Sunflower star Pycnopodia helianthoides

You once asked me to write out an incident at an emergency clinic I told you about that happened some years ago. I'm having an intense flash back of that time now.

In 1970 I lived in a small single apartment in Hollywood, CA. I didn't work. I was on ATD (Aid to the Totally Disabled). I was morbidly depressed, chronically suicidal and routinely inflicting self injury on myself with razor blades, often needing suturing.

One night when I had cut to the point of needing stitches I took myself to a small local emergency clinic on Santa Monica Boulevard. The doctor who sewed me up was very kind. He said that if I ever felt like doing that to myself again I should come over to the clinic before I cut .. He suggested I sit in the waiting room if that would help prevent me from cutting. He said I didn't have to talk to anyone just come over and be there as long as I needed to He said it would be all right with them for me to just be there until I felt safe to go home.

Several nights later when I was needing to self injure I remembered what the doctor said about going over there before I cut. So I did. I sat down in the waiting room The waiting room was empty. Soon a Nurse asked me what I wanted. I explained my situation and what the doctor from the other night had told me.

She left and got the doctor on duty. It was a different doctor. He came to the window and gruffly said "What do you want?" Again I tried to explain. He said "You can't just sit here. You have to leave." so I did.

I went home and cut deeper and longer than I ever had before.

I went back to the emergency clinic.

When the doctor sewed me up he barely anesthetized or cleaned my arm. The nurse assisting him seemed worried and concerned but the doctor had a deliberate and angry demeanor. It was very painful. A dead kind of pain. I felt numb physically but for the solid ache in my arm where the needle poked in and out. And somewhere else I felt humiliated and shamed for my failure to keep from cutting and having to come to him for sutures.

The pain of that still haunts me and makes me weep with sadness for my helplessness. I am angry too at that doctor and that nurse for causing me so much pain and humiliation. All they had to do was let me sit in the waiting room, show a little human kindness to a person suffering. I communicated in words what I needed. I wasn't asking for money or time, just space.

I don't know what else I can say about it K. It was horrible I still cry about it today and it still hurts me to remember it.