Nathan Hansen: After the Army, there’s trouble and treatment for veterans

It’s been a week since your admission and you have denied the past three series of medications. You feel less sedated, but a fog blankets you and weighs down your eyes throughout the day. You make your way from your room to the commons area, not only for meals now, but to watch television and read.

Before leaving, each time you close your door you place a broken straw from a broom high above between the door and the door jamb. You suspect someone goes into your room each day, but know making any implication will sound symptomatic so it’s best to find proof— catch the culprit in the act. If the straw is on the ground when you return then suspicions are correct. If the straw is still in its spot then you will remain quiet. You are as unsure of your own sanity as are the people in the fishbowl and if there’s a chance a straw can tell you, you’ll take it.

You’ve learned from prior hospitalizations that there’s a consistent ebb and flow between staff and residents on wards, and most times it’s the pull of force from the powers that be that make a tide silky smooth or destructive. In Los Angeles, one nurse would take you outside on to the roof to play basketball. Plexiglas walls bordering the ledges were three inches thick and ten feet high with overhangs impossible to reach. The psychiatric ward was on the second floor there, in a hospital that towered nine. You once owned a pet mouse in college that ran a series of mazes and tunnels in a tiny plastic cage and you imagined you must have looked so similar to people working in offices above, an unkempt man in pajamas and robes hopping about chasing a ball bouncing from backboard to dust-covered walls as if searching desperately for a piece of cheese, a reward.

Resident Gisick has refused his medicine this morning. ... Veteran Gisick slept through the night, and did not barricade the door of his room.

In Kansas there were marathon games of cribbage, but only with young staff that didn’t know better that having fun with a patient was still work. And there was always someone each shift who read too deeply into your medical file trying to make assumptions about you.

In the short time you’ve been on 5-C in Los Angeles you’ve adopted a routine of inconsistencies that are needed to not become totally complacent and dependent on the broken system promised to take care of you, the VA. Depending on the staff, there can be times of normalcy just as there can be mayhem. It is best to go with the flow.

There is nothing for you to do except walk the halls and burn the calories that come packed in tin cans. The walk from your room at the end of the hall to the commons area is exactly 17 tiles. You know this because you have taken up counting to pass the time.... You do the math. Thirty-five, no, 36 laps you need to do for one mile.

You take the first step. By the third lap you already feel winded. You stare at the blocks passing beneath you and dream of flight. If you only had wings you’d never allow yourself to touch ground.

Since you’ve been walking, the charge nurse has already documented the behavior.

Resident Gisick continues on ward restriction status. Moved about the unit entire shift. Walked the halls at a rapid pace, reading while walking. No interaction or socialization with peers noted. Will watch for further anxiousness and recommend anti-anxiety medication.

This story was originally published November 10, 2015 at 12:46 PM with the headline "Nathan Hansen: After the Army, there’s trouble and treatment for veterans."