It has been a long time since I have managed to update here since my return from Santa Fe inpatient treatment. I continued to decline in mood and mental health. The depression, hopelessness, anxiety and hyper-vigilance all contributed to a deepening desire for suicide.

I mentioned that I was considering suicide in an email to my therapist on October 7th, the day that hurricane Michael hit us. At my appointment that morning, she asked me to go to a center to be checked to see if I was safe from attempting suicide. She had called my wife to tell her that I must go and be checked out. 

I drove through the storm to the center, filled out some forms and was then interviewed. I repeatedly told them that I was safe and it is just how I was feeling at that very second. They consulted with the doctor there who decided that I should be involuntarily admitted to a facility somewhere. No amount of reasoning with him worked. I walked out of the room and headed for the door but they refused to open it. There were about 6 people watching me, and through the glass in the door, I could see someone looking at me and talking on the phone. I assumed that they were talking to the police to come and get me.

A worker at the center needed to take a patient through the locked door, and I followed behind. I went to the bathroom and then ran out of the building. There were people from the center chasing me across the parking lot.

I drove away and parked in a development where I thought I could not be found. Location service was turned off my phone, and I contacted my therapist. She tried to calm me down and to hand myself in. I just drove around in a panic trying to decide where to go to. I could leave the state and be safe there.

After many hours of deep thinking, I went back to the house with the idea that I would pack some stuff in my car and head for Virginia and wait it out. In the end, I decided to just accept the situation, take a shower and get some sleep. The police didn’t come during the night or the next morning. They were probably very busy dealing with the hurricane.

Around midday, my wife called the local sheriff’s office to see if there was an order out to detain me, and there was but it was only valid for 24 hours, and was issued at 4:10 the previous day. I left the house and drove to a local park and just sat there, with phone location turned off, and waited until the 24 hours were up. When I got back, my sons said that about 30 minutes after I had left the house, the police had called there to take me to the secure unit.

Things were not improving, I was cutting most nights, on my leg. The cuts were very deep and making a real mess on the sheets. I was cutting deeply into the flesh and on one occasion I had to ask my wife for help as I could not stop the bleeding. I resorted to putting a towel on the bottom sheet to stop the blood from getting on the sheets. I was tired and ashamed at having to bleach wash the sheets everyday. After cutting I was immediately putting a large band-aid on the cut, but the blood still came through.

Skip forward to October 18th. I went to my usual appointment with my therapist. Everything seemed fine, then she handed me a letter and told me that I needed to see someone else for therapy as she would no longer see me as a client. She said I needed more intensive therapy and put me in touch with a DBT specialist. I was stunned. We hugged and I left her office.

I drove to a local park and contacted her via a special app on my phone, asking her to reconsider, but she wouldn’t. I was still in IOP at this time, so I called them, trying to not break down. There was nothing that they could really say or do. What is the worst fear of someone suffering from Borderline? REJECTION, and that is just what had happened to me in a major way. It totally validated all my harmful thoughts about myself.

I drove around for a while, bought gas and stopped at the ABC. You would have thought that after having some time to think, I would be rational again, but that wasn’t the case.

I drove to a large shopping center and parked right on the edge, well away from everyone. I took out my suicide kit of large amounts of old, saved meds, and a plastic bag. I started taking handful after handful of the meds. I could feel them taking effect. My phone rang and I knew it was the therapist that I had been seeing for well over two and a half years, weekly. That is a lot of time spent together, working on issues. I opened the messenger app and told her no phone calls. She wanted to know where I was and what I had taken. I refused to say, but she kept asking what she was supposed to do and what else she could have done. 

I was almost passing out at this stage and ready to put the plastic bag over my head when I noticed that there was a police car and ambulance parked in front of me. Someone must have called them, and they somehow traced where I was from my phone. I got out of the car and told them that I didn’t want or need any help and refused any treatment from them. After a few minutes, I could no longer stand because I was so close to passing out. I sat down on the grass. They continued to speak to me, but I don’t really remember much. I have a vague recollection of them getting me to lie on a trolley and being wheeled into the waiting ambulance. That is my last memory for about 10 days. 

I woke up in the local hospital ICU, hooked up to many monitors and multiple bags dripping fluid into various veins. I may have had some recollections, but they were probably just imaginary as I had been unconscious for a long time. I spent a total of 12 days in the ICU, with someone watching me all the time.

These details are all from what people have told me and from photographs that my wife took while I was in the ICU.

The hospital had to call poison control to find a protocol of treatment for my condition and the combination of medications I had overdosed on. I know I was intubated a number of times and in a coma. They put me on Fentanyl and Propofol to keep me sedated. At one time I had to be restrained to the hospital bed. I pushed my wife at one stage and my daughter yelled at me. I do remember that part because of the look of absolute hatred on my daughter’s face. It will haunt me forever.

The also inserted a catheter and it went wrong. My bladder would not empty so that had to do that and pulled out a liter of urine with an excruciatingly painful procedure. While I was intubated I contracted pneumonia which meant antibiotics and a partially collapsed lung, which thankfully cleared up. The antibiotics however made me get C-Difficile, so more antibiotics, and everyone who came into my room had to be gowned. I also ended up with a UTI. 

After I was released from the hospital, I was emotionally overwhelmed. Not with relief as you might expect, but anger. Anger that I had survived and that I had been saved when I didn’t want to be. Rage that I was still alive. I kept breaking down in tears of frustration. I was in a very bad way and needed to speak to someone about it all. I emailed my old therapist and was basically told to go to the hospital if I felt I was in danger.

The DBT group she wanted me to join was not covered by insurance and would cost $200 a week to attend. That is way out of my budget. There was another DBT group with a sliding scale, but it was an hours drive away, so four hours of driving a week was also out of the question, plus the cost of the group.

I am still trying to find a therapist, but having no luck. They either won’t take me, are not taking new clients, or do not take insurance.