While following the Lindsay Clancy trial, medications stand out to me. Zoloft, Lamictal, Seroquel, and others like a reel of dark memories. Seeking help during my first postpartum, Zoloft was my first antidepressant. The intrusive thoughts Lindsay mentioned bring forth my own that followed a middle-of-the-night postpartum hemorrhage, surgery, and hospital stay.
But the brighter images by far that flood my mind are those of a loved one experiencing psychosis.
This loved one is younger than me, someone I treasure and have sought to nurture their entire life. I have vivid memories of visiting them in the hospital during an inpatient stay. They clutch a Bible and tell me they couldn’t sleep all night because they were held in triage with several others. No rooms were open. The inability to sleep is what started this episode. I file that away for an advocacy conversation soon to follow.
I gift the cheery coloring book and markers I brought that passed a careful staff inspection. I hope they will help during future hours sitting in the hospital room or the group lounge. As we talk, I note the rate of speech, normal. I check for their observations, all coherent and linear. They share how they feel the Holy Spirit. I look around at the dim gray walls with peeling paint and smell the harsh scent of antiseptic. It’s common to see an increase in religious fervor while in a state of psychosis. What comforts me is that they aren’t seeing demons. The coloring book I brought has only positive Bible verses.
Before this stay, my loved one told me, “Cathy, I can’t go home. I keep seeing the house with blood running down my hands, and I think I’ve killed the family.” I am not safe to be there. I’m thankful the visions of violence at their own hands seem to have gone today.
But I can’t get over the feeling that they are falling through the cracks. No actual room? Sleeping in a loud triage station? This is going to make everything worse.
I’m wary of this whole system. The lack of beds, the nurses with massive patient loads, despite patients paying double-digit amounts for every day and night spent here- who benefits? The short visiting window is ending, so I hug my sweet loved one goodbye. As I leave, I ask to speak to the charge nurse and emphasize that whatever happens, my loved one must be able to sleep tonight. The nurse reassures me that they will add more medications. A private bed (finally) will also help.
The fact that this same loved one is discharged just days later, still manic, still in and out of lucidity doesn’t surprise me anymore. Unless one is “actively suicidal or homicidal,” the patient does not “meet criteria” for admission, and the bed must be given to some other lucky soul on a waitlist.
Fortunately for my loved one with bipolar disorder, they are not a postpartum mother at this stage of life. They have faced more than most from the way the illness takes from them. Job loss, relationships altered, personal property gone forever, the list of casualties could fill a page and more. Often the system fails: A tired police officer suspects drugs and calls a SWAT team instead of de-escalating. Sometimes a caring soul advocates though, and those times alter this loved one’s future for the better. There was a compassionate jail nurse who allowed blood testing (to later show how incapable of rational thought this loved one was).
I shudder to think of the world my loved one would face if they had children at this stage of life. As they wrestle to survive and make their way with invisible illnesses few care to educate themself on. When I read the list of medications thrown at Lindsay Clancy, I have a picture for each one. Zoloft and others for myself. But the Lamictal, the Seroquel, those are vivid when I remember what each one can do, for better or worse. I remember when the Lamictal, instead of bringing the hoped-for “lighter side effects,” triggered that full-blown episode that dragged on for three months. The terror in my heart with each midnight phone call. The unknown numbers from the hospital or multiple rehab centers still linger in my phone and contact list.
The thing about psychosis is that it looks different than most people picture. Yes, there can be hallucinations and sometimes a complete loss of self. But the scary part is right before and also when everything feels normal for a second. There’s an edge that is hard to see. When someone is almost “better,” you both grasp at hope. A normal moment on the couch. A trip to the park, caring for pets or people, making dinner. One night of bad sleep can crash it all down. The next day, a wrong word, a trigger, and everything spins off kilter again. It’s not linear. An episode can linger, holding those in its grip with a sweet breeze or gathering speed like a full-blown tornado, sometimes moments apart. It sounds like Lindsay had been on and over the edge for months before the tragedy happened.
Lindsay Clancy was exhausted. Her now ex-husband Patrick described seeing her in agony on the couch begging for a moment of sleep. As a mother, a few days like this had me halting a new medication immediately. I never experienced full psychosis. But my loved one did. And I will never forget. That edge, that line. When you think maybe they’ll be ok. But then, the illness takes over. This mother was failed again and again. I pray the deaths of these babies were not in vain. Let us learn compassion from this horror.
I imagine what could’ve happened if Lindsay had been so surrounded by family through the storm. If her doctors had cared enough to follow up on her very serious thoughts. What if someone had been there to help her with that journal she kept, to watch those symptoms she tried so hard to stay on top of. Maybe the torrents of rain would’ve lifted, and she could’ve said with full confidence, “I’m ok now.”
I wonder if this family had been able to have nighttime help. I wish this story could be rewritten. I wonder if she had the maternity leave many other countries enjoy. What would the story look like with a year’s fully compensated maternity leave?
God be with Lindsay Clancy. I pray for compassion in the sentencing. She is either facing a lifetime in prison or a facility. I picture my own loved one and the many times they faced a system that so often can’t or won’t understand. I picture the darkness in my own mind, and how I leaned on my family, especially my mother, during both postpartum journeys. My sisters in many ways saved me.
The wishes and wonderings don’t help the Clancy family now, but they could help others. Let us love the ones when they need us most. Psychosis may be uncommon, but it touches more than you would think. Call the new mothers. Check on them. If you have been there with any type of postpartum health challenges, share the fears you had or still have. Normalize advocacy. Be “nosy” if needed. Make a call. Be persistent, but gentle.
Postpartum doesn’t end at that six-week checkup. For many moms, like Lindsay, the storm comes months later. Please do not look away.
