intake

The hospital could be an entire story in itself . . .and though I'm not quite to that part yet, I will tell you this much:

When I first got there, there were tests - seemed like hundreds - they took days to finish - blood tests, verbal tests, urine tests, dexterity tests, and written tests - never seen so much writing in my life.

And the questions were weird -
1) Do you like mechanical magazines?
2) Who was a better man Abraham Lincoln or Elvis Presley?
3) Do you have a satisfactory sex life?
4) True or False - I enjoyed reading Alice in Wonderland.
5) Do you sometimes have trouble controlling your bowels?

My GOD - what the hell kind of information could be gleaned from those? I still don't know. I was a 14 year old girl - of course I didn't like mechanical magazines- I had NO sex life, and is number 5 a joke?

Even NOW I cannot be sure what the correct answers to these questions are (and by correct, I mean the ones that don't peg me as clinically insane). But regardless - after all my answers about Elvis and poop - this is what they said about me:

"This is a malignant profile. Serious suicidal overtones are suggested here. It would not be safe/prudent to treat this child on an outpatient basis. Testing indicates, she has severe problems having her needs met appropriately - or at all. She does not appear to have major problems with authority or defiance, although her pattern of scores points to difficulties relating to females. According to the profile she is very much a worrier, yet is not at all open or trusting with these concerns. She requires psychiatric intervention, or this will not end well."

And how they knew all that based on Alice in Wonderland . . . is still a mystery to me.