I was very lucky – there wasn’t a day on Stanage when I didn’t have visitors. My husband, my parents and my in-laws (Val and Dave) all took it in turns to come and visit me. I think they communicated between themselves and came up with a bit of a rota, which was very sweet. What baffles me is how they managed to do that without me organising it for them. It was almost like they didn’t need me to hold everything together, after all! As someone who had put enormous pressure on myself to keep everything going whilst being ill, the fact that I could step back, let all the spinning plates drop, and THE WORLD CARRIED ON TURNING, was a bit of a revelation.
Despite having daily visiting hours between 4pm and 8pm, the ward wasn’t exactly set up for one to receive visitors. The dining room had lots of tables and chairs but people would constantly be coming in to make cups of tea, or just wandering round, so privacy wasn’t easy to achieve. The communal area had various sofas, but again you’d have to share your visitor with other patients and support workers, and once again privacy was not high on the agenda. So I tended to take my visitors to my room, with two of us sitting on the little bed and one on the lumpy chair, all drinking tea out of whatever plastic mugs I could swipe from the kitchen. (I actually ended up hoarding one of these sought-after mugs, keeping it on the top of my wardrobe ready for the countless cups of tea I drank every day in there.)
It’s not an understatement to say that my little team of visitors kept me going. They all reminded of the life waiting for me when I came out, they brought me gossip and news and, most importantly, they brought me BISCUITS. Tom’s dad took great pride in bringing me boxes of the Really Good Cooperative cookies. My appetite wasn’t great while I was in there (anxiety tends to make food seem like such an effort), and I often only picked at the meals, but by the evenings I had usually calmed down and enjoyed tucking into my biscuit stash before bed.
If they were fazed by the fact they were visiting me on a psychiatric ward, they never showed it. They took it all in their stride and happily chatted away to me about how everyone was doing, what I’d been up to and what birds they’d spotted (that last one was my dad). I know how absolutely shit it must have been coming to see me in that place, not to mention a complete pain because Sheffield is a bit of a nightmare to navigate, especially in the late afternoon/evening, but they always greeted me with big smiles and bigger hugs.
Tom, Mum, Dad, Val and Dave – I will never be able to thank you enough for the visits, the smiles, the hugs, the gossip and the biscuits. You kept me sane…ish.
Sarah x
BPD and Me 