Hey everyone,
You guys might have seen my thread about a week ago when I decided to try and ctb, it's here: https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/tonight-is-the-night-its-time-to-say-goodbye.52089/
Obviously, I'm not dead, despite my best efforts. Here is a brief overview of what happened:
After I drank the SN I felt fine for a few minutes, then started to feel my heart racing and I got dizzy as well. I said goodbye to the people in the chat and then went to go lie down, hoping I'd just pass out and die. Unfortunately that's not what happened.
Almost the second I moved away from my computer a hugely intense wave of nausea overwhelmed me, I can normally keep myself from throwing up but after lying down for a few seconds and trying to breathe deeply to stop it I knew that I was going to be sick. I crawled to the bathroom and turned the lights on and threw up a few times into the toilet, my parents woke up (I'm guessing from the noise) and found me. They had known I was feeling suicidal and I think suspected (but didn't know) that I had SN, but as soon as they saw me I think they knew what had happened. Dad called 000 (the emergency line here) and mum went into my room and found the SN, my glasses, measuring equipment, etc.
I was semi conscious at this point and curled up on the floor, threw up a couple more times, and was extremely cold to the point that I was shivering and shaking quite a lot.
The police and paramedics arrived pretty much at the same time, followed by police rescue maybe 10 or 15 minutes later. They gave me oxygen, a cannula in each arm (extremely painful) and tried to keep me talking, my blood oxygen at this point was 88%, and after a few minutes went up to I believe 91 or 92%. I was feeling very sorry for myself and just trying to stay conscious at this point.
Once police rescue were there they brought in a stretcher and tried to get me down the stairs into the ambulance, this is around the point I lost consciousness, they had me on a stretcher and were trying to get me around a very sharp bend in the stairs in my house.
In the ambulance the weirdest part was how nonchalant they all were, just chatting very casually about me while I faded in and out of consciousness, they had a weird oxygen mask over my mouth and nose and I was still shaking from cold, they wouldn't give me a blanket either.
I vaguely remember being rained on as they took me into the hospital, and there were so many people around me, they had the poisons information on the line and were talking about a case of a girl in California who had died from only 1g of SN, they had weighed the container found in my room and estimated I'd taken 50g, in reality it was only 20, I'd just prepared two doses.
My methemoglobin was at 58% while in there and my SpO2 dropped as low as 66%, they cut my top off and pulled my pants off and covered me with those ECG stickers, when I removed them there were a ton of them. They started to treat me with methylene blue (140mg in two doses according to my discharge summary, I remember them discussing that I could have up to 5mg/kg) and it was after this (not sure how long) that I regained consciousness completely. I was freezing cold and had one of the people holding an oxygen mask over my face, they were talking about intubating me and moving me to the ICU but apparently there were no beds available there, they told me they were going to intubate me but decided against it because my oxygen saturation was already very low and I was "GCS 15" which seems to refer to a Glasgow Coma Scale, meaning I was conscious.
Anyway after a bit everything seemed to settle down, my SpO2 was going up and my methemoglobin was going down, I was still supposed to go to the ICU but ended up staying in the resuscitation bay because there was no space. My parents came in, that was the hardest bit for me. My dad's eyes were so red, it was obvious that he'd been crying a lot. They went home around 5:30am, and I wasn't able to sleep. This is about 4.5hrs after I took the SN.
The head doctor at the ED, a lovely woman named Eva, came and had a very blunt chat with me. She asked where I got the SN (I just said "online") and told me that it was a very close call, I was only minutes from death and I was really fighting for oxygen at one point. That was pretty interesting to hear since it didn't feel like a close call at all, I was conscious or semi-conscious for most of it and didn't need to be intubated. Even though I was in intensive care I wasn't actually admitted to the ICU.
After spending the rest of that day in the ED I was medically cleared once my methemoglobin was normalized and sent to the psychiatric ward under a mental health order, worth noting that this was less than 24 hours after I took the SN, things worked really fast.
The thing that really, really irritates me is how they talked to me about what would happen with the psychiatric ward, first it was "maybe it wouldn't even be effective for you, maybe you'll stay for a day or so" then it was "maybe just a day or two", then once I was there Friday I was told that I'd have to stay the whole weekend at least because there are no psychiatrists there over the weekend (how this is possible in a major hospital I have literally no idea)
After a couple of days in the psych ward I started to literally lose my fucking mind from boredom (no leave, nothing to do) and on Monday begged them to discharge me, with my parents permission they sent me home and now I'm on a waiting list for a residential program, a private hospital that I'd go to for 3-4 weeks for full time care, me agreeing to go there was a condition of my discharge :/
Anyway! That's about it, if anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer them, or even upload a copy of my discharge summary with all personal info removed, it summarises what happened.
I think I'm going to try and take things easy for a bit, I don't feel any different in terms of mood and the psych ward staff put me on an antipsychotic, lurasidone, which has been making me feel really blunted. I'm considering just not taking it, I've read that it can cause permanent issues with your brain.
Here are some of the things I've taken away from this incident though:
- The SN was completely painless, not even a tummy ache.
- The nausea was bad but the actual throwing up wasn't any worse than if you drink too much.
- Maybe the 20g I took was excessive? I almost died and only had it down for 5-10 mins, maybe 10g would be a better idea if it didn't make me throw up.
- Definitely need to fast longer than the 6 hours I did, I still had a lot of dinner in my vomit.
- Dress warmly! I was very cold although I was lying on a tiled bathroom floor.
Edit: I forgot about this one until now, but I feel like using SN as an enema could be the best way to take it, assuming it's able to be absorbed that way. There would be no nausea or risk of vomiting it up that way.
As for where to go now, I don't know. Both my parents and the doctors asked me if I feel different after this attempt, and the honest answer is no. I don't feel any better. I don't feel some life-changing realization after almost dying.
Still depressed and suicidal, but I have no plans at the moment. My SN and my metoclopramide is gone so I'll have to start from scratch.
Love,
Ava
