I called the Halifax Hospital Psychiatric Unit to talk to mom, and an unidentified man answered the phone. He told me he would get her, and then put the phone down on a table or desk or something. For ten minutes — I timed it on my iPhone — I listened to the sounds of people yelling and screaming in the background.

Then someone named Ted picked up the phone. He was very rude to me. He was very loud, and I wrote on a little piece of paper that he was “a dickhead”.

I tried to be nice to him; I explained how my mom had been at Stewart-Marchman. Ted said that SMA was mostly for drug rehab and “seriously crazy” people who screamed all the time, and that my mom was probably there because she yells so much.

Ted said that mom was in her room, “screaming for three hours straight this afternoon.” It broke my heart to hear him say that.

I don’t remember much about this phone call, but I do remember that I was very, very upset when he finally hung up on me. I was literally in tears. He was very unprofessional. He called me a stupid kid, which is a little absurd because I’m 38. It was awful, and I never got to talk to my mom.

I hope that someday someone from Halifax Hospital reads this and looks to see who named Ted was answering the phones at 9:00 pm Eastern on February 2, 2012. He shouldn’t just be fired. He should be slapped and then fired.