Two Unexpected "Vacations"

My parents have been taking their grandchildren to Europe for 2-4 weeks in the summers. They have eight grandchildren and my youngest son John was the last to go this year. However, my mother wasn't well, so my father asked me if I would come. So I unexpectedly went to France, Belgium and Luxembourg (the majority of which time was spent in France) this summer with my father and son. It was a good distraction for me though I was still somewhat depressed and it was very sad for me to see how much pain my father was in from his arthritis. He also managed to miss a step and slice his arm, which required 12 stitches and my father and I were also worried about my mother for at least the first week or so of the trip until we heard she was doing much better.

So "trip" number two. The week before last I was extremely depressed and thinking about suicide, even though I was at the cottage on a river. When we got back to the city on Monday and I saw my psychiatrist we both agreed that it was time for me to become an inpatient so I could be removed from the rest of the medications I was on which were not working and be put on something else.

I am bipolar (II) so the drug I've now started is lithium. I've already been experiencing some side effects so I hope they go away.

During the "vacation" time I've been here so far, I've been both up and down although the up is probably more like an absence of the lowest depression, not really being normal.

The inpatient psych ward is calm and quiet and very peaceful and the nurses and doctors are lovely. I have the greatest empathy with the patients who struggle to regain mental health. There is a patient lounge with fridge, TV, ice dispenser. There are rooms for group and individual therapy. I tried an art therapy and relaxation class last week which were good. There is a larger dining room/computer room/piano room, with pay phones that accept incoming calls.

Even with someone like me who has a mental illness (bipolar disorder), I've never knowingly met a schizophrenic before and now I've met two. There is some stigma that all schizophrenics are violent or scary in some fashion, and that is just a stereotype. There seem to be quite a number of patients with serious, serious depression, and four of them went for ECT (shock treatment) yesterday (were "zapped") as one of the residents said. I've even met the first other bipolar person here besides me I've ever met.