Sunday, April 6, 2008

Disorganized X 100

One of the wackier weeks ever isn't over and it seems that it will be bleeding right into next week. The Bean was protesting something for a few days at the beginning of the week, but now seems to have settled down, allowing me the energy and time to work on everything that's gone by the wayside recently...

All of my long-stay clients are getting themselves together and are graduating treatment one-by-one until the end of the month. Hooray! Except that means that as each one leaves, a new trainwreck client will take their place. Woah, and the new ones are a ton of work. The past week was a re-education in that field. My newest client came into treatment testing dirty for meth and after 24 hours of her being unable to come up with a clean test, I had to transport her to detox. I spent the best part of the day Thursday driving around the valley looking for the damn detox center. In the meantime, this sweet, messed-up woman was sobbing in my car, all of her belongings tied up in a garbage bag or jammed into a plastic purse. Before we admitted her we did search her stuff and came up with a few drug spoons and some shady looking substances, but still there was no getting rid of the meth smell on her and her crap. So my sniffer-in-overdrive was overwhelmed with the rank meth smell for hours. Even after she landed in detox, I had some of her stuff in the car and was stuck with stink for the next 24 hours. After all that, I could probably get a job as a drug sniffing dog. I think I'd be pretty impressive.

On Friday, about 5:30, when all I wanted to do was be done with work, one of my favorite clients suddenly started to proselytize as "Jesus's female counterpart." I've seen psychotic breaks a tiny bit before this, but I was never the one completely in charge of the situation. Watching her helped me understand why people who don't know what psychosis looks like see someone who's possessed. It really did sound like a foreign voice was coming out of her head. I spent the rest of the night in the ER with her. Fortunately, within 2-3 hours she was lucid again. The docs couldn't come up with a reason and her tox screens were clear. Huh. The rest of the weekend has been damage control, while I try to convince the staff that this girl isn't going to stab them in the neck or jump out a window.

So I'm sitting here thinking that I need to call my friends and family who've attempted to reach me in the last week, but every ounce of my energy is depleted. I know I'm a big yawner-- nothing funny to say or any interesting Bean news to report.

xoxoxo
k

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