The actual journey to the hospital: Thursday.

The drop-in center is a part of A+E
Despite what you may have heard, it was not packed to the gunwales...
We moved smoothly through the system.

From nurse practitioner
Towards neurological tests
To a psychiatric nurse...

Then in the car again
To a psychiatrist
In the psychiatric hospital.

By this time I was feeling disoriented, upset, lost, in need of someone to tell us something...

Josh - now Service User just kept on talking about his brain tumors and degenerative disease, and this time he was telling a psychiatrist whose listening skills were aimed with laser accuracy to answer 'is this a person a risk to themselves, or to others'? and 'what else shall I proscribe after the SSI?'

Towards the end, the mental health nurse picked up on my despondency. I said that we needed to talk to a counsellor. I didn't say it because I thought it could happen. I said it because it was true!

I wasn't surprised that he didn't say, 'Certainly, we find it really helps people who come in with someone who is suffering mental health issues, to talk to a counsellor'

I was surprised how he suddenly shifted into using counselling skills...shocked really.
I was in a room with my husband, my son, the psychiatrist! How could I feel that I was in a safe and confidential space and able to let my feelings out!'

I have a whole list of anecdotes about inappropriate counselling that I will share with you one day.

We left with our son
But perhaps that was an only just...
We left with the proscriptions

Our souls in tatters, unable to make sense of what was happening.
Walking through the wind and the rain back to my car that I'd parked in an illegal space because there were no parking spaces.

I felt terrible.

Still. needs must.
Off we went to the shopping mall
Got the SSI, and the Valium.
Bought Service User some new shoes and socks
Ate Coronation chicken sandwiches...and went home.

Our house was now an extension of the psychiatric hospital and we are lower than cleaners in the hierarchy of things.