A Difficult Intake

I met this woman 4 years ago on the night shift.
The intake Nurses cried to me about what a difficult admission she had been. She was discharged from the Hospital to die at home.
She was skeletal.
She was very friendly and most determined to get better.
And so, she did.
Sort of.

At first it was easy to accomodate her demands for these fussy things.
Then it became evident she did want any HealthCare so much as she wanted grande Theatre.
A production every mealtime. She directed, we played the prop directors.

She is so bad now that frequently when I come in she is in the process of throwing away this elaborately prepared food that she demands (and gets) in the garburator. Most of the Nurses and healthcare workers just roll their eyes and do it. If they don't she ends up calling and making them a "do not send."

I like Theatre.
I do not like wasting Public funds though.
Get the woman a Psychiatric Evaluation.
Send a Mental health Worker.
But sending people each and every day to puree boil blend stir re-puree, reboil etc...
what a collosal waste of time.

I do not understand why we are enabling this strange process.

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we are all the same, we are all different.

The ideas of mental health and mental illness have replaced the idea of God and the Devil, and the institutionally legitimized explanations, justifications, and interventions of psychiatry have replaced those of organized religion. "During the Middle Ages," James Turner observes, "no clear lines separate the religious from the secular...The church and the world blended." Today, no clear line separates the psychiatric from the nonpsychiatric: the explanations, justifications, and interventions of psychiatry permeate the world and blend with it.
- Thomas Szasz