That’s why in late September, when his mania began to spiral once again and he couldn’t see a therapist anytime soon, Miles decided to take a wait-and-see approach.
“The way I still work internally with my mental illness is I’ll just sit and stew with (my symptoms). I’m not going to really express how I’m struggling,” Miles said. “I just don’t want to feel like I’m bothering somebody or that they have to be responsible for how I’m doing.”
Two weeks later, nothing had improved, leading Miles to think that going to the emergency room would be the best option to alleviate his situation.
Hospital
“We got to Kaiser in Santa Rosa and they were very busy, very busy,” said Miles’ mother Lori, speaking in a phone interview less than a week after he went to the hospital. “And I’ll give it to them. I have been in the medical profession and I understand. I absolutely understand that.”
After evaluating Miles, caregivers determined he was a “5150,” the California Welfare and Institutions Code section number for cases where a patient is deemed to pose an immediate danger to themselves. Under state law, it allows health professionals to place the patient under 72-hour emergency monitoring.
“They assigned a security guard who sat there, sat with us for an hour with a metal detector,” Lori said. “Then, they tell me I have to go wait in the waiting room because they’re going to go put him in a chair in the hallway, or on a coat rack in the hallway, and I can’t sit there with him. Only the security guard can.”
So Lori continued to the waiting room, where she patiently waited for hours before being sent home to await a phone update on Miles’ status. That call didn’t come until nearly 24 hours later, she said.
Meanwhile, according to Miles, the guard stationed with him never used his metal detector.
“In the bag I had brought I had a journal and I think it’s common for people who have a history of self-harm to hide the things they do it with. And I do that, I have a really big story about that,” Miles said.
“And in my journal, I was hiding razors that I had since forgotten about, but were still there. And what I can assume happened—because they weren’t taken from me, because they weren’t found—I had seen them, and that, in my manic state, spurred me on.”
Being in a manic state, the next thing Miles clearly remembered was the deep gash in his throat and the panicked hospital staff discovering what had happened.
Miles said it was midnight at the time, and although the cut was not life-threatening, a doctor advised him he needed stitches. But Miles didn’t see anyone else doing those stitches for another six hours without sleep, he said.
“It was just the longest six hours of my life,” Miles said. “I was left alone in the room. No nurse came in to talk to me. At that moment I was left alone, I think, because I might have been considered a danger to others. I don’t know, but it hurt a lot because I knew I wanted to talk to people at that point in time, but I didn’t understand.”
What also disappointed him was that the hospital staff gave him Seroquel, a drug used to treat mood and mental health conditions. It was also known to give Miles negative side effects, such as extreme drowsiness and difficulty breathing.
He said he had instructed medical staff not to give it to him at check-up, when they ask patients if they are allergic to any medication.
“It’s the one thing I told you not to do and you did it,” Miles said. “I felt out of sorts for the next week, I couldn’t remember the time or the date. And I’m sure stressing over it wasn’t helping. It was just all around very disappointing. It was scary.”
Asked about the incident, Kaiser McCall’s representative reiterated Kaiser’s statement that they will not comment on specific cases.
After a day at Kaiser, Miles was transferred to a stabilization facility, also in Santa Rosa, where he stayed for two days before going to St. Mary’s Memorial Hospital. Francis in San Francisco for three weeks. Miles said after the incident at Santa Rosa Kaiser Hospital, his status increased to “5250,” which extended his hold period to at least two weeks.
The strike ended
On Oct. 21, Kaiser reached a four-year agreement with its labor unions that “will enable greater collaboration aimed at improving access to mental health care,” the provider said in a statement at the time.
“We appreciate our therapists’ confidence in this agreement, which addresses the concerns they expressed, while supporting Kaiser Permanente’s commitment that any agreement must protect and improve access to mental health for our members,” Kaiser said in a statement. “We are happy to have all of our employees back, taking care of their patients.”
Not all details of the deal were made clear, such as whether Kaiser would guarantee weekly therapy for members in need — something Miles said could have made for a much better experience during his latest episode.
“I do not benefit from irregular, monthly therapy. “I would do better under weekly therapy,” he said.
Now released from St. Francis and back in Petaluma, Miles is looking to start his first semester at Santa Rosa Junior College as a nursing student. His dream of becoming a medical professional was inspired by his experiences – not only with mental health, but also physically, having grown up with a birth injury that eventually led to the amputation of one of his arms .
“Some of the best times I’ve had, medically, have been with my nurses, getting to know my nurses,” he said.
“People deserve adequate and equitable health care, and being on the other side of not getting it has made it clear that there is work to be done.”
Amelia Parreira is a staff writer for the Argus-Courier. She can be reached at amelia.parreira@arguscourier.com or 707-521-5208.
