Aftermath

I spent the whole weekend in hospital. Oh the shame. Self inflicted injury made surgery a necessity to maintain function in my hand. I was really scared / ashamed / horrified about it all. The hospital is over an hours drive away, so we had to get someone to stay in our house so that my husband could drive me there, leaving at 6 a.m. without waking the children. He dropped me at the hospital entrance and I made my way to the ward. I was shown to a side room next to the nurses station. I was spoken to kindly and asked if I would like to be Mrs.... or my first name, to which I replied first name please. Then a man arrived - he was an older man, probably the age of my dad. He introduced himself as a MH nurse from the hospital psych unit - and he had been allocated to me for the day. Basically I was not to be left on my own. I don't know what they thought I was going to do, but I was not going to be alone. At this point I shut down completely and withdrew into myself. I couldn't string a sentence together or get any words out. He tried to make conversation, but I couldn't engage with him at that point.

The nurse came in and was so kind. She was not judgmental or shocked by the state of my arms. The surgeon came and explained what they were going to do and again was kind and understanding and very dismissive of my stuttering apologies. It was a long day - there were lots of emergencies so my operation was put back and back. As the day went on I began to chat to the MH nurse. He was lovely, we talked about MH, but also about religion, faith, church, children, history, politics and education! I finally went down to theatre at about 8pm. The anesthetist was a bit scary and business like - though I did have to laugh when they drew a huge arrow pointing to the damaged wrist! Just in case they forgot which one to work on!!

When I came round I was very groggy and remember very little of it. My arm was heavily bandaged and felt very heavy.

Once back on the ward I was yet again not to be left alone, this time it was a Healthcare Assistant. I couldn't sleep during the night - I was wide awake - the HCA however, put her feet up and slept the time away - with some healthy snoring thrown in.

I was discharged in the morning and my mother in law came to collect me.

Reflecting on my hospital stay I was struck by how caring, kind & considerate all the staff were towards me. So often there are tales of people who have self harmed being treated like second class citizens, not so for me. So the guilt at taking up all these good people's time is great.

I have had to work hard not to interfere with the wound - the urges are great. But for all those who put themselves out for me, I will not do it. I will not undo their work and give in to the devil called self harm that lives in my head.