12 Dirty

"12 Dirty chronicles a 48-year old woman’s handwritten, with Crayola Wide Tip-Magic Markers, true story having been committed to one of Chicago's most brutal psych wards for what was a steroid adverse drug reaction.”

The book is a real-time, 8.42-day, 220 hour recount of a hardest personal pledge for survival.

"12 Dirty” is the name of half the 12th-floor psychiatric ward for Covid-19 isolation in an otherwise decently coiffed hospital of a major for-profit Catholic healthcare system. One of their ER doctors in my neighborhood hospital, “Res,” had a young buck wanting to “treat me and street me.” I was wrapping the pilot episode of my first real psychotic break, having been pumped with prednisone for the past several months in order to save the vision in my right eye. The drug contraindication was inevitable, given corticosteroids are on my list of medication allergies. The risk to benefit teeter finished tottering when it came to preserving the good eye.

(I had gone 100% blind in my left eye as a result of a C-R-A-O, a Central Retinal Artery Occlusion, on Labor Day, 2020. Autoimmune disorders affect nearly every woman on the female side of my mother’s family. Certainly, I am not immune. The topical disorder here is a major rarity, Susac’s Syndrome.)

Everything I had when I arrived at the mental hospital was divided into Security, Clothing, or Contraband. From only a slit of probably a window, 2 intimidating nurses disrobed me into the "uniform." I honestly only saw auras of horror around their heads and nothing else in the room. The uniform was a hospital gown in front, one in back. A pair of ill-fitting scrub pants, and a pair of the hospital-issued standard no-slip socks. I had to scramble with my phone, only sticking to my hand by the Otter Box. They wanted me to hurry, hurry. In the age of the iPhone, it's too difficult to remember the phone numbers of my loved ones, medical and mental health teams, and my kissin' cousin, the regional IL State Congressman. Scribble.

I was escorted by the auras into a different alien pod. There were no lights. There was no bed. There were no blankets. Instead, there was a slab. The slab was about 5' long x 3" wide. It had padding perhaps 1/2" thick. I shook, curled up in a ball. A fat black nurse slid what kind of looked like the head of a buffalo through the slit in the door, yelling "LUNCH!" I turned over, wondering if I should naturally vomit or stick my finger down my throat.

The room's paper walls amplified people crying, yelling, in “12 Dirty” and I had changed into the scrubs, gowns & socks...My shoes were contraband. My phone was contraband. My Curious George stuffed animal was contraband. As it were, I naturally vomited on the floor. I’m tidy…which was why, when I threw up, I wanted to sop it up with my sheet. Sadly, I was scolded by the bitchiest blond nurse since Ratchet. Who knew patients were supposed to leave vomit, feces and any other body fluids where staff can see how many cc were chucked. I later pissed all over the place. How much worse could it get?

After I made graffiti out of bodily fluids on the slab, another nurse came in. She had a red pill. "Here is something to help you calm down;” in a thick African accent, whereby setting the tone for my urge to write the script, as scouted locations of this movie in my mind already presented themselves.

It’d be a lie if I said that every hour, every experience while over in “12 Clean” was horrifying. There were connections by circumstances I had with other women on my floor, which was a geriatric populous. I was the kid. I had basically a masters in both clinical & counseling psychology. I knew psychopharmacology in and out. I observe & recite with keen accuracy…and I had the aid of the Crayola Wide Tip Magic Markers.

Yes, trust and believe that nothing went unnoticed. I wrote it all down. I do not wish to alter anything I handwrote in12 Dirty, which would diminish the emphasis of the entire story.

Currently, I am living in isolation for the duration of no more than 120 days in “skilled nursing” in a northern Illinois suburb. Medication management, elbow daily wound care and physical/occupational rehab were the goals, though it’s honestly just a bridge in between unwelcome back to my home with my mother and SSDI coming through affording me some type of subsidized independent housing.

Here, I’m bruising, weaker and sicker sitting in this subdivision of pale rooms.

Please note: I flew off on this whole pernicious vacation voluntarily.

To Ken Kesey:

One flew northwest. One flew Southeast.

This is either a copy or a pastiche.

Andrea C. Miklasz

Northbrook IL.