Sparks and Butterflies...

Poe and I are terrible about swearing. We really are. I can swear like a sailor.

We are usually pretty good about swearing in front of the kids, but I must admit that we’re not as careful now that they’re older and not prone to repeating what we say like parrots.

Both kids recently had occassion to swear, and well? I’m kind of okay with it.

In the first instance, Poe walked out with Joseph as they were taking trash out to the barrels. Poe observed as Joseph lept about 3 feet exclaiming, “Holy shit!”

“Did you just say what I think I heard?”
Meekly, “yes?”
“Why? and why did you jump?”
“A rat ran over over the barrel when I went to put the trash in.”
“Well, okay then.”

In another instance – a little back story. We have a recent accidental addition to our family. An outside feral cat we have named, “Tink.” Yes we named it. It was a lot easier than saying, “You know, that cat outside?” Anyhoo, it has taken residence under the house next door, and I have taken to giving it a little house outside, with food and water. Why? To solve the incessant yowling. Once I started feeding it, it shut up. I can’t catch it to take it to the vet to save my life, but oh well. The thing is – Our indoor cats, Sassy and Pebbles, have caught wind of this interloper and they are having none of it. The problem is, when they see it outside, they take to growling and hissing and yowling at it. It puts them in some kind of red haze, and they instead attack each other if the other one is in sight.

In the wee hours of the morning when I was up, but it wasn’t yet time to wake the kids, one of them saw Tink. They then attacked the other indoor cat. I don’t know who the instigator was in this instance. They took off howling and screaming and biting at each other. It got pretty bad, and I couldn’t catch up to shock ’em out of it. They made two rounds of the house, and then they ended up in Logan’s room. Unfortunately – Sassy, who was being chased, got scared/upset enough that she started piddling while she was running. Yes. I had cat pee all over the freaking house. They ran up and over Logan’s sleeping face. While peeing. I suddenly hear yelling and sputtering from Logan’s room, and this predominately happy-go-lucky child yelled “Jesus Christ!” at the top of his lungs out of a dead sleep.

I can’t say as I blamed him.

And so. Apparently my children swear. And yet, it is completely appropriate swearing. When you’re talking rats and cat pee in your face, I just can’t say, “gosh darn it.” Doesn’t roll off the tongue. Am I right?

Yesterday morning I talked to a doctor. I literally picked up the phone in a “I should call them” move. I was putting the phone down, thinking “give them an hour, and then call” when the phone rang. Eerie. They thought that Joseph was at a point where we can treat him on an outpatient basis.

On the one hand, of course I’m glad my family is back together. On the other hand, now that he’s home it feels like, “DON’T FUCK THIS UP MOM.” Yes, he has mental illness. Yes, we have doctors, therapists, medications, and a special school. But still, he’s only 12, so I feel like while we give him a bunch of tools for living – I still feel a lot of pressure to make sure he’s doing what he needs to do, and NOT doing what he needs to NOT do. Considering the reason for his visit to the hospital, too, I’m not exactly sleeping easy.

Next is getting him into his psychiatrist today. I know he had some qualms about the dosage on the medication, but we’ll be talking about that in the office and can make changes if we need to. Once that appointment is under our belt, we’ll need to do a re-entry IEP at school. They basically need to take this latest information and turn it into a safety plan/add it to his IEP.

Yesterday, all I wanted to do was sleep when 4pm hit. I think everything was finally hitting me, and I could barely move. I’ve done really well about not losing it until that point. But? He was home. I think my body was making it clear it was done, thank you very much.

So. Things are not at the “All Clear” point. I would put it this way. When he was at school, not feeling safe, and asking to be put somewhere safe? We’ll call that Code Red Critical. In the hospital, but safe? We’ll call that Critical. Now that he’s home, I’d call it Serious, but definitely not stable. We are so not Stable yet.

I would also like to thank two ladies who reached out personally. I’m not calling them out since they emailed me. But thank you. I really appreciate what you had to say. There have been some family issues that have been less than supportive, and I really appreciate that you took the time.

All kinds of things go through my head as to what to post in this kind of thing.

How is Joseph doing?
How are we coping?
How Logan handling it all?

But taking the time to actually write it down as I’m living it seems to take more energy than I have right now.

To top it all off, I landed a new client. But she’s a VA Firm, which means, I’ve actually landed 3 clients through her. In and of itself that’s a fabulous thing. But. It means I’m working full time now. And juggling like the best Vegas-juggler you’ve ever… EVER… seen. I landed her one week to the day before Joseph landed in the hospital. I’m giving her full disclosure and all, I can’t lose the gig. But it makes my stress level that much higher.

