DRAFT
2020
72-hour Psychiatric Hold
As part of my experience being married to Mr. Roberts, on July 21, 2020, I was placed on a 72-hour psychiatric hold, known in California as a 5150. The following is the account I wrote while participating in Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) at Kaiser Permanente after avoiding their Behavioral Health Department.
This account provides an overview of the harsh treatment Mr. Roberts, exhibited for the duration of our marriage.
Beginning of Account:
“On the morning of the incident, July 21, 2020, I was right in the middle of cleaning out litter boxes for the cats and rabbits. To my surprise, I received a phone call from Kaiser’s Behavioral Health Department. I was transparent about how I was feeling, without understanding the repercussions of my own actions. I wasn’t aware that by placating them and allowing them to put words in my mouth, that it would come back to bite me so hard for the rest of my life. It’s important to note that, simply because a person feels a certain way is in no way an indication of it being a fact. These were feelings I had expressed, not facts. For me, there’s a huge difference between the two. What it led to was my being trampled on by a broken system I didn’t understand. I needed someone other than myself in real-time to support my emotional stability and well-being, rather than facing the difficult reality of the experience alone by my ex's sabotage.
I had been quite content with my day so far, cleaning up after the animals. It was a labor of love. Little did I know I would be separated from them shortly. Meanwhile, my ex sent me a picture of himself with a nice text message. He was deflecting, preparing to hold himself blameless.
Then there was a knock on the door. I knew it was law enforcement because of the way they knocked, so I opened the door and invited them in. They were wearing masks because it was during the COVID pandemic, as was I, since I was happily doing chores. The officer with the dark hair said he was there to 5150 me. I was very surprised and thought it was some kind of mistake, so I fully cooperated because I figured that once my ex was done with his meetings, he’d straighten this whole thing out. Boy, was I ever dead wrong. I’d never been so wrong in my life about anything, or so I thought at the time.
The officer took my handgun and gave me a receipt for it. To be honest, it didn’t occur to me to ever use my handgun to commit suicide. We then waited outside for the ambulance, enjoying the warmth of the day. I just knew this was all a misunderstanding that would get straightened out. I had so much to do in the house and in the yard.
When I arrived at the Psychiatric Emergency Services (PES) facility in Martinez, I was appalled by the way I was being treated, as if I had done something wrong and was a criminal. I answered their myriad of questions and felt satisfied that I had told the truth. By that time, they had taken my belongings, which was upsetting because I didn’t like being separated from my personal property.
I was wheeled over to another part of the hospital for a COVID test, and on the way there, I thanked the sheriff’s deputies for their service, still not grasping the seriousness of the situation.
My time was spent in horror at the way Black women were being treated. And I was disgusted that the mask policy wasn’t being enforced with the patients. I already had a mask on from when I was doing chores back at the house. One client licked the chair’s arm out of spite just to push my buttons.
I became nauseous, and they wouldn’t give me anything for it, even though I had a prescription for anti-nausea meds. I asked for a barf bag; this was a hospital, after all. The guy behind the counter said they didn’t have any, to just go in the bathroom if I was going to vomit. I said, “No, there’s urine all over the floor,” and I kept insisting that they hurry up and give me a barf bag. Someone else handed me one, and after sitting down, I threw up in it. That’s about when that lady licked the chair to share her germs with everyone.
Undo Influence
I kept calling my ex for different reasons. I had to call him so they’d give me my migraine meds. I had to call him so they’d finally give me anti-nausea meds. I had to call him to enforce mask-wearing. I had to call him to get my shoes returned to me instead of walking on the hard floor with just booties, which was causing me crippling pain. Each time I called him, he’d call the administrator to get me what I couldn’t get on my own. Staff then began to resent me and went overboard by calling me princess and bowing down to me—which was very unprofessional.
There was no chance of my being able to eat because my stomach was tied up in knots, so I skipped every meal except for the beverage.
They were talking about transferring me to a different facility—in Oakland—where I would be even further away from my animals. I was agitated by that time and not so pleasant to deal with. They held me for an extra night because they were waiting for the COVID test results.
