Free The Story of Channon Rose: Lessons between the Lines by Channon Rose Page B

start feeling really sick? I started to panic, and then I was able to calm myself down, only to find myself back to the reality of standing in my bathroom staring at myself in the mirror crying and wondering what I had just done. I wanted to die, but at the same time I didn’t. I started to feel a small sense of regret come over me, which then turned into a huge overwhelming feeling of regret. In addition, I started to feel really strange. My face turned from a flushed red color to pale white then grey and I started to get very light headed. It was difficult to tell how much time had already passed, so I wasn’t sure if I started to have a panic attack or if the pills had enough time to kick in and were slowly starting to kill me. I didn’t know, but at that moment I knew I didn’t want to die anymore. I rushed to grab the phone and I frantically called my mom at work and told her what I had done. I could barely breathe at this stage. I started hyperventilating. The meds were definitely taking affect by this time. I didn’t know if I would be able to control this and stay awake long enough to help myself or have someone save me.
    My mom was mad, I could hear it in her voice but I needed her help more than anything right now. She said to stick my fingers down my throat and try to throw up the pills. I tried but nothing came up. I hadn’t eaten much that day, so there was nothing to throw up. I was finally able to throw up just a little bit, but not much, not enough to make a difference. I don’t remember much after that, the pills were doing their job as I had initially intended and they were taking my life away. Sometime later, the fire department broke down our apartment door. I wasn’t awake or coherent during this time. This was all information I received after the fact. Apparently my mom had dialed 911 after I called her and the fire department found me and rushed me to the hospital. In the emergency room they pumped my stomach, and when I came to, they made me drink charcoal—it tastes disgusting. I kept telling the nurses I didn’t want to die. Every time I woke up, I went into a panic attack. I remember grabbing the nurses’ arms and squeezing them so tightly so they couldn’t leave my side. I was panicked that I would die alone. My mom worked far from where we lived, and traffic in Los Angeles doesn’t care if your child is sick.
    I stayed overnight for observation. The next morning the doctors told me that with the amount of Seroquel in my body, they were surprised I was still alive and told me I was very lucky. My mom was so disappointed in me but she stayed with me in the hospital that night and told me how much she loved me and how sad she would be if I were dead. That was what I needed to hear, how come she never told me that before? We spoke that night in the hospital about seeing another psychiatrist because the medication I was on clearly was not helping at all. I was placed on a 72-hour 5150 hold in Northridge hospital but got out early because this time I knew what they wanted to hear to let me go. Mental hospitals were something I knew well by this time so I knew how to play the game and work the system. Life moved forward after those incidents and I was now in the 8th grade. I almost couldn’t believe that I had passed 7th grade with everything that had happened during that year. I had been expelled from so many different schools in one year and hospitalized more than any other child the doctors had seen during that time.
    I now had a new psychiatrist, who had taken me off Depakote and put me on Prozac.
    We were told that it would take around three days for the new medication to settle in my system. I was very adamant about not taking these new drugs. I hated the way the medication made me feel, and I felt that I really did not need it. I remember begging my mother and doctor to let me try being on nothing for a while, but my psychiatrist was insistent. I needed medication we were told, or I