My Weekend

I am trying to put words around this weekend and find a way to deal with all the stess and emotions. Of course I can't go into much detail nor do I really want to.

I agreed to take the Friday night on call shift for a co-worker who needed someone to take it knowing full well that I was also on call on Saturday all day. Now last weekend I had an awesome weekend at Ruidoso with the group for church (including eating hobo dinners) but I came back on Monday to only be on call that night and then was on call Wed. night that accumulated about 9 hours, so agreeing to Friday night was well I want to say like committing suicide but that is not really a cliche I like much.

Anyway, I'm thinking its been pretty busy it has to slow down sometime and how wrong was I. Friday only resulted in one call but a call that hit so close to home that I am still reeling from it.
Saturday resulted in spending about 12 hours at the Hendricks ER and trying to keep calm psychotic and manic clients. This is my job.

But what is still haunting me is the decisions I make all the time. Usually they are so easy but often somewhat gray but sometimes just hard and I really question if I did the right thing, even when my supervisor tells me what we are going to do.

Here is the basics of my job. I see people all day and all on call who are suicidal and/or psychotic. Often my clients don't have family support, a job, insurance, or much hope. Often I see clients after a suicide attempt (more overdosing going on out there than you can imagine) and I basically determine if they are safe to go home with a safety agreement or whether they want to voluntarily admit to a psychiatric hospital, or whether we are going to force them to go to a hospital (aka as committing a client or EDO emergency detention order).

Its the EDO's that make it gray sometimes. See if you want to go to a hospital its easy - go - we even can help pay in some situations. But if you don't want to go its a whole new ball game. And so I have a decision to make - force someone or let them go home on a safety plan. Often even then its pretty cut and dry but not always.

I have never questioned any decision I have made nor even when it was gray been concerned I made the wrong decision often erring on the conservative side. This weekend that might have burned me. Not that my supervisor gave me much of a choice but when you make those decisions and you aren't even sure its right and you are supposed to be the mental health authority that knows when to make those decisions what do you do.

How do you sleep when that is haunting your dreams and you are reliving something that could have so easily been you?

I sometimes worry I have gotten so into a process that I don't see the clients as a person and see the heart and the potential they have. Have I gotten so frustrated with the noncompliance with meds, the refusal to obtain a job, the clients that won't help themselves get help that is being offered to them that I fail to see a human anymore.

So when it hits close to home, when it could have just as easily once upon a time been you, your decisions are no longer just a process or a signature on a piece of paper but they remind you there is a purpose in what you do

And that was my weekend.