No… really… I do.  Why?  Because I was sweating like a pig tonight all because someone didn’t take their anti-psychotics and… yeah… they went psycho.

I have one of the better Emotionally Disturbed Person (EDP) conversion rates in the borough.  Generally I can crack the uncrackable and have them understand that they in fact NEED to go to the hospital so that force isn’t necessary.  For some reason, those I work with think I might have majored in Psychology in college when in fact I majored in Film.  I don’t think that those I work with understand that I can get into the heads of the EDPs and relate to them because I am, in fact, one of THEM.

Tonight’s call was a little harder.  Okay… alot harder.  She was small framed but stronger than Bill Goldberg.  She had gone catatonic unless she was near a window, in which case she was trying to jump out of it.  I got into her head for a few minutes… got her talking… got her up and walking… but then she went crashing down again in the hallway.  So PD had to restrain her.  She freaked.  She ended up going out on the chair in cuffs and cravats.  She made me sweat… all 100 lbs. soaking wet with a pocket full of quarters that she was.

Her mother was there… in fact that’s who she had been visiting when she had this episode.  Her mother had no idea how sick her daughter was.  She had no idea she was on anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, and bed time tranquilizers.  I wonder if the daughter really did keep it a secret, or if the mother was in denial.  We didn’t even realize the extent of the meds she was on until we got her to the hospital.

The mother had to watch as we restrained her to the chair and hear her cries for help.  Then the stretcher in the ambulance when her daughter cried, I let her mother hold her hand.  The mother had to watch as the hospital staff restrained her daughter to the hospital bed.  The mother had to watch as the nurse came with the needle.  The mother had to hear her daughter cry for help from her as the needle went into her arm.  The mother had to watch as her daughter was snowballed into semi-consciousness.  Then, the mother cried as her daughter slipped away from her behind the doors into the locked ward where the sound of howling was coming from.

As a parent, it is undoubtedly one of the most horrifying things you can ever go through.  The inability to make the world right for your child.  As a person it has to be the worst thing in the world.  To have your freedom and ability to reason taken from you.

The entire time, all I could think was, “At least she isn’t spitting.”

Now I stink.