The Contract

I am a woman of my word, when I say I’m going to do something I do it, equally when I say I’m not going to do something I don’t. That mentality has kept me alive.

I spent six months in a psych ward, three of which were in the intensive care unit. When I was moved downstairs from an open ward to a ward that’s within another ward, I tried to kill myself. I came close to boot. The doctor said that another minute would have done it. I ended up being unconscious for ten minutes and brought to a general hospital by ambulance from the side door. At the time, the only thing I regretted was being found.

I spent six weeks in hell without any electronics or much of anything really to occupy myself….so I tried suicide again, and again, and again and continued to try to the point that I wasn’t allowed go to the bathroom or shower on my own. I wasn’t allowed in the smoking room or the tv room, I was confined to my bed.

My bed was two feet away from glass windows that were five feet away from the nurses station. I didn’t know any of the nurses, and they didn’t know me which made things harder. I found myself more reluctant to approach them. I was under a different consultant also, one who specialised in the intensive care everyone in the small ward needed. There were three patients to every nurse and they had their eyes on me the whole time.

I got so desperate that I broke into their clinical room when they were dispensing the medications and tried my damnedest to take an overdose…twice. They were on the ball and I was tackled to the floor each time.

They took all of my belongings off of me, including the clothes that weren’t on my back. I was in a pickle. I went into the new doctor on ward round day on the fourth week and we chatted for over an hour. She explained that I had a choice, I could either continue what I was doing making the nurses lives hell, or I could earn their trust and in return be allowed in the tv room to watch a movie or a quiz show…anything other than the distractions I had at that point, which were zero. She explained that no matter how hard I tried to end my life, instead of me dying, I would end up brain damaged because it was within their duty of care to revive the patient no matter what. She told me that no one had ever died on that ward and that all I was doing was putting extra restrictions on myself. She made me think.

Still suicidal I decided that four weeks was a hell of a long time not being allowed go to the bathroom on your own. As I began to know the nurses better, I felt more and more capable of asking them for a chat rather than act on my thoughts. It didn’t happen every time, but I was slowly allowed privileges which I wasn’t allowed up until then. After three days with no incidences and talking instead, they stood outside the door when I urinated. After another three, the same thing happened with the shower. The next step was letting me into the tv room for certain amounts of time and only if I sat or lay on the couch.

They asked how they could make a safety plan with me. I told them that my integrity was strong to the point that if I signed a piece of paper saying what I wasn’t going to do then I didn’t do it. A trust began to form. At first, the safety contracts were every hour, then every two. Eventually I got to every meal. When I reached that point, I had two weeks of no suicide attempts under my belt. My integrity was shining through.

I was moved to the outer sanctum of the ICU after six weeks of entering it. There were fewer nurses there, but they still checked on you every thirty minutes. It got to a stage that I was signing one contract with the day staff and then another one with the night staff.

When they were late I self-harmed by punching the living shit out of myself. I felt that I could do it then because I wasn’t contractually obliged not to. The contracts lasted twelve hours and twelve hours only. My integrity intact, I became the first person of the day for them to check on and they made sure that the contract cycle was constant. It wasn’t much of a big deal really. I wrote that I wouldn’t use a ligature, punch myself or run. The day staff timed and dated it and just signed it again with the night staff.

I was only supposed to be kept on that ward for a few days but ended up staying there until my insurance ran out and I had to leave. Upon my departure one of my favourite nurses, Amy, asked me to sign one last contract…that I wouldn’t self-harm when I went home. I had to think about that one…it was a big ask. I asked her if I could reflect on it for a few minutes and then decided that yes…. I would sign it.

I came out of hospital on the 2^nd of September and my contract is still in place, my integrity intact.