Locked-up Loonies Part 2

Ah, Maxwell. Such a smooth talker, who suffered from Schizophrenia.

The day I met Maxwell, he came up to me and without even introducing himself asked: "Are you married?" When you're a female working in male lock-up ward, you are always married. Otherwise, they'll steal you and take you back to their bedroom and stuff you under their mattress.

Maxwell told me many stories of his wives, his BMWs, his riches. None of them were true. What was true, however, was that Maxwell had an affinity for us female nurses. One day, Maxwell was elegantly lying across a table and when I walked past him, he called me a "beautiful, sexy angel". Whenever I walked past an open doorway and looked in, Maxwell was staring back at me. It started getting awkward when he would suddenly appear next to me when least expected (surprise!) or when he would attempt to hold my hand.

While working in our hours at this hospital, we had a room in which we could sit and type up our findings of our patients. The assignment load was huge, and we could use any spare moment to work on our projects. We had spent a big part of the morning working on these assignments, and then all went out to grab some lunch together. On returning to the room, we walked in, sprayed deodorant, had some girly talk and sat down at our computers. Suddenly, in my peripheral vision, I saw a dark silhouette in the corner of the room, glaring at us. Maxwell. Under my voice, I muttered: "Whatever you do, don't look at the corner of the room". My friends looked anyway. Caroline screamed. Some of us jumped a metre away from him. One friend ran out to call security. Maxwell simply asked "Why didn't you invite me for lunch?" Needless to say, security had to tackle him and pull him out of the room while his nails dug tracks in the carpet.

Later on that day, my super nifty bladder failed me and I needed a pee-break. I walked out the room and had the distinct feeling of being followed. I started walking faster and just before I got to the bathroom, I had a quick glance over my shoulder. Maxwell. He grabbed me and pinned me against the wall. I let out a meek: "Sister?... Doctor?" trying to find someone in charge who could possible take away the bright light at the end of the tunnel. Luckily the Sister-in-Charge found me, grabbed some Haloperidol and put Maxwell out of his misery. *side note: I wish I could have received the Haloperidol*

They started drugging Maxwell heavily. Apparently I was a bad influence on his psychosis. Maxwell took a bad reaction to the sedation one day and we needed to move him to a room closer to the nurse's station. Only problem is, we were 4 skinny nurses and one 90kg man. You do the math. This resulted in us putting a sheet under Maxwell and sliding him along the floor all the way through the ward to get him to the room, leaving a trail of drool behind us.

Maxwell slowly started getting better, but he still loved us nurses. One day, we were leaving work, and as we got to our cars, we looked behind us only to find Maxwell following us with a packed suitcase and a bottle of juice. He insisted that he would be coming home with us. Once again, security had to tackle him and take him down. You would think security could have just not opened the gate for him in the first place, no?

The last time I saw Maxwell, I was no longer working in the ward but at a Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic. I saw him running on one of the fields, non-stop. He had lost a lot of weight, and was looking good. I asked a Doctor why he was running so much. The Doctor replied that Maxwell believed he had been entered to run the Comrades marathon.

Locked-up Loonies Part 1

One of the hardest moments in training to be a kick-ass nurse is the specialization in Psychiatry. Not only because you remove all the masks you are wearing to disguise who you really are, but because you work with people who want you to die.

We were all nervous, yet excited, to find out where we would be placed within a certain Psychiatric hospital. I was particularly nervous because I am very scared of the unknown. I went (with Ariel) to our beautiful, very understanding lecturer and asked her not to put me in a specific ward. What happened? I was put there anyway..

Male lock-up Ward.

That's right. Big, scary men. Big, scary, *crazy* men who are so out of control, they are under constant guard and are locked inside. Now, maybe this was my lecturer's way of showing me what I can accomplish. Or maybe this was her way of enjoying some of my suffering. Sadist.

We walked towards the ward holding hands. The glass windows were shattered. There were men standing at the windows watching our every move. The big white gate was unlocked by security for us. I walked through that ward with my back to the walls at all times, and when I came to a corridor I would dive across (stealth style) to the other side, holding my pepper spray like a gun. The Sisters decided we should all meet our patients. We walked into the lounge where they were sitting. One by one, they introduced themselves. A lot of them seemed totally normal.. Except for the occasional one that would just walk out the room or randomly start screaming. My favourite patient was a man named Sam, who suffered from Schizophrenia. At his turn to introduce himself, he promptly stood up and shouted: "Secret Prime Minister, Third Division", waved, and sat back down. He came and greeted us all individually, and excused himself. He walked out the room and back in through another door and introduced himself all over again. Later on, he came up to me and said "If I knew you were coming, I would have shaved." He walked off like a man on a mission to go shave, until I found him in the courtyard picking at blades of grass.

While watching over the patients during lunch (making sure the anorexics ate and that the depressives didn't slit their wrists with the plastic cutlery), Sam came up to me with a couple sachets of black pepper and informed me that it's brilliant for preventing heart attacks. Ah, where would I be without my Sam? After I got to know Sam a little better, he informed me that his mother gave him a blowjob. And that he enjoyed it. Sam was so very sweet, he would try feed me his food, or steal me an apple from the kitchen because he was always convinced that I must be hungry. Exercise time with Sam was the highlight of my stay at the hospital. Exercise releases endorphins (feel-good chemicals) but in Sam's case, they made him perform very.. erm, effeminate moves. Halfway through exercise time, he would stop and sit on the floor. However, when it was his turn to demonstrate an exercise move, he would jump up excitedly and perform weird dance moves ala Michael Jackson on tiptoes, hands on waist, shaking his hips.

Another man I met was Harry. An old guy with Alzheimers. Harry loved to exercise, despite barely being able to walk. I can still hear Harry chanting in his ex-smokers, Portugese-accented, voice: "Wunnn, Toooo, Sreee.." Harry was extremely hyper-sexual and grabbed my bum every time I walked past him. I didn't know this at first and went up to speak to him on our first day there. He looked at me slowly, told me I was beautiful and put his arm around me. In the next instant, he had a crazy moment and tried to strangle me. Harry used to sit on his own swearing in Portugese. God forbid you ever got close to him, he would either try slap you or try to have sex with you. Good thing my pimp hand was strong. I think Harry knew how to piss me off as well: by sitting down. Once Harry sits, there's no chance he's going to get back up easily. He would shout "Nurse! Nurse!" until I would come pick him up. I would stand with my weak little arms under his sweaty pits, inhaling his dry urine smell, while he tried to nibble my earlobe. *shudder*

Sam and Harry were a breeze in comparison to another patient we encountered: Maxwell. Stay tuned for Locked-up Loonies Part 2. ;)