5. Chocolate Eclairs and Mutual Madness

In the fifth installment of 'Maura and Me,' I learn how to make friends in the psych ward

A psychiatric ward runs on regulation, protocol, and scrutiny. I’ve never been in the Navy but from my grandfather’s stories, psych wards and Naval procedures seem comparable in their strict rigidity. Of course, the Navy is full of people who likely “want” to be there and likely have their faculties. The ward, however, is most definitely not. But that doesn’t mean the nurses won’t try to keep everything orderly and in control — everything the patients minds and bodies are not.

A chronic people-pleaser to my core, I had spent countless visits to the ward following the nurses’ protocols and the ward’s rules to a tee. Described by nurses, medical students, psychiatrists, and researchers as “the perfect patient,” I was not one to color outside the lines when I was inpatient. I lived with a simple ideology in there: Follow the rules. Do anything to stay in the care team’s favor.

I was extreme in my rule-abiding ways while most patients bounced from compliance to assertion. But then there wa…