I became aware that Black women were being heavily sedated. One woman wet the bed, and they wouldn’t give her clean underwear. They just gave her more drugs. Another woman was panicking about being released because she had nowhere to go. So they drugged her and gave her another bed.
Meanwhile, new patients were arriving. One of the PES staff yelled out, “Here comes another loser!” Finally, I was transferred to a facility in Oakland after two nights, and then spent two nights in Oakland. I rode by ambulance, and the EMTs who took my fanny pack for the ride left it in the ambulance when they dropped me off. I was livid and thought I’d never see it again.
I had to stay an extra night because I had to wait for the psychiatrist to discharge me, and there wasn’t one available. The facility was nice, and I said whatever I felt they needed to hear so I could be released. But not before having a bad reaction to the fragrance in my room. The patient I shared a room with kept applying perfume lotion, and it gave me migraines.
Finally, on Friday morning I was discharged. There I sat with my bright pink baseball cap on, wondering why everyone was frantically searching for me just because I wasn’t in my room. I was sitting in the lounge. Then they finally realized I was sitting right there the whole time, and that they looked like idiots.
While I was there, I bonded with the Marine who did my intake. We hit it off right away, and he hated that place because of certain policies regarding how some of the patients were forced into a room without any windows, and the door was kept locked. They were essentially prisoners, not patients. No lights, no sound, no human contact. Complete deprivation.
Returning Home
When my ex came to pick me up, he acted like a jerk, as though he had been the one somehow wronged and that he was the one suffering some kind of punishment. He was playing the victim even though I was the one sobbing. This had been the single most traumatic event of my adult life, up to that point. My ex wasn’t moved by my tears, and I figured out later why this was. It took some digging and careful thinking about how it all went down. Then he admitted he had gone through a board member of his, who’s also a psychiatrist at Kaiser Permanente to have me 5150’d.
Thus began my odyssey to uncover the complete truth. And boy, was it ugly. I didn’t speak to my ex for months, even before I pieced everything together. He locked me out of rooms and planted hidden cameras to spy on me. He withheld my new driver’s license and shredded my credit cards and dental card. While he dined out, I went hungry. I kept losing more and more weight. His lack of concern was evident; he only cared about keeping the truth at bay.
He crumpled up all of the cute notes I had written previously and threw them on the floor next to the kitchen trash, where he threw away my cat Lumi’s food dishes. He locked up the pet supplies so I couldn’t get to them. He turned my picture face down on the piano and brought home the pictures of us that had been in his office and turned those over, too. He even tried again to have me 5150'd a few days later, but I wasn’t so naïve anymore, and I was able to circumvent it.
He called 911 and informed them that I had just been 5150’d, and that I was delusional. He knew that sometimes I fainted, which was what happened and had nothing to do with delusions. He has had fainting spells twice, but he didn’t want me to call 911. I was taken away by an ambulance once again, but this time I was angry, livid, in fact, and I was not kind to the firefighters. They took me to the Emergency Department at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Walnut Creek.
After approximately three months, I finally broke down and started talking to him again for one reason: Lumi needed to go to the vet, and my ex was my only means of making it happen.
Emotional Abuse
Kaiser later defended the psychiatrist, my ex’s board member. I was damaged by all of this due to the cruelty my ex engaged in. He even withheld my blue DMV placard to use for himself and lied about having it for approximately nine months. Then it fell from his sun visor, and I took it back. Everything was topsy-turvy, so to make sense of it all, I was bound and determined to get to the bottom of what occurred, including finding out which ambulance company held onto my fanny pack. The EMTs didn’t turn in any paperwork at the facility where they dropped me off, so I was unable to find out who transported me. It was a big mystery, which I later unraveled.
My fanny pack ended up at Martinez PD. They said they just found it in the evidence room on a shelf, with no explanation or note, and notified me by postcard. Did I believe that they didn’t know how it arrived there? No. In fact, it showed up after I had figured out which ambulance company was used and had given them a call, trying to track it down. The ambulance company was very unhelpful and quite rude. But I remembered the EMT’s name and the details of the story he told me, including that he has Lupus and that his hair was wild if he didn’t shave his head. He had been so busy talking to me that he failed to keep track of my belongings. I had an attorney write them a letter. Apparently, it was their responsibility to keep track of it because they were the ones who took it from me.
