Discharge

After a month in the hospital, Julie is sent home.  I travel across the county to attend her discharge meeting.  It is brief.  Julie refuses to speak so the meeting is largely ceremonial.  The psychiatrist recites the reasons for her coming into hospital, and all of us except Julie agree that there has been some change.

There has been some change: Julie is no longer trying to save the world, but she is now deeply depressed.  She has missed out on Christmas and New Year.  She has been able to make some sensible decisions about her treatment, but she has also continued to self-harm and some of her decisions are less than helpful.  She is refusing antibiotics for an infected wound, apparently on the grounds that there’s no point.

It’s not the best start to a discharge, but staying on the ward is probably a worse option in the long run.  The mood on the ward at the moment is ugly and ill-tempered.  And she needs to get back to her flat, and something like normal life.  The longer she stays, the longer it will take.

I don’t say much at the meeting.  I listen while a plan is made to send Julie home alone to her flat, a new place she moved into just before her admission.  She has been on a busy well-staffed ward for a month; nobody seems to recognise that her empty flat will seem strange and lonely. No food in the cupboards, but a week’s supply of medication; and the stated intention of taking her own life.  We’ll visit you tomorrow morning, says the crisis team cheerfully.  This seems over-optimistic to me.

Fortunately I came prepared for just this eventuality. I step in and change their plan: drive her home, fill up the food cupboards, cook dinner, run a bath.  And then I cart the airbed stashed in the boot of my car upstairs and camp on her floor overnight.