I
just happened to see ‘The NHS Saved My Life’ on ITV; a celebration of seventy
years with the NHS and I was inspired to write this post about my own
experience of the NHS and how their services have saved my life.
Other
than being diagnosed with Asthma and having the occasional cyst on my ovaries, I
had no experience of the NHS until my mental health deteriorated.
You
know how usually, in mental health, a person begins exhibiting signs of mental
illness for a while before things might come to a head? It wasn’t like that for
me.
One
day my head was silent and the next, I was hearing voices. One day I was living
my life and loving my weekend job and the next, I was suicidal.
An
ambulance was called to my College when I admitted to a teacher that I’d taken
an overdose in June 2009. I can remember being shown into this room in A&E
and a Nurse did a blood test on me and told me that if I left before they’d
gotten the results then they’d call the police. I did, so they did. And they
were honest with the police when they told them that no one could sit with me
and make sure I stayed there so the police did. And when my bloods showed that
I needed the life saving antidote for the overdose, I was referred to the psychiatric
team to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act (1983). I’d never been
sectioned before so I was terrified, but a Nurse took the time to sit with me
and explained what was going to happen.
Going
to the psychiatric hospital was the worst part of the ordeal and so when I
overdosed again a few months later, my reluctance – ironically - to go into a
medical hospital was knowing that they would save my life. I remember that
second admission when they transferred me between wards and I went to get out
of one bed to get into the other and was told ‘we don’t want your foot to even
touch the floor!’ Once again, the hospital gave me life saving treatment.
Throughout
the years of my poor mental health, I think that I stopped taking responsibility
for my self-harm because I was doing it because of the hallucinations and
memories of my abuse and then it was always in my head ‘oh well the hospitals
are there to save me.’ Looking back, I can see that this is the wrong attitude
and it’s probably a very controversial one in the mental health industry that
far too many people don’t discuss often enough. I can remember one admission
where I had to be given a general anaesthetic and put on life support to give
me the antidote because I was so determined to commit suicide and end the torture
that was the auditory hallucinations and constant memories of my abuse. The essential
thing to bear in mind is that my mental health was so poor that if I were to be
left to my own devices; I’d have been dead a long time ago.
And
this, is what makes me so grateful and thankful for the NHS.
I’d like to give a
special mention to Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (my local
psychiatric NHS trust looking after all of the mental health services in my
local area) for being the key life-savers during this time.