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FEATURE
TO HAVE A PSYCHOLOGICAL BREAKDOWN
By Lucas Slater
As told to Katie Miller
After being diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2008, Lucas Slater moved into Jayhawker Towers in Fall 2009 with high hopes of making a fresh start. Only four days later, he was checked into Rainbow Mental Health Facility in Kansas City, Kan., where it took almost two weeks for him to regain mental clarity.
I was wide-eyed and smiling when they carried me out of the Towers on the stretcher. By that point, I was out of my mind in every sense of the word.
It's difficult to look back and try to rationalize my thoughts during that time, because they weren't at all rational. Every idea I had was crazier than the last. The thing about a severe psychotic episode is, there is no rest from the intensity. My mind was constantly working as bizarre thoughts consumed me.
The descent into my full-on break from reality was so gradual, not even my own mother saw it coming. The day I moved in she knew I was acting a bit strange, but thought nothing was wrong because I was so happy and excited about everything. I was in the best mood, talking a million miles an hour and joking around with my new roommates. I guess those were the first signs.
I didn't sleep during those first nights after moving in. With all the excitement, I'd gotten sporadic with taking my meds, and by the third day, the only reality that existed to me was my own convoluted and erratic thoughts. I sat in the stairwell and became convinced I was being watched. I obsessed over nonsense theories I had come up with. I slid my credit cards under peoples' doors. I paced around outside talking to myself. Everything around me seemed false. I lived on the fifth floor and believed all the other floors of my building didn't exist, but had been planted there to trick me into thinking they were real. The whole world was playing a joke on me.
I've no idea how much time lapsed. At some point I'd gone to the front office of the towers and just sort of sat there in a daze. I was told later that I'd given one of my credit cards to the tower's director and that he was probably the one who called the ambulance. I was rearranging my DVD collection for about the
100th time when paramedics came to take me to the hospital. That was when the paranoia set in.
I was suspicious of everyone, even my own dad. My memory is hazy from the sedatives, but the next thing I remember is waking up strapped down to the bed. I was screaming
decode the hospital wristband they gave me as fast as I could in order to get out. My mind still had no perception of time passing, and days ran together clouded by medication and my own irrational mind.
Now it seems funny to me, how I would sit around petrified that my brain was leaking
THE NEXT THING I REMEMBER IS WAKING UP STRAPPED DOWN TO THE BED.
hysterically when a nurse tried to draw blood from my arm. To my family and the doctors it was a simple blood test, but in my head it was an elaborate conspiracy to break my arm.
memories. Other times I would wander into other patients' rooms naked. I methodically ground my teeth and did this thing with my arm where I would twist it in on itself because I thought it would help me get answers more quickly. At the time though, I trusted my warped logic without question. I had no choice.
At some point I was transferred to what I thought was a prison, but was actually a mental health facility in Kansas City. I was so convinced it was a prison I was trying to
Lucidity came back as slowly as it went, but
I first noticed it returning when I began to feel out of place at the mental hospital. Everyone else seemed so much sicker than I did and I just wanted to go home. The last days were an odd mix of euphoria and depression as I struggled with the idea of going back into the real world. I was impatient, tired of waiting, doing everything I could to get through the days.
When I was finally released, I thought I'd been there three days and was shocked to find out it was actually 12. Time had evaded me because the acuteness with which I felt every emotion, every fear, every anxiety overtook me completely, to the point that it became my reality. Being psychotic for that long takes a serious toll on mental stability. I now stay strict with my medications and have a daily routine that I follow to cope with the vulnerability that follows a severe psychotic breakdown.
TO PULL SHRAPNEL
OUT OF YOUR LEG
By Divine Chi As told to Nadia Imafidon
Divine Chi, a pharmacy student, was about 9 years old when he and his cousin came across a junkyard on the way to dump trash. In the gated, secluded community of Yaounde, Cameroon, where he lived, the people carried their trash miles away to a large trash-dumping area where the trash was burned and taken away. Chi stepped on what he thought was a land mine.
We were walking through the forest and came across an area, about a mile from my house, with old rusty cars and old machinery. It was like an abandoned junk yard. My cousin went off to do some exploring, and I saw some shiny metal sticking out of the soil. I decided to mess with it.
I heard a loud explosion. I thought it was a bomb. I was disoriented and tried to go toward my cousin, calling out his name over and over again. But I couldn't hear him respond. That is when I realized I had gone deaf. I started crying, fearing that it was permanent. I thought the explosion blew out my ear drums. All I could hear was ringing. It only lasted about a minute, but it was the longest minute of my life.
I didn't know what was going on. I looked
THAT IS WHEN I REALIZED I HAD GONE DEAF.
down at my leg and saw that it was covered in blood. Five pieces of hot metal were stuck in the skin in a vertical straight line. Each jagged, twisted, solid piece was thick around, like a bullet, and key-length. I tried to brush them away with my hand but they didn't fall off.
Pain was not my primary concern. I had to stop the bleeding.I had seen those hunter movies where whenever someone bled they
I spent the next 15 minutes pulling them out, one at a time. The first two were closer to my knee and not too far deep into the muscle. I yankedthemoutrightaway.Ijustbarelytouched the next one and felt pain instantly.I had to rest a bit after attempting to pull it out.I freaked out when I tried to move the last fragment and saw the metal move underneath my skin.I let out a weird yell as I felt the irregular metal tearing stuff in my leg while I wrestled it free.My leg gushed blood.
I wasn't the only one crying. My cousin didn't know what to do, and tried to assure me that it wasn't that bad. Here we were, two 9 year olds, in this forest that was vacant of any other human beings. But at least I had a leg, he told me.
took a t-shirt and wrapped it around the wound. I tore off my t-shirt and did the same.
We left the trash bags in the junkyard. I was in tears the entire mile-walk back. As I put weight on my foot, my muscles tensed and filled my leg with pain that I had to bear. The white t-shirt around my leg was soaked through and dripping red when we reached a stream. I washed off my leg with the unclean water.
When we returned, my aunt washed my leg with a cloth diaper soaked in alcohol. The bleeding finally stopped, and I saw five prominent holes in my leg. She then filled the open wounds with ground pepper sauce and tied my leg up.
At the time, I thought what had exploded on me was a land mine, but I knew that I would have lost a leg or an arm. Now I think it may have been a gas-filled car part that expanded in the heat of the dry season.
In retrospect that day was awesome. The leg part was pretty bad, but I got special treatment for the rest of the week. I took taxis to and from school instead of walking, and I got my favorite food whenever I wanted it. And I didn't die.
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