Having panic attacks and massive dizzy spells with no health insurance meant many visits to the emergency psychiatric ward at Bellevue. Only once did I try to wait - but they don’t give poor folk no good drugs, so I always ask to be placed in the regular emergency room. Only once did I wait because my ENT doctor told me to speak with his friend there for medicine (psychiatric medicine is sometimes recommended for people with Meniere’s disease). It’s full of police bringing in the New York crazies. Little asian girls clutching bibles and muttering to themselves. Men who claim to be police, handcuffed to their chair while they wait to be seen, yelling and making a racket with their chair bouncing around. A giant knocked out homeless man in a full NYPD body bind wrap, drooling all over himself wheeled in by stretcher. And me. According to my old social worker, they let the criminally insane folks walk around freely in a designated area at Bellevue psychiatric. They’re locked up for crimes but they’re also nuts. Probably why they committed these crimes. But she left because she was tired of feeling unsafe. Weird, right? I was there a month or so ago. They walked me to the psychiatric ER because I said “panic attack” but you get to go to regular ER if you just have trouble breathing (panic attack). I was there for all of two minutes. There were police, staff and security everywhere, but it was super quiet. Someone farted - I don’t know who - and no one seemed to notice. Or perhaps, care.
Anyways, I want to read this book.
1 year agoCurrently Reading: Weekends at Bellevue
Really enjoying this first-person account of the craziness (literally) that floods The Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Ward and ER from the Head Attending Doctor on weekends, Julie Holland. It’s interesting to hear Dr. Holland discuss what inspired her passion for exploring the psychologically unstable and some of the incredible (and touching) experiences dealing with patients and fellow doctors at Bellevue.
