Shin’s Story
In 2014. 3:40. Northbridge. I was sitting at my desk at work, reviewing an email asking me to complete a report blah blah. My vision began to swim, my mouth dry, chest pain and overall, feeling very disorientated and reportedly had begun to pale. My first coherent thought was that I was having a heart attack and so I asked a colleague for some aspirin. A trip by ambulance to Royal Perth Emergency, morphine, visits from my retired nurse mother and my heart specialising sister and the outcomes from blood tests and I was told that I had NOT had a heart attack, however they did keep me overnight and provided me with a schedule me for a number of heart related tests in January 2015.
…but if it wasn’t a heart attack what was it?
• I needed reassurance and a direction that was not just medical, but also emotional.
• I needed to know that I wasn’t being labeled just a hypochondriac
• I was scared .. Very suddenly, very scared!
During those 6 short weeks, I had several similar episodes both on my way to, during or on my way home. Some included unrelenting agitation, others unstoppable crying. I couldn’t breathe, other times hyperventilating. All the while doing my best to be at work and no even partly achieving what I needed to do. My employers dealt with the original and subsequent episodes, with progressively less and less support and more and more demands and pressure. By February, I was driving around lost, blinded by tears, yelling at myself and feeling sick about going to work. I had tried to drive off the escarpment, been pulled over by the police for erratic driving and delivered to my psychologist office. My GP had looked at my near catatonic state and given me tablets.
My mental health nurse cousin sat with me and my wife and held me through an appointment with a psychiatrist and subsequent 6weeks in a psychiatric facility.
When I think back on this period of my life I had questions …
What will people think of me?
Do I need to hide how I am feeling?
I must be crazy right!?
I’m so ashamed! So embarrassed!
Why are people looking at me like I am broken?
I was fine before, now I can’t do it anymore … what is it? … Don’t know, but I just can’t do it anymore.
- …things need to change
- STIGMA busting public education and the funding for it is needed.
- Talking about mental health must become as easy as talking about a cold!
- Less hospitalisation and more community based support
- Put more money into community support groups. Not just the big guys … fund the smaller ones too!
- I want to see funding into the training and promotion of the peer community.
- Money into compulsory mental health programs in work places and to provide funded EAP supports
- Training and professional development requirements for Police in Mental First Aid & Mental Health courses
I am 6 years on from that time now, but I still dance on a razor edge sometimes and it is at those times when telling my story helps sort things out again in my head.
I hope it helps you too.