So. How is Logan handling it? Short answer is an influx of good boy syndrome. We’re trying to just let him be, and take him on our visits when he asks. That’s even a hard decision. I mean, he’s 10. Should he be vising his brother in a facility like that? On the other hand, he most definitely was getting curious. It’s a 4 hour round trip, so we would be disappearing for most of his awake time at night, and he’s been spending that with grandpa. We’re having all kinds of serious discussions he’s not a part of. His brother is “sick” somehow, but he doesn’t have a broken leg. Also, because he’s our accident prone child with a heart condition, he’s seen his share of hospitals for his EKGs, Echos, and stitches. He was questioning why he’s so far away. We’ve explained it as best we could. (How do you explain that someone tried to kill Joseph in the last hospital he was in, so we requested a different hospital in BFE?) So, he came to his own conclusions. The hospitals near us are for stitches. Okay. We’ll go with that. After his first visit when we were pulling into our driveway at bedtime for him, I said, “So, now you know what we’ve been doing at night.” He replied, “Now I know how much you love your kids.” I almost cried right there. He’s 10. He shouldn’t be having deep thoughts at 10. He should be arguing about cleaning his room, and trying to finagle more Legos. But – now that nothing is mysterious, he’s doing better with the situation. And Joseph likes it. When we leave, he hugs Logan, and since we all visit in the same room, he let some of his fellow patients know, proudly, “This is my little brother.”

How we’re coping? I don’t know. There’s lots of gallows humor, a lot of scheduling, and lots of breathing. There’s been a lot of laughing.

As for Joseph, he’s still in the hospital. We all want him better before he comes home. So, I’ve voluntarily committed him. Essentially, everyone seems to agree that Joseph is not suicidal, but OCD. The problem is, his current particular intrusive thoughts are of him dying. So he’s in the hospital until we figure out his correct meds, in the right dosage, and turn the obsessive thoughts to something else. I feel like the best and worst mother in the world, to be honest. But, if I were to be a sissy and not commit my “precious snowflake” so I wouldn’t have it on my conscience, they probably would force a two week hold. Two week hold means court. Court means record. Record means deleting potential opportunities from his future I have no business deleting from him at the age of 12. So – I suck up the judgement (including my own) and signed the papers.

He is having some trouble with his roommate and that sucks. The kid beat on him, and so Joseph told on him. Therefore the roommate calls him a snitch, and called me a whore.

And THANK YOU for having to make me explain “whore” to my 12 year old.

So I assured Joseph that the comments of a sick kid to not effect me. I’m a big girl, and he’s acting out. Poe explained to him that this isn’t the first time it’s going to happen. Boys (and sometimes men) have a tendency to break out the “Mamas” when they’ve got no other ammunition, and gave him some tips in handling situations like that. We also told Joseph to keep snitching – even if the other kids doesn’t like it. He’s there for a reason, and the hospital can’t help him if they don’t know the facts. Joseph seems to understand about all of that – but he’s seriously done with this kid.

Other than that, Joseph understands what’s going on, and is being proactive in his treatment. He also feels safe, so he’s not begging to come home. He wants to feel better, and had asked to be put somewhere safe, so this is most definitely partly his call. He’s going to be there until at least Monday. I’ll be talking to the doctors again on Monday. We had to switch the visits to every other day. I feel bad about that. But we have a truck. It’s our only vehicle. Poe works relatively close to home. So – one fill up per week is what the budget can tolerate. Filling up every other day due to the distance? The budget can’t handle that and we’re out of money. So, we switched to every other day. Joseph seems okay with it, as long as I tell him every time we go when he’ll next see us. And we’re there every time we say we are. He’s trusting us at out word at the moment. We’ve never let him down if we’ve said “ABC is going to happen.” We always add a “maybe” or a “this isn’t a promise” when we’re not sure – otherwise we always follow through consistently, including consequences when we’re talking behavior, so he’s been able to trust that we’ll be there, and so it’s not effecting him as much as it could, thank God. Every time we go, I also give him an update on what’s going on with the doctors, and what we think is going on with him, what we’re doing with his meds, etc. One – he has a brain, and needs to know what’s going on with him. Two – we’ve never shielded him from, well, himself. We’ve always been up front. Because his issues do not effect intelligence, cognitive functioning, or putting concepts together, we’ve felt it important that he has full knowledge. And when necessary, takes responsibility. He’s going to have to live this way. Plus, I want him to know that while he’s in there, he’s not forgotten. He hasn’t been tucked away as a “problem” and we’re proactively helping him from the outside. That’s very important.

That’s all I got for now.

I’m not sure what I want to say here. I’m a little numb, a little dumb, exhausted, and I still have to work, fend for another child, manage my husband’s schedule, all with a sinus infection.

But – Joseph’s in the hospital again. Suicidal ideation, with a plan. In other words, he doesn’t want to die, but can’t get the pictures out of his head (obsessive compulsive) and he was afraid he would be worn down enough to do it.

Three day hold. We’ll see how it goes.

I have to drive two hours to get to this hospital. But – it was the only one with a bed so he didn’t have to go to the previous hospital we had such a terrible experience with.

There’s a lot of good and bad in this.

Bad – compulsive thoughts
Good – he recognized them

Bad – have to call a PET team in
Good – no handcuffs, everyone’s calm, his personal psychiatric team was involved, no drama

Bad – he has to be hospitalized
Good – he recognized the need and asked to be safe

Bad – 4 hours round trip to see him for our allotted hour each day
Good – He’s not at the hospital where someone tried to kill him

I have no answers. I have no help. I have no idea what’s going to happen in the next few days. I sure as hell don’t have the money for this. I’m trying to take it day by day.

Today, we have food in the house, and he’s safe. I can’t really worry much beyond that and remain sane myself.