I tried to get Martinez PD to reimburse me for the pearl ring that was missing, but got an emphatic no. There was no need to write me such a terse letter. I wrote the officer back and said I hoped that was just a form letter he was using, and not his actual personality.
Eventually, I was able to take Lumi to the vet, and she subsequently had two teeth pulled. She was feeling much better after that. I did what I had to do to get her seen and treated for two abscessed teeth. Her health and well-being were worth the betrayal to my soul.
I wrote two poems and made videos out of them for YouTube. I was particularly fond of the one about the Thin Blue Line called “The Blue Abyss,” about my changed attitude toward law enforcement since being 5150’d, and I showed it to my ex. He stared intently at the YouTube video, reading the verses. When it was over, he said, “What I want to know is, who wrote 'The Blue Abyss?" I was surprised by his question because I was proudly showing off my work. When I said, “I did. I just finished writing it,” he got up and walked away without saying a word, and gave me the silent treatment. He still didn’t know yet that I knew the level of his betrayal.
I filed for a domestic violence restraining order (DVRO) approximately one year later, after he came home falling-down drunk with his assistant. The judge ruled against me because he found my ex’s lies more credible than the truth, and my attorneys failed to present any of my evidence because they also believed my ex. Their belief changed over time, but the damage was already done, and it was severely traumatizing. The supervising attorney personally took over the case, and I couldn’t have asked for a better attorney. Unfortunately, she dropped me as a client when the retainer was running low and issued a refund for the remaining balance because by that time, I was living in my vehicle. I then had my ex’s wages garnished and eventually hired another law firm. Much to my disappointment, it seemed as though they were on his side the whole time. My ex had the amount of spousal support reduced after I had just gotten out of the hospital, and then he terminated it early. The female attorney, Gail Fishburn, at the new law firm quit abruptly, so I was left with ‘Pete and Repeat', without support.
But yeah, that was me who had my ex, the CEO’s wages garnished. Never in a million years could I have predicted something like that. It was an attorney from my prepaid legal service who advised me to do so. Otherwise, I never would have collected the spousal support that I ended up using for the new law firm I eventually hired. It took a while for me to start receiving the checks, but it was well worth the effort, and kudos to Park Bradbury for advising me on this. Everyone else was stuck on the fact that my ex was in contempt of court. That was all well and good, but it wasn’t lifting me out of severe poverty and deprivation.
When I finally started collecting spousal support, I was able to get the cracked radiator in the Toyota Highlander replaced so that I was no longer stranded in a disabled vehicle. I was just stranded with nowhere to go. A hotel was strictly out of the question because of the expense it would incur. My then-therapist, Nathan Aish, LCSW, MSW, MPH, PPS, was right about my needing that money for an attorney. My ex played dirty all the time, and his lies completely swallowed me whole over and over again.
Then I ended up being hospitalized twice due to four bleeding ulcers and severe anemia. After I got out of the hospital the second time, I rented a U-Haul van for 32 days, and I stayed in the back of the van with Lumi. It gave us both more space, but I was still staying in a vehicle, unhoused. I’d ask Mark to drive us in the van to run errands with Lumi on her window perch in the back. It was comical to see her not move from her spot. It was also comical to watch Mark walk Lumi on a leash at the beach where we lived. Our group of homeless misfits was a sitcom just waiting to be written. What a perfect cast of characters we were: McDuff, Al, Kevin, Mark, Melanie, Chief, Alex, Roland, Les, and the others who would only stay one or two nights. RVs of all different sizes would park there, too. Those of us who lived there had a routine about where we liked to park. And we’d grill food and share everything.
Eventually, Mark had some shady characters trying to track him down. He wouldn’t say who they were, but he did talk about his dangerous relatives. Then he suddenly up and left the area. Rumor has it that he ended up in So California. We all seemed to lose touch with him, and I had been placed in a shelter where McDuff and Kevin were already staying. They have since received lifetime housing vouchers, which is a real coup. If I had been aware of just how flawed the system was going into this, I surely would have lost my mind.
END OF ACCOUNT”
