Front Page      1 Who is to blame  2 The beginning 4 The affect caring had 5 What I did 6 Challenging the System

3

Getting Help

A few weeks later Steven woke me at 1.30am. He was in quite a distressed state, I could identify paranoid but never heard of the word psychotic. I went down to the living room with him and sat talking to him. Steven was making me feel uneasy, but the way he was looking at me and the things he was saying to me. He was frightening me to be honest. I was now aware of his diagnosis and all I knew was what I had read and heard from the media. Maybe I should have woken his dad, but I didn’t because I was aware he had to get up for work in a few hours. 

At 2am I phoned for an emergency doctor, I explained his diagnosis. The doctor refused to come! Neither did he tell me whom I could phone.

I had a few contact numbers and then phoned the out of hour’s social worker, by this time Steven was really agitated. The social worker said he could not get anyone here, and to phone the police. I put the phone down and did not know what to do. Why should I phone the police, he had not committed a crime. He was ill and needed medical help but nobody would come. I did not know what to do. I then thought perhaps if he was distracted his symptoms might lessen. I got some playing cards out and started to play cards game with him. All of this time his symptoms were becoming worse. Inside I felt really scared, I kept pushing him to play cards. I do not think he really wanted to. He still kept looking at me and saying bizarre things to me. I was looking at him and it felt as if I did not know him. Then I would reason with myself this is Steven, and the Steven I know would never hurt me. Thinking back the more I forced him to play cards the more agitated he was getting. He kept jumping up from his seat, banging the table and repeatedly shouting NO, NO.  It was not to do with playing cards it was something going on in his mind. He tried to get away from me, trying to get out of the house. I was trying to stop him, thinking if he got away he might do something to himself. 

Although I felt frightened of him, I kept thinking about the Steven I knew I kept trying to convince myself he would not hurt me. But part of me was not sure. I took the chance that he would not. I kept putting my arms around him and hugging him trying to calm him down. Talking to him and telling him I cared about him. 

A lot of this happened after his dad had left for work at 5.00am. 9.00am came and I phoned the out patient clinic where his CPN was based. Leaving a message for her to contact me. I phoned every hour throughout the day, at least six times. Nobody came to the house. Until 4.00am in the afternoon.

The events I have previously described went on all day. I had already spoken to Steven about going into hospital so he could get the help he needed. He agreed to this without any opposition at all. He had not harmed me in any way during this time. 

After he had gone into hospital, I discovered what the shouting and banging was about. He was hearing voices telling him to attack me, he was resisting what he was hearing and this was why he was shouting. The reason why he was trying to get out of the house was to get away from me so he would not do what the voices were telling him to do. Steven stayed at the unit for five weeks, as a voluntary patient, I visited every day as I had promised to. He came home most weekends. One of the nurses in charge of his care wanted him to be sectioned, but the psychiatrist took a different view and Steven returned home. 

In part 4 I will be talking about how caring for Steven had an effect upon me. I do not regret the fact Steven was not sectioned as far as I was concerned he was better off with his family than being in a psychiatric hospital for months on end. While he was at the unit I could see the effect it was having upon him as regarding some of the other patients. The symptoms they were experiencing were having an influence on the way he perceived things. He was coming out with comments that he had picked up on from other patients and reacting to this. References to religion and the occult, accusing his dad of things that were not true. This came from a girl he had got friendly with at the unit. The longer he was at the unit the more bizarre he became in his beliefs and accusations. 

Within weeks of him leaving the unit this stopped and he has never referred to any of this since. 

While Steven was in the unit, we had two phones calls from soldiers who had served with him in Northern Ireland. They wanted Steven to be a witness for them regarding something that happened in NI . One call I took the other Stevens dad took. We both said that Steven was too ill to be a witness for them. I did not think of asking for their contact details or what they wanted him to witness. We have never heard from them since. With the events that followed I now wish we had. 

The strange thing is Steven can remember everything that happened in N Ireland except the time when he thought he was going to die. It is as if he has wiped it out of his memory. I have read that this can happen sometimes when somebody suffers a trauma they cannot deal with. He can remember going out on patrol and being in charge of the patrol because the sergeant went to a function. But does not remember what happened on the patrol.