The Room

An unlikely but familiar source bailed me out of the board & care. The wife of my friend from the soup kitchen just happened to know a couple who rented rooms to college students.

They were located one town over and in a posh neighborhood. My first night there, the landlords hosted a dinner party. The next morning when I went downstairs, an empty bottle of wine appeared at each place setting. All of this being a far cry from where I had come from, I experienced immediate culture shock!

The couple turned out to be wonderful people, but I certainly didn’t want them to know about my mental illness. Commuting back and forth to the city, I only told them I worked with senior citizens.

My psychiatrist gave me a routine blood test. It showed that my kidneys were a little off-kilter. He changed my medications again, giving me newer drugs. Some of these made me so drowsy that sometimes I had a hard time making it home. I was to spend a year living in the “room.”

Sometimes I went to church with my friend and his wife. One Sunday, my sight became blurry. Also, in the past few weeks, I had been awfully thirsty. I contacted my medical doctor. After running a few tests, I ended up in the hospital for a couple of days with the onset of type II diabetes.

Now I had become physically and mentally ill. Becoming tired of it all, I called my psychiatrist for a mental health home to stay in. Without hesitation, he knew just the right one. Within two weeks, I received a call.