Therapy Dog Thursday with Charlotte, the Great Dane

Life in a psychiatric ward and Charlotte, the therapy dog.

I keep walking about the house looking for things. I enter a room, determined, but by the time I scan it and search it whole, I realize that I have no idea why I even came there in the first place. I find myself staring everywhere. Into space. The fridge. The closet. The clogged sink drain. And if it were not for Tug and Waffle’s alerts, I’d probably still be there, looking for me, in all the wrong places.

Depression is a cunning sadist. It takes so many shapes and manifestations. In the beginning it’s slow and sneaky. It creeps into the corners of me. Tears, out of place. Exhaustion, in the late morning. Fury, over the most mundane of circumstances. And then, the fog rolls in. Slowly at first, before all at once socking me and my mind into a silent, blank state of oblivion as it smothers me whole.

I took this week off of work at The Dogist to “recover.” What an optimistic concept. As if one week of sleeping, weeping, and tweaking a medication that will take three months of white knuckling it to even know if it works is enough to admonish, resolve, and honor the fight that is depression. 

I know honor is a weird word to use. But I wish we would use that to represent the fight that is life with mental illness. I wish we would recognize what insurmountable peaks these illnesses are for us to climb, what beasts they are for us to tame, and what we must do to continue the fight that is to live with them daily. 

I don’t want to do this fight anymore. I am so tired of this fight. So damn tired of this fight.

But, this is a fight I refuse to lose, even if it is one I have fought since I was a girl. I refuse to give in to the deep sorrow in my chest and the fury at my condition. And, as it worsens, I refuse to give in to the silence, to the void of emptiness, to the eradication of me, to this illness that is hell bent on erasing me.

So, I still wrote for you and me this week. Yes, I still wrote this week, in a weeping and sometimes snot covered fury, because this illness will not take me. No, it might hurt me and harm me and bring me to my knees but depression will not take me even if it’s hellbent on rearing its cunning head within me as of late.

So, with love and dork and without further ado,

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Therapy Dog Thursday

The bed whirred beneath me as the nurse opened the door. “Kate, it's Thursday. You know what that means. You need to get up. Now.”

I swung my legs over the side of the inflating hospital bed to appease her pointed words. I’d always hated that they put mechanical beds in the psychiatric ward but there I was, riding the sagging bed like a terrible carnival ride as it inflated beneath me. 

It seemed like such a little thing to change. Couldn’t they give me a real mattress instead of a medical bed? A good night's sleep instead of an alarm each hour, on the hour? But nothing I said would ever change their rules. I’d been to the ward 11 times before and no matter how many times I asked politely and proved, with sleep hygiene studies about the importance of a good mattress, the medical beds stayed put. The whirring of the mattresses persisted. They inflated and deflated, forever keeping time on our passing lives, destined to outlive us all.

I threw a wrinkled sweatshirt over my head and slippers on my feet. I shuffled to the bathroom as I dodged a hallucination, the first of the day. Tracing the burnt mustard tiles on the bathroom floor, I counted them, with hopes a little math would keep the demons at bay. But, if Zyprexa, the oldest school anti-psychotic in the book wasn’t working, no head game would work either.

Another hallucination stormed my view and I shrunk into the toilet bowl.

The nurse, impatient as ever, came back to check on me. Seemingly unconvinced by the bathroom light, she walked all the way into my room and pressed the bathroom door ajar, her glare catching my hollow eyes in the mirror. 

“Finish up. Come on. You know the rules. All groups or you can’t go this afternoon.”

I shifted my eyes to my feet, buried in the hospital scrubs that I’d lived in for the past week. I went back to counting the yellow, peppercorn flecked tiles. Nurse rules be damned. I was safe here and maybe if I counted the tiles just a little bit longer, the hallucinations would leave me be, the meds would start working.

I finally finished peeing and raised my gaze to find the nurse still scowling in the mirror. Startled, I fell off the toilet. Grabbing my pants and what little was left of my dignity, I tried for one last second of privacy before the day took hold,

“I’m coming. Really.”

But still, she stayed, watching me shuffle in shame as I wiped, pulled my scrubs up and washed my hands. 

What was privacy in a locked psychiatric ward anyways? How could privacy even exist when the doors didn’t close, they just swung, and the nurse was always allowed to watch me pee in the first place?

I made it to group, and all the other groups too. I sat through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I talked in Coping Skills. I even volunteered to write on the board in Mood Management. 

Then, finally, it was lunch time. After clearing up, I sat myself on the floor by the nurses station. There was a new shift setting up and this batch was full of kind ones, nurses that had been there over the years. They didn’t see me like the frequent flyer I was, like the girl who bounced from medication to medication and psychotic break to psychotic break. 

Instead, these nurses saw me as the girl from before, back from when I was the hopeful case of the unit, the smart college girl that might get out.  The funny, sweet young adult that might live beyond the illness and its talons.  

