The Far Side

Remember those comics called the Far Side, that just had a twisted way of looking at the world?

The Far Side is sorta how we all try and roll around here. We snicker during prayers.  We make fun of serious stuff. We roll our eyes while people are still looking at us. Sometimes we even say out loud what we are all thinking.  It's a good stress reliever. It helps us remember not to take ourselves too seriously, which we are also much too inclined to do. To paraphrase my hero Marjorie Hinckley, you can cry at life or you can laugh at life, and crying gives me a headache.

So, when the opportunity presented itself, even with all the stupidity raging around us, we attempted to create opportunities to laugh, at ourselves, at the doctors, and at the circumstances we sat in.  None of this is probably very funny really, but at the time it was these little moments that made life almost bearable.

So, I have six kids. It takes a lot to scare me. And, I've been to plenty of emergency rooms through the years. I know how they operate. And how they operate is SLOWLY. So slowly. So on the morning of January 8, when I found myself headed to the ER with my suicidal daughter,  I did the only practical thing, at least in my mind. I stopped at the Wendy's drive-thru for a diet Coke and some breakfast. I tried to get Audrey to eat something too, but she refused.

I mean, it's not like we were having an actual EMERGENCY. There was no blood and everyone was breathing just fine. And I knew that the day was shaping up to be extremely long, exhausting and painful. It would all go much easier if I wasn't starving and was properly caffeinated. I actually didn't even think this was funny. I thought I was being really smart. Audrey thought it was pretty funny though, and she told Dan who wasn't surprised. He knows me.

Later, after Audrey was admitted to the inpatient unit, she was not doing well. There were very few things that would bring a real smile to her face. At the entrance to the unit where all the parents lined up to get in during visiting hours, there was a window that you could look through and see the kids if they happened to be coming back to their rooms from the common area. Audrey hated walking past that window and having all these strangers staring in at her. She would occasionally make eye contact with one of the parents, and have a stare down with them. That made her smile. What she really wanted to do however, was to get a hold of a pen,(which was next to impossible) write the word "HELP!" on the palm of her hand in big black letters, and then, as she was walking past the window, slam her hand against the window while staring out at everyone as insanely as she could muster. It would have been a great plan, but pens were nowhere to be found.

Treats of any kind were off limits on the unit. Every day when we would go visit, we had to lock up all our belongings in a locker and then the staff would "wand" you to make sure you weren't taking anything in that you shouldn't be. It only took a few days for us to realize that it was not that hard to smuggle in chocolate. I would just stick it down inside my bra right before going in, and when we got to Audrey's room, I'd unload. We had to be careful though, 15 minute checks and all. I think it made me feel better than Audrey to do that. It was my way of harmlessly thumbing my nose at the stupid rules.

When Audrey moved to Provo, we smuggled in lots of things too. One day, we snuck in some tic tacs and by this time she had figured out how to get things back to her room. The security measures in these places are well intentioned, but not very hard to circumvent.  Anyhow, she got the tic tacs back to her room and that night, surreptitiously "dropped" one on the bathroom floor, then watched innocently as panic ensued when staff thought that someone had smuggled in drugs.

There are more, and as we remember them, we will add to this post.

It was a survival tactic to see my girl not lose her rebellious spirit throughout all she was going through

It Gets Worse

I've sent a kid off to boot camp. I've kissed my kid goodbye as she hauled off to France completely on her own.  I've sent a kid off to Mexico on a mission for two years. But by far and away, the hardest parental task I have ever had to do is to leave my kid in a residential psychiatric treatment facility.  The day you first lay eyes on your perfect baby, you never, ever envision that eventuality. But after 10 days on the inpatient behavioral health unit, that is exactly where we found ourselves.  Medications were not working, She was worse than when she got there. She was not ready to come home. She didn't want to come home. I couldn't stand the thought of her not being in my care. But we had to get her out of the hospital. She was getting worse by the day there. After 10 days, it was to the point that almost anything would be better than laying in that hospital room another day.  I worried about what kinds of kids she would be exposed to in a residntial setting. I worried about what would happen to her, and above all, if she really would be safer there than at home. Looking at different treatment options was scary and confusing. But the bottom line, in the end, was her safety. We were not set up to watch her 24 hours a day to keep her safe from herself, and that is what she needed, nothing less.

We were fortunate that she was still 17 when we started this whole process. We had access to her doctors and were included in all the planning for those first few months. It was a gentler way to break into this world than if she had already been an adult, and we would have had no access to her treatment plans. Also, because she was still in high school, her treatment center was essentially set up like a boarding high school, only with all sorts of protections in place for various behavior issues.  It was a tough place, with tough kids. At least she could finish her schooling there, and she would be busy during the day with classes. The staff were basically good, but there was a high turnover rate, and terrible, terrible communication. Her therapist was good, but was left out of the loop on the residential side and as a result, Audrey was sent to a level of care that was very restrictive and punishing, and was not at all what she needed. As a result of this, she, and we, lost a lot of trust in this place almost from the start, especially since we all knew going in that she would only be there until her 18th birthday.

I was so naive. When we first took her to the hospital, I assumed she would be there a few days and then come home, stabilized and ready to go. Then, when that didn't happen, I assumed she would go to treatment for a few weeks, and be home well before her 18th birthday in March. I never ever in my wildest nightmares imagined that she would be there longer than that.

For two months, we drove to Provo at least twice a week for visits and family therapy. Every week it seemed like she was worse than the week before. Nothing that was supposed to work for her was working. Nobody could figure out what was wrong or why this had happened to this bright beautiful girl. Every person who worked with her loved her. "So smart," "so insightful" "so much potential", "so talented", "such a great girl" were comments we heard from everyone. Only nobody could figure out how to help her.  The other girls there had long histories of mental illness, family abuse, drug abuse, chaos, and dysfunction. Audrey was not the type of kid they were used to seeing there.  In typical Audrey fashion, she made fast friends and found some small hope in comforting other girls there.  Wherever Audrey goes, she attracts friends and people love her and are drawn to her.

But she wasn't seeing that. She was so busy hating herself.