Sorry this post was later than normal everybody. It’s been busy this past day or so with work and my book hunt. This woman is harder to find than I thought possible. I was able to search through some public records at the library near where she lived and I still wasn’t able to find a name. I’m really starting to doubt whether I’ll be able to get my hands on either the new journal she wrote about in my last post’s entries. I doubt there is a second journal for the group home residents since she transferred departments not too long after she had started. I’m going to go visit HR again and see if I can talk to my friend in there and maybe she can give me the name. She didn’t last time due to employee privacy rules and such but if I tell her how important it is I speak to this woman maybe she’ll heed my plight.
Anyway, I know you guys just want to know the next entry from this crazy house so I’ll get to that now. This particular resident still lives here so many of these details are quite disturbing as they do actually carry over into her daytime self.
Room 1 | Room 2 | Room 2 contd. | Room 3
Room # : 4
Resident’s Initials : I.H
D.O.A : 7/16/88
Current Date : 8/21/90
8/21/90 -- It will be a much needed relief now that I won’t have to hear IH ramble on about her delusions like she did during the day shifts. When she goes to her room to take a nap she is completely asleep. She’s a 59 year old Hispanic female who has extreme delusions of grandeur. It has also been discussed that she may be showing early signs of dementia. During last night’s shift she spent the night quietly in her room, waking up several times to go out and smoke but was redirected back to her bedroom to sleep because it was too early. During medication supervision she was observed swatting at visual hallucinations.
8/27/90 -- During my floor checks last night IH was sitting on her bed responding to visual hallucinations. She was actively tracking something around her room, swatting at it and putting something in a box. Her visual hallucinations seem to get worse every now and then and when I first started she was simply tracking them around the room. She’s not as bad as some of the other residents in the house but I worry for her. Given what I’ve seen from this place at night I feel she may be better off in a more intense level of care.
9/5/90 -- Last night IH came out of her room and shuffled slowly into the kitchen where I saw her open the refrigerator and pull out a package of cheese. I saw her initials were on the package but even though it was hers I had to tell her to put it back because eating a snack at 2:52 was probably not a good idea for her stomach. She held the cheese up past her shoulder for a few seconds and then threw it against the wall. I didn’t realize she was that strong because the cheese looked like it was shot from a cannon. She returned to her room and that was it for the night.
9/7/90 -- Last night I was dealing with another client when I heard IH step out of her doorway. Again she was responding to her visual hallucinations and was pointing at it. It looked like she was twisting something, I wish I could have gotten a better look but dealing with this other resident who was spouting Scripture verses at me was my main priority. By the time that incident was resolved IH had already retired back to her room. When I checked in on her to see if she was okay while I was busy she simply laid there, still breathing, and waved her hand. Just then I felt something close the door, pushing me aside as it did. I have no idea what that was but it definitely freaked me out.
9/20/90 -- IH has been laying low lately, she comes out of her room every now and then to smoke but she can be redirected most of the time. There have been times where she goes outside at 1am to smoke, ignoring me completely, but what can I do about that? However, last night she came out of her room screaming about how there are residents in this house who are prostitutes and sold their souls to the Devil. After about 20 minutes of trying to calm her down I called EMS and had her brought in to be evaluated by a psychiatrist. I checked her room to make sure there was nothing important of hers in there before she left but I could find nothing. That room though, it felt encapsulating and reeked of something dying. I figured the smell was that she had brought food in her room at some point and it has gone sour.
9/24/90 -- It was reported during the day shift that IH’s room contained at least 4 dead mice and a block of moldy cheese. That explains the smell. She has not returned yet but it looks like she’ll be in the hospital for another week.
10/2/90 -- IH returned home some time this afternoon and she seems to be okay again. She looks a little lackadaisical but she’s probably tired from the experience. During room checks I saw her sitting in bed and it looked like she was praying because her hands were clasped pretty closely together, almost like she was holding a hand in between her own. Shortly thereafter she laid down and just went to sleep. It was the most bizarre thing.
10/12/90 -- Last night was perhaps the worst. I witnessed IH shuffle out of her room and towards where I was sitting in the dining room. It was about 3:20-3:30 and she stood there and just screamed as loud as she could. This went on for about five minutes during which residents were coming out of their rooms to see what all the commotion was about. It felt like she was the epicenter of some storm as all the residents who had congregated around her began screaming as well. As she moved towards me I felt myself being squeezed, it became difficult to breathe and I started losing vision. When I came to the clock had only gone forward 7 minutes but there were items from around the dining room thrown everywhere. I tidied up and marked this down in our communication log and spent the rest of the night in the office.
10/24/90 – IH has been extremely quiet this past week or so and I am so thankful for this. She came out of her room to drink some water and that was about it.
10/30/90 – Last night IH was up getting her water and began choking. I ran into the kitchen to perform the Heimlich maneuver on her and thankfully she spit it back up. What she spit back up, however, wasn’t water. It was some tarry looking substance and smelled of rotten cheese. When she turned to thank me her eyes were glazed over and her voice or should I say voices sounded much deeper than normal. I called EMS stating she was having a psychiatric emergency following a choking incident. They came and had to wrestle her into the ambulance to be taken away. I was informed before the end of my shift that she would have to spend a good amount of time in the state psych hospital before she could come back to our group home. Apparently things were much worse than I anticipated.
I don’t know how long she was there for but when I started working here she had returned. She’s been fairly tame during the daytime hours.
Again, I apologize for the lateness of this post. I spent a great deal of time searching for the woman but to no avail, even after finding out her name. I searched her name at the public library and found her in the last place I was hoping for, the obituaries. She passed away about 12 years ago of apparent suicide, jumping off of her apartment complex. The worst part is that they found her body to be covered in some odd tribal-type markings. I have no idea what I’m going to do now about finding that book so I’ll have to ask around on the psych unit again.
Submitted March 02, 2015 at 05:10AM by Mentalmentalworker http://ift.tt/1wBES6V nosleep
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