bad pennies always show up again

my little break is over and i have to tell you - it was GREAT! 

am finally done with double duty between the minimum custody hospital and the medium custody prison.  now i can get down to business, but on my last day there, i was presented with two bags of river rocks.  now these aren't just any river rocks - there is a story behind them that i feel compelled to force on you and anyone else who reads this.  grab some coffee. ;-)

about a year ago, there was a young man at the prison who was on the mental health caseload.  he had a history of suicidal ideation, and he was on psych meds.  lo and behold, he felt better and asked to be taken off the meds.  after evaluation, the psychiatrist agreed. 

the problem with any kind of psych med is, it makes the patient feel so much better that they think they don't need it anymore, not realizing the med is WHY they feel so much better.  the young man began to decompensate.  the psychiatrist only visits the unit once or twice a month - and there was no one to available toorder the meds .  he was shipped to another unit where they put him in segregation with a suicide blanket and the next day, shipped him back to us.  he was our problem - and we were going to fix it.  can't blame them.

well - still no psychiatrist, and dr. h didn't seem to think the case warranted the phone call.  but ava, who is a former psych nurse, interviewed the inmate personally, set him up with the PA (who doesn't like to write scripts for psychotropic drugs) and PA did prescribe them.

he was pitiful!  ava told me.  someone had given him a sea shell to rub to alleviate his anxiety and he had rubbed the damned thing so much the ridges were smooth.

she showed me an email she had dashed off to the Powers That Be in the state capitol.  it read something like..

"i certainly hope mental health has a lot of rocks to give this young man, because he has rubbed this one to death!"

the next day...one of the nurses brought a gift for the mental health department - seeing as how they had no supply of stones to hand out.  two bags of river rocks...which that department declined to accept.  ava kept them in her desk until last week when she handed them to me.

i wouldn't part with them and the story behind them for the world.