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.

January 8

Oh, hello there. Long time no see. What's new?

Oh, you know, the regular stuff. I'm just sitting here waiting for the Relief Society Presidency to show up and in the mean time Duncan decides to mop the kitchen floor with the soapiest bucket of mop water the world has ever seen, because he says he is sick of the sticky mess from the Kool Aid that the girls spilled last week when they dyed their hair. Only the floor isn't sticky because they didn't add any sugar to the  Kool Aid. The floor is going to be sticky now though, what with all that soap he isn't going to be able to rinse off.

Hmm, that sounds like quite a night. Where have you been all year?

Oh, we've been around. The ER quite a bit. The maternity ward. The psych ward. The home improvement store. Chicago. It's been a busy year.

Wow, sounds busy, I hear the kids have missed hearing from you. We should catch up sometime.

Yeah, there's a lot to catch up on.  I wouldn't even know where to start. And a lot of it would be boring.

Well, you could start where you left off, on the worst day of the year, January 2.

Yeah, only it turns out that January 2 was not the worst day of the year. Not by a long shot. I'm not sure I could even pick a worst day of the year this year. But I guess January 8 would be in the top 10. So I'll start there. Pour a coke and pull up a chair if you want to hear all this.

January 8 was a Monday and it was the day Audrey's car wouldn't start, so I gave her a ride to school.  January 8 was the day we were both completely silent on the drive there. January 8 was the day that we sat in the car in front of the school, and instead of jumping out and running into her classes like she always did,  she just sat there. She just sat there until she somehow summoned up the energy and courage to tell me that she couldn't do it any more, she just couldn't stand to live for one more day,  and that she could no longer trust herself to not do something drastic. 

January 8 was the day I did what I would have considered unthinkable a week earlier. I drove my brilliant, kind, talented, hard working daughter to the ER at Primary Children's hospital for a psychiatric evaluation because I couldn't trust her to not kill herself that day. And after that, I drove her to McKay Dee hospital and admitted her to the Behavioral Health Unit, and left her there. Then I drove home and had to tell her brother and sister that she was terribly ill and I didn't know when they would see her again or what would happen, and we all cried a lot of hot painful tears that night.

January 8 was also the night that I guiltily breathed a sigh of relief when I climbed into bed that night. It was the first night in several weeks that I could sleep soundly, knowing that someone else was watching my daughter through the night to make sure she was safe. It was the first night I didn't have to wonder what I would wake up to in the morning, the first night I didn't have to dread going into her room and hoping that she was still  okay, and that nothing unimaginable had happened in the dark night while I was sleeping.

We were all pretty innocent that night. I could never imagine that night that it would be four long months before she would sleep in her own bed again, or what she would endure in the coming days and weeks.  I could never have imagined the world of treatment centers, isolation, therapists, self harm, seizures, loneliness, sleeplessness and fear that was waiting for us.

Knowing what I know now,  I still often agonize over whether I made the right call, taking her to the hospital that day.  It's a hard thing to turn your child over to strangers and admit that you aren't equipped to help her and I will never know if it was the right decision. Would things have turned out better or worse if we had brought her home?  There were terrible days in treatment, and terrible things happened to her while she was away. But in the end she is still here, alive and breathing.  Someday I might could forgive myself for sending her away and for the mistreatment she experienced. But I could never forgive myself if something had happened to her here at home while she was in my care.

January 8 was only the first of many worst days.

Post Holidays

January 2 is historically the worst day of the year. The party is over. But that's good, to get the worst day of the year over with so early on, right?

Right.

Anyhow, today is not the worst day of the year for me at least. While everybody else went back to school, back to work, back to normal, I am at home, in my Christmas jammies, sitting in front of the fireplace eating orange sticks and pretending that I am still on holiday and refusing to think about all of the things that are waiting for me to do.  I only feel a little bit sluggish and unproductive when Netflix pops up and asks me if I am STILL watching.

