Just in case you were wondering, panic disorder was not the only major mental illness to happen to me. Nearly 6 months to the day after I was admitted into the psychiatric ward the first time for panic disorder, I was admitted again for my first ever episode of psychosis. However, I will have to fill in the gaps from the first admission to the second admission. I will endeavour to tell you the symptoms, experiences and feelings that I got in these six months, as well as inside the psychiatric ward and as an outpatient.
After my first ward admission (October 2002), the first male patient to talk to me became my first ever serious boyfriend. Anyway, after about 3 months (Start of February) of the relationship, things went really bad (I do not want to do into details). Anyway, at the end of the relationship, I was so distraught by what had happened that one day, I just suddenly out of nowhere, started to cry. Cry and cry I did it was uncontrollable and I didn't stop crying for the next 2 days. On the third day, I started to wonder if I should disappear from this town and either go north or south of where I was in my car. I did not want to stay anywhere in the vicinity of my (now ex) boyfriend. Because it is natural for a person like me (who has atypical autism), to go into thinking mode and zone everything else out, I just sat there for hours deciding if I should leave or not. After a long while, I had not yet made up my mind when someone came out and wanted to talk to me. In the end, I did not make a decision and I just stayed in this city after all.
Well, you do not probably know this, but I have a twin sister! Anyway, in the typical twin fashion, we both broke up with our boyfriends on the same day! This occurred on a Monday. Anyway, I was living with my sister, her boyfriend, and some other guy. Anyway, after the breakups and money rent problems, we all decided to move out of this house. A week later, I move out and so do the other people. On the Saturday night, there were still a few bits of clothes and a watch or something because we had not moved every single item out. Anyway, on the Saturday night (this house was privately rented out), the house decided to go on FIRE! It saved us from cleaning the house to get the bond back on the Sunday! Anyway, I moved back to my father's house after this happened. However, because I did not lose anything in this fire, it did not affect me psychologically much at all.
Because at times, I am quite the impulsive thinker, I took a suggestion from the first boyfriend that I should defer my Mechanical Engineering course for a year (I had just completed 2 years of it). I deferred, but after my breakup, I had no idea what I wanted to do in my life. My oldest sister decided to help me out. We bought new clothes and we saw a G.P. The G.P. Told me that from my first ward visit, they had diagnosed me with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Perhaps they should have diagnosed me as a child because I couldn't speak until I was six, I had to attend a special preschool, I got kept down in preschool, I attended the Endeavour Foundation, I went to the Child and Youth Mental Health Place where I learned how to talk by phonetics (syllables and pictures on cards), and I had to go to speech therapy. And yet, after I attended all these special places when I was a child, surely they could have diagnosed me then, not when I was 20 years old! Anyway, I started to see ano! ther counsellor, who suggested that I have a go at the Music Degree. I somehow managed to get into the course 3 days before it started!
This was where my problems started up again and deteriorated. After I just moved into my father's house again, I started to cry uncontrollably again. The only medication the ward gave me at this period was Zoloft (antidepressant). All this did was make my highs higher, and my lows lower. I only lasted at my father's house for 6 weeks before I decided to move back to my mother's house. At some point here, I started the music degree, as well as going back to KFC part-time (I had taken some time off due to the first ward visit). The combination of starting a completely new uni degree where it was mainly theory based (I had never done any music theory in my life - and the course started on Grade 5 music theory!), restarting KFC again when I was emotionally fragile and confused easily, just moved house again and had to deal with my mother nagging me everyday, caused me to go into depression and start getting some really weird symptoms.
From the start of my Music Degree until my second ward admission (around 6 to 7 weeks), I started to get sick. I stopped crying everyday, and instead started to become withdrawn. Slowly, I started to get paranoid, have delusions and have a few hallucinations as well.
