A couple of nights ago, I went into the livingroom at the crisis unit at Quincy Mental Health Center and said to all the patients who were in that room:
"I would never ask that people never cough around me. I know that sometimes people have to cough. I would appreciate it if people didn't cough around me deliberately."
A male patient and a female patient both started to speak loudly at me. The male patient was someone who had coughed at me a few times since he had gotten to the unit, and who had been spoken to once already by a staffperson. The female patient had coughed loudly outside my room that morning; since several people had already coughed outside my room before she did, and she did it the most loudly, I had looked out the door of my room that morning and asked her not to do that again. She began yelling at me then, also.
When I turned to leave the livingroom, the male patient who had taken issue with what I had said coughed loudly. I turned back and said "Did you just do that, after what I just said?" The female patient called me crazy. The male patient coughed as soon as my back was turned, two more times, before a staffperson in the office who had witnessed his behavior walked out of the office and told him to stop.
That staffperson and the nurse who was working that night spoke individually to everyone, in the office. Even so, coughing continued outside my room that night; the staffperson even got coughed at by a male patient when her back was turned.
I wrote emails about what happened and sent them to the assistant director of the unit that night. She is on vacation this week.
The next day, I printed the emails that I had sent her. I asked the night nurse that the emails be placed in my chart.
Last night, things were much better. There was almost no harassment at all. Two of the male patients who had just gotten to the unit when I tried to talk to the group and who witnessed the male patient coughing at me told me that they thought he was being unreasonable and that it seemed like the behavior to which I had objected was bullying.
This morning, I asked the nurse manager to read the emails that were in my chart.
Soon after I asked her to do that, she told me that I had to move out of my room so that another patient could have that room. I was to be placed instead in the "swing bed," a bed that is not in a room at all. It is in the small hallway that connects the two main hallways of the unit. This small hallway is walked through all day by both staff patients. It is also walked through at night, every half-hour, by staff doing checks on patient rooms. Of course, the lights are left on all night in both main hallways.
Whoever has the swing bed has no privacy. There is nowhere to leave things except next to the swing bed, where anyone can look at or take anything. Things that can't be left like that have to be kept in the nurses' office or locked overnight in the assistant director's office, which also means asking staff for access to those things, every time that they are needed.
I was told that I had to move out of the room immediately. It was to be given to someone who would be at the unit for the next 3-5 days. Whether or not I would get that room when the patient left was inconclusive.
The nurse manager told me that the decision to move me from my room was from "upstairs," meaning that she had nothing to do with it, which I don't believe at all.
I went upstairs and found the office of someone who had interviewed me a couple of weeks ago about "voluntary" team services that you have to sign up for to be able to stay at the unit. The concession was made to me those weeks ago that I was interviewed by someone from the less invasive team services, which I felt was probably all I could hope for if I wanted to be able to stay at the unit until I get permanent housing. This afternoon, she coughed as soon as she saw me. I told her that I had an emergency. She asked me to wait because she had something else she had to deal with.
I waited for several minutes in the hallway. I finally knocked and said that I knew she was busy but that I had an emergency. I asked if there were someone else with whom I could speak. She said she would talk to the unit supervisor, and she asked me to wait in the waiting room.
I went to the waiting room and stayed there for several minutes. Knowing that the nurse manager wanted me to move out of the room immediately, and that I did not have a lot of time to wait, I went into the hallway again. A receptionist at a desk at the end of the hallway put her face into the crook of her arm and coughed as soon as she saw me. I walked up to her and saw that the person who had interviewed me for the less invasive team services was talking to the unit supervisor. I gave copies of the emails about the incident that happened the other night to the unit supervisor, who works upstairs and is almost never at the unit. I asked her to read the emails. She asked me to wait, saying "I have three things ahead of you, Lena," in a tone of voice that suggested that I was taking up her time and being a difficult (read "crazy and demanding") client.
I went to the waiting room and waited. While I was there, a woman whom I have never seen before walked into the hallway and coughed loudly. I told her not to do that again. She had already turned toward the next hallway and didn't answer; she just coughed again while she walked away.
When the unit supervisor got me from the waiting room and brought me to her office, she told me that she hadn't had a chance to read the emails. I said that I would wait for her to read them before we spoke.
She read them. Then she told me that my being asked to move from my room was not related to the emails or to the nurse manager having read them this morning. She said "I'm sure that will be difficult for you to believe." I think it would be difficult for anyone to believe.
I realized that there was nothing left to say to her. I went to the unit to move from the room.
There are bureaus in the room; I emptied them and got ready to put most of what was in them in the storage unit that has everything that I took out of my apartment last year.
The nurse manager left for the day. During the next shift, concerned staff called someone and saved my room for me, for the time being.
There is no patient at the unit who would not have interpreted my being forced from my room as punishment for my having objected to being harassed. I would have gotten harassed day and night, everywhere on the unit, if I had lost my room.
I had hoped to spend today looking for an apartment. Instead, I spent it putting my things in garbage bags, trying to get everything out of my room at the unit. I'll spend tonight putting everything back where it was.
My room is safe for the time being. However, I think that my stay at this unit is precarious. If I was retaliated against today, which I can't believe isn't what happened, it is likely that there will be more retaliation against me, and against the people who helped me.
Copyright L. Kochman, April 9, 2015 @ 6:33 p.m.
