Tag: