Fourteen years ago this week, I wrote what was probably my proudest column. I wrote about how my sister Melanie, nearly five years younger, had worked much harder than I had throughout school, had persevered where I had failed, and was now celebrating a university convocation where she was conferred a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. She was the first person in our direct lineage to get a university degree.
Mel, as everyone except her immediate family called her, would go on to become a registered nurse at Saskatoon City Hospital, where she cared for thousands of people over the next 14 years. One of those was even one of her instructors. For the first decade or so, she was on the medical ward. Then she was in the float pool, covering shifts on almost every ward of the hospital, and getting to know a large portion of the staff.
Melanie’s life, from a young age, revolved around becoming, then being, a nurse. Well, that, and fishing. She joked that she nursed so she could afford to fish. Melanie was most at home with a fishing rod in one hand, a coffee cup in the other, a fish on her hook and a campfire burning nearby. Her favourite times were spent with friends and family doing exactly that.
A month ago, on May 3, Melanie died by her own hand.
Melanie struggled with mental illness, prescription-drug induced depression.
Melanie first started showing signs of insomnia in junior high. It only got worse. By the time she became a nurse, she could not sleep without taking a sleeping pill.
Let me point out this pill is recommended only for short-term usage – like 14 days. She was on them for something like 14 years. There’s something wrong with that. Some doctor wrote those prescriptions for 14 years.
She had all the side effects. I mean if there were 10 listed, she was all 10. They included cognitive reasoning, anxiety, dry mouth, vertigo and memory loss (which terrified her). She knew this was affecting her work. The memory loss pushed her over the edge, because she was losing her confidence in herself. She was deeply afraid she would lose her registration.
We started to know something was wrong about two and a half years ago. It may have been sooner, but that was when we noticed. And it just got worse.
She would call Mom, and sometimes me, and say, “Pray for me, Mom.”
She would call me and say, “I’m not right, Brian.”
She reached out to God. She accepted Christ as her saviour on her hands and knees a year ago.
Devin, her long-time boyfriend, did all he could to help her, including coming to live with her. We were all worried about her.
I have since found out that many, many people were just as concerned. Many people were texting her, wanting to know how she was doing.
Everybody tried to help her. Several of us tried to directly intercede, but the anxiety, depression and paranoia brought on by that sleeping pill, and an antidepressant (known to lead to “suicide ideation”) prescribed two weeks earlier, exacerbated the situation. She felt no one would come to see a marker for her, that no one cared, that everyone was moving on with their lives and she was not.
Yet the Warman funeral home, with a normal seated capacity of 250, crammed in 375. By my estimation, there were probably 200 nurses in uniform there. One hundred people attended the interment in Canora.
Hundreds of people cared for her, but those prescription pills kept her from seeing it.
If your arm is broken, they fix it. But what do you do if your soul is broken?
There’s an ad on TV that says “Where does depression hurt? Everywhere. Who does it hurt? Everyone.”
No joke.
We have to break the stigma of suicide and mental illness.
We have found out that Melanie had meticulously planned every detail of what transpired. It was in depth, detailed, and gone over. She ensured no one would have the chance to do anything about it.
Her phone was full of messages of people worried about her. Everyone was there for her, but she simply could no longer see that.
She left us with broken hearts.
Don’t let it happen to you. If you need help, there are people to help. If anyone is thinking about taking this path, remember, there are people who love you. Don't do this. We don’t want to lose anyone else.
I don’t want to end on that note, however. Everyone who I have spoken to said, “Melanie was such a good nurse.” And she was.
She is in Christ’s arms right now.
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