We had an uneventful Christmas. It was nice, just quiet and less intense than most Christmases around here. I read a wise article on Facebook about just letting each Christmas be what it is, and not forcing it to be something that it's not, and being ok with that. This year, we didn't have a kitchen, we didn't have a ton of money or time and I decided to let a lot of things go and be okay with that. So we did no baking, other than a morning of cookie baking at my mom's, which Audrey and Olivia both slept through.




We also did very little shopping, and less decorating. Dan, for his part, did get the Christmas lights up and they looked fantastic! He even took them all down yesterday, which I was not emotionally prepared for, but I was not about to complain. Better to get them down a day too soon than 6 months too late.

The best part of the day was of course talking to this guy.

He is doing good. Christmas day marked fourteen months out. It's crazy how time can go so fast and so slow at the same time. Seems like he just left, seems like he's been gone forever.

Christmas Eve we went to my moms and played our Christmas game and ate pizza. And then it started snowing! It was a treacherous drive home, lots of slide offs and tow trucks. We made it safely and it was awesome to wake up to a beautiful white Christmas. Third year in a row we have had snow on Christmas eve.

We dressed up the dogs. That was cheery.

I think they liked it. Benny left his Santa suit on all night.

\We also  dressed ourselves up.

Duncan let us sleep in til 7 on Christmas morning. We got up, opened presents, then went to my cousin Pam's house for breakfast. They were nice enough to invite us up when they heard about our lack of kitchen facilities.

Apparently I pretty much sucked at taking pictures the rest of the day. This was all I got of our evening Christmas dinner. Mitch and Ria, Alisa and Erwann, and Mom and Dad came over for ham and we ate downstairs on paper plates and opened more presents. 

These two found charcoal masks in their stockings.

And that was Christmas

New Year's Eve we were back at Grandma Sally's, playing board games and working on puzzles. Grandma wanted us to sleep over, but we opted to come back to our own beds.

And then, we started off New Year's Day with a first day hike at Great Salt Lake at dusk, There was a full super moon, and it was pretty great to see it rise over the lake. We walked down the beach in the snow, it was really cold, but a fun adventure to start off 2018.

Thanksgiving Again

I admit, I am a big Thanksgiving scrooge. I always love getting together with my family and eating, but Thanksgiving has always rubbed me the wrong way. It seemed to me it was a holiday for men, who would sit around all day watching football until they were served this lovely meal, then they would go sit around some more and watch more football until it was time for pie, then they would sit around some more until the mess in the kitchen was cleaned up. Meanwhile, the women would be shopping, planning prepping, cooking, cleaning and scrubbing for 3 days straight. And we were supposed to be happy about it.  It just never seemed fair. Plus, it's just weird and a creepy homage to to power of advertising/culture that all over America families gather and eat the exact same foods on the exact same day. And they do this to show they are thankful?  And don't even get me started on the thankful Facebook posts. 

So this year, Audrey and Alisa did all the cooking. Like, ALL the cooking. Mom made yams, I brought drinks and Erwann made pie crust. Audrey and Alisa did everything else. And I realized that if I had ever had a sister to share Thanksgiving with, I might have felt different about it.

They had a good time. The food was great, and me and my mom went for a walk while dinner was cooking.

It was a good day, and we are all thankful.

Being Mrs Banks

Audrey has wrapped up her role as Mrs. Banks in the school musical.

She knocks my socks off.

I know I'm biased, but really, she has such a presence on stage, and the girl can sing.

It was a great show.

Sadly, she was sick  with a cold all week long, and struggled to keep up her voice. She drank hot tea, rested her voice, took Sudafed, drank lots of water, everything we could think of to help her get better. I thought she still sounded fabulous. She was a bit bereft, as Mrs. Banks would say, and felt she could have done better if she had been in tip top shape.  Even more sad, her voice kept getting worse and worse after the show was over. She basically had no voice for a few days afterwards, it's a good thing the show was the week it was and not a week later.

Anyhow, she did great, and now we are looking forward to the spring production of Footloose.

A few adoring fans.

Mrs Banks and Mary Poppins, a dynamic duo

One of the best parts for me about these shows is seeing Audrey in her element. When she comes out after the show and all her friends and castmates are there laughing and talking and congratulating each other, I realize what an amazing girl I have.