Patient Perpetrator

Katie Regittko

The last time I rode in an ambulance rushing to the hospital, a part of me jumped for joy.

This time it wasn’t my fault, I thought. People will show their care before judgement for once.

There’s an EKG in front of my television set; my dog was back with my roommate. Once again, I didn’t know if that gentle goodbye would be my last to her. But if I died, I remembered in the back of my mind, at least it wasn’t my fault this time.

Tiny metal box rushing down the road to the hospital.

Texts flooding my inbox.

Spray the nitro under the tongue, chew this aspirin.

“You’re kind of young for this.”

The physical symptoms were almost identical to the times before, but this time without a paired electrolyte imbalance or laxative overdose or extended stretch without intake. Heart racing, chest tightening, pain, and everything else blurred out. I couldn’t see or breathe, but a part of my dying heart swelled as I thought again, this wasn’t my fault. For once. When you present to a hospital after taking boxes of laxatives, you’re perceived to be suicidal from the start. Scream until the nurses stare that this is what you did to try to survive, but no matter what, in the flowchart of biomedicine, pill overdose = suicide attempt.

Cue elopement risk measures.

No phones, items, or visitors allowed.

Cue patient sitter.

Multiple sets of eyes on your every breath.

Cue drug tests.

You must have lied about not taking anything else.

Cue involuntary 72-hour psychiatric hold.

At least.

When you enter a hospital after taking boxes of laxatives, you are a waste of resources. For there are people who need bags of fluids and electrolytes, care of doctors and nurses, EKGs and vitals all night who didn’t choose this fate. People who were scared and surprised when this happened.

When you enter a hospital after taking boxes of laxatives, you are an oddity. Nurses cannot wrap their heads around it. Doctors’ eyes widen when they read the chart. Wait until they see how long their kind have tried to help. On paper, you are incorrigible. In person, you are exhausting. No one is more tired than you.

Having an eating disorder is having to explain your “why” in an emergency. Why does a stroke victim go into hypertensive crisis? After six years, I don’t even know why I take laxatives. I think a random spike in blood pressure is as close of a metaphor as anything I’ve come up with so far. When someone’s blood pressure spikes unexpectedly while watching television, they reach for a beta blocker. When I sit on the couch and the number of eating disorder thoughts skyrocket off the charts in my brain, I reach for laxatives and push away food.

I am holding this illness and its blame at the same time. I am holding this guilt and the concern of others on these tired shoulders. How can I heal while assuring everyone I’m okay? I’m not. I’m searching for a breath to feel scared and angry and sad, but this isn’t about me anymore. Illness is a group effort, and I’ve been elected the leader without my consent.

This is waiting until rock bottom to reach out for help, or not sleeping until your labs come back, or opting to die on your bathroom floor rather than step foot in a hospital for fear of incarceration in a psychiatric facility at the drop of a “danger to oneself” label. It’s finding yourself imprisoned with no autonomy as an adult, all because you aren’t very good at eating.

Society handed me these behaviors on a silver platter and didn’t mention that the dining table was behind two locked doors and that I’d have to show my empty plate to the nurse before leaving.

Healing shouldn’t be this hard. You cannot incarcerate the body without incarcerating the mind.

I visit a friend in the hospital and can’t walk to her room without looking over my shoulder for my police escort. I’ve embraced the fifth amendment in my medical interactions knowing that incriminating myself is more harmful than telling this illness’s truth. I can’t tell a friend about urges without waiting for red and blue lights out my window and a “wellness check.”

Medicalized and then criminalized—I shouldn’t have to recover from my recovery.

When I went to the hospital most recently, a part of me jumped for joy. Because when you have a blameless illness, you deserve care. You don’t have to fear that what is on the back of the next doctor’s clipboard are the papers that will send you to the next bed available across the state, handcuffed on a two-hour ride in the back of a police car. When you have a blameless illness, you get fundraisers and flowers and prayers in service and PSAs. People check in. They buy you meals and make sure you’re going to your appointments.

A patient, 20, presents to the ER with chest pain, numbness, dizziness, abnormal EKG, and tachycardia. One question decides everything that happens next: are they to blame?

-Katie Regittko is a junior from Carrboro, NC, pursuing a major in Sociology and minors in Medical Anthropology and Health & Society.-