kids who haven’t yet learnt to mask their emotions, but they still happen to adults. Most of the time I can contain myself, but this time it all came out and when it does I look mental. I wrote a post before about how to treat someone having an autistic meltdown, and one of the biggest things is to never ever get angry at them or tell them they’re misbehaving and need discipline. We are not throwing a tantrum because we’re not getting our way, we are overwhelmed and in a lot of distress because the needs of our highly sensitive nervous system are not being met. The trigger to the autistic meltdown must be identified and removed immediately. Do not make an autistic person wait and endure the trigger. This will cause so much distress and the melt down may then become a “shut down”, a dissociative response where we may faint, feel dizzy, lose our vision or hearing, go numb, become paralysed, feel extremely heavy and tired, become nauseous, feel out of our body, feel like everything is unreal, are unable to speak, feel weak or hot, and for those with DID, we may switch personalities. Unfortunately this is what happened to me on Monday. Private hospitals often tell my doctor that they struggle to manage me here and want to send me back to a public hospital where the craziest of the crazy go and can be physically restrained. My doctor is now asking me to take Olanzapine, a sedative, hoping it will keep me calm and I can stay here. He told me he’s had two patients who have been blacklisted from the hospital (one for turning the fire alarm on and flooding the hospital, the other for smuggling drugs in). He didn’t want me to be his third. He’s given me unrestricted leave, so I can go out when the noise becomes too much. I am lucky to have the best doctor in the hospital.

I’m yet to find a hospital which is autism-friendly. We really need an autism ward. The layout of the ward I’m in right now is terrible. The communal area is not in it’s own room, so the noise of other patients talking, playing UNO and watching TV can be heard from the bedrooms which are next to the lounge. I open the door of the bedroom and I’m directly in the communal area. Right now I am sitting in the interview room, which has become an evening ritual, to get away from the noise. Yesterday I even brought a blanket in here and lay down on the floor as I was so tired but I couldn’t get any rest in my room because people were watching TV. Thankfully it is quieter during the day as most patients are doing a day program. Yesterday someone from maintenance finally came to the ward and turned off my air vent, which is SUCH a relief.

I don’t know how long I will stay here for. I am managing a bit better. I sleep during the morning, then spend my day building Harry Potter themed lego sets, doing a paint-by-numbers beach shack, playing The Sims (the very original) and using my laptop until the battery goes flat and I have to take it to the nurses’ station to be charged. I enjoy going out when I am up to it. There are lots of great vegan joints around here. In Brunswick the Veggie Bar’s ice-cream parlour (Girls & Boys) has the best vegan ice-cream I’ve ever tasted. This evening I had a vegan pizza at Fratellino, then walked along the Yarra. There is a park there which has one of those big, round net/nest swings which I know a lot of people love, especially autistic folk. When I was standing at the lights on my way back, I noticed a girl next to me was also wearing earmuffs. They said “My brain has 1000 tabs open at once. 98% anxiety ridden, 2% girl”. I’ve been looking everywhere on the internet but couldn’t find them. I don’t know where she got them from, but at least I know I’m not alone. She, unsurprisingly, was wearing a hospital wristband as well and was on her way back to the hospital. There actually seems to be quite a lot of autistic people in hospital, and yet hospitals still will not make the place more inclusive for us.