But that was before. Definitely before.

Ducking an imaginary demon, I shuddered again, knowing all too well that those hopeful days had long since passed. Positioning myself just in front of the locked door, I watched the clock tick as the nurses filed paperwork. 

Time passed in the blurriest of ways, as it always did in the ward. It dragged, like a dull art history lecture, but it also held nothing; no history, no famous works, no revelations destined to change the world forever. It was simply there, empty and endless. A mirage of medication, mundane meetings, and anything I could come up with to avoid the hallucinations and make it out alive. 

It always felt like the only thing that changed in that unit were those stupid mechanical beds that whirred precisely on the hour. That is, except on Thursdays. Because in the psychiatric ward on Two East, the unit I used to live in until the hallucinations faded into the numb desolation of medication-induced obliteration, Thursdays were not just any day in the ward. Thursdays were Therapy Dog Thursdays, and that meant everything to me.

At 12:55pm,  I started petitioning the nurses like a big pharma sales rep. 

“Did you know that one single dog pet can decrease a human’s cortisol level?

Did you know, on top of that, it can increase one’s oxytocin and we all know that’s in short supply around here.

And what about what dogs do to neural pathways? Have I told you about that?”

The two nurses smiled at my joy, a rarity, and chuckled at my chiding. With a nod to each other, they gave in, knowing the therapy team was always early. As one of the nurses entered the classified unlock code behind the station, the other pressed the big green button and held the door for me. With a smile, she beckoned.

I jumped to my feet and screamed with a volume that startled everyone, myself included.

 “IT’S TIME!! Everyone, it's time! It’s time for Therapy dog Thursday!!!!”

Before the nurses could scold me for my volume, I sprinted my way out the door and danced down the hall towards the meeting room. 

The meeting room was no longer the dull cell of forced learning, an awkward circle of overmedicated patients, and a white board. It had been cleared, and as the sun illuminated the room fully, there sat Charlotte, regal and poised, a black and white Great Dane ready for her afternoon’s work.

Mesmerized, I hovered in the doorway admiring her. Her polka dot coat glimmered in the sunshine as she eyed me. We held each other's gaze for a moment or two, checking each other out fully before both of us found our smiles, brimming wide. 

“You know, you could be a horse, Charlotte! And Oh! How I’ve missed you!”

The handler laughed and I hurled myself into the room and upon Charlotte, the magnificent three year old, 130 pound great dane.  Throwing my arms around her thick neck, I clung to her while singing absolute nonsense to the two of us.

The nurses, having finally caught up, apologized profusely. 

“So sorry about that. She’s psychotic. She just has this thing for dogs.”

The handler smiled and dismissed their concern with a nod and a gesture toward our now snuggling duo.

“Don’t worry, we know Kate. Charlotte loves Kate.”

Stroking Charlotte’s coat gently, I melted into the floor beside her. As another hallucination swarmed my view and I shuddered in terror, she offered me a paw. We held hands like that for a quiet moment, as silent tears began to stream down my cheeks. 

The other patients had filed in by then and they each got a turn to pet Charlotte. Stoic but always kind, she was unshakeable. No petting was too rough, no noise too loud. She made space for all of us, and all that we were. A dog, she was still the most humanizing companion we had encountered in weeks.

After everyone had had their turn, it was mine again. I lay down on the floor and snuggled up against her. As the hallucinations swarmed, I counted her polka dots and told her my secrets. I told her about how bad my hallucinations had gotten and how most of the time, I was really scared of them. I told her that they flew now, that they weren’t just my dead body hanging in the trees or overdosing in bed. I then went on to apologize for being back there - for not being able to keep the madness away, as if I had a say in it, as if somehow the demons that had taken over my mind and my life were also all my fault. 

Charlotte listened attentively, her gaze never leaving mine. With a paw and a nod, she offered more presence and compassion than I had felt since being there. With her, I was just a human. With her, it was okay to be me.

The hour finished up far too quickly and after pleading, the nurses resorted to prying me from her side. 

“C’mon Kate, you know the rules. We have to go back now.”

The handler, generous as always, offered a few more minutes but the nurses insisted. “Even with Kate, rules are rules.”

The nurses pulled me away and my tears returned as we trudged down the hall. Pushing the enter button, the nurses ushered me inside but with a twist, I pulled away and sprinted back down the hall after Charlotte and her handler. I caught them just before the elevator but, instead of throwing my arms around the dog, I threw them around the woman. 

Holding her tight, I gave her one massive, unshakeable hug. 

“Thank you,” I whispered, in her ear.

Thank you for giving me back to me today. It was everything, if only for an hour.”

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If you are interested in training your dog to become a therapy dog or simply learning more about the meaningful work they do, please visit Alliance for Therapy Dogs.