Hospital visit
The door to the psychiatric ward looks like the door to the vault of the national bank.
I am thinking of Hannibal Lector.
I ring the bell and a voice answers “Oriste*?”
“I am here to visit Hektor.”
Hektor called me the day before to tell me that the police had picked him up to get him admitted, at his mother’s request. This is his third day inside.
On the other side of the door, a huge lever is pulled to let me in.
I step into a typical hospital corridor. It doesn’t smell of antiseptic, but stuffy and sweaty. I follow the nurse. The reception is at the end of the corridor. A little further down the corridor is a coffee machine where some patients hang around looking bored.
Bars
H nosokoma* leads me to a lattice door in the right hand corridor, which she opens for me and immediately closes again afterwards. Hektor is leaning forward on a bench. The short, narrow corridor doesn’t offer much freedom of movement. To the left are three small rooms. The nursing office is on the right, in a closed room with a hatch. Hektor asks through the counter for a cigarette that he has to light right there. He may not possess anything himself. If he wants to call, he must ask for his cell phone.
When he sits down again I give him a tiropita* that I’d brought for him. A man comes to sit with us, starts to rattle on and asks if he can have a piece. Hektor gives him a piece and asks him kindly but determinedly to leave us alone. The man moves a little away on the bench, sulking, and says no more.
“What happened, why are you locked up here?”
Mother
“I manna mou* ” had me admitted, in her eyes, I am restless and agitated and she’s unable to cope.”
I know his mother. I have often been to their home. Like many single men, he has been living with his parents again since the economic crisis, to reduce the cost of living. She is the boss in the house, that is clear to me.
“Are you a danger to yourself or your environment then? What have you done?”.
Irrational behaviour
Hektor has a history of “irrational” behaviour. I know him as friendly, intelligent and social. Sometimes he is agitated. Then he lets numbers and signs guide him. Once we were on the road in my car and he suddenly asked me to turn around, because three black crows had landed on the electricity line on the right side of the road. In his eyes that was a bad sign, and a reason to take a different path. If they had landed on the left, it would have been a different story. If he attaches so much value to that, I will just turn around. More roads lead to Rome, don’t they? He also values numbers. Certain number combinations are signs of ill omen and are a reason to change his intentions. It drives his mother crazy, but not him.
Other patients
A woman shuffles into the corridor from one of the rooms. Her light blue nightdress is covered in dark spots, she is wearing a diaper and has clearly soiled herself. When I notice her Hektor looks at me with sad eyes.
“She has been walking around like this for a few hours now, and nobody cares about her.”
It doesn’t seem to bother her.
“What does your treatment consist of?” I ask him without paying further attention to the woman.
“I have to get injections, I can’t leave this department until I submit to the course of treatment, and I don’t want that. I know what happens then, or actually, not… I’m losing whole pieces of my memory ”.
Not an incident
I understand that very well. In our village also there are a number of people who get, what I call, sprayed. Sweet, intelligent people who occasionally get lost, start rambling, or worse become aggressive. Figuring out what the best medication or treatment is for them specifically seems not an be an option. Whether accompanied by the police or not, they receive an injection from a doctor or nurse. After “the injection,” they walk around like zombies, staring at you with empty eyes or sleep half a day.
Too crazy for words
For me, it is too crazy for words that Hektor is in this heavily guarded department. He is neither suicidal nor aggressive, and we discuss what to do next.
Even before I drive home, I call my long-time friend Elefteria, the secretary of the village lawyer. When I get home two hours later, he has already made a phone call to the psychiatrist and an authorization has been prepared in which Hektor appoints me to have power of attorney as his legal representative. This takes his mother out of the picture and I can talk to the psychiatrist on his behalf. That same evening, Hektor moves from the secure department to the normal but still closed ward.
Introducing myself
Two days later I have the first conversation with the psychiatrist.
We are in a small, stuffy room, him, o yiatros*, a lady who was not introduced, Hektor and me. Hektor and I had agreed that I will speak. I reach out my hand and introduce myself.
“I have some questions” I start.
“Is there in your opinion a reason to believe that Hector is a danger to himself or his environment? Because as far as I can see, he’s not. Based on my experience in psychiatry, there is no good reason to hold him against his will then “
The still young doctor moves back and forth in his chair and looks at the lady who is not looking at him but at her notebook.
“What is your relationship with Hektor?” he replies. “How long have you known him? What is your experience of psychiatry then? Certainly that of a nurse?”
I get annoyed by the deprecatory tone in his voice, but at the same time, I’m secretly enjoying myself. After all, I am an ex-patient.
A special friendship
“We have been close friends for a few years, we talk a lot, he sometimes stays with me at my house and I know what makes him tick. In the Netherlands, I was active for years in the patient advocacy movement, which stands up for the rights of the patient. I would like to know what his treatment consists of because as far as I understand there is no treatment. So what is the goal of his admission?”
“We believe he needs medication to control his irrational thoughts, he can’t leave earlier.”
Hektor accepted the injection seven weeks after this conversation, without getting any other treatment.
It is easy to be combative if you can walk out of that security door again, but difficult if you are the patient, without an advocate.
Music: Stereo MC’s – Connected
ορίστε – please, tell me
η νοσοκόμα – the nurse
η τυρόπιτα – cheesepie
η μάννα μου/ η μητέρα μου- my mother
ο γίατρος – the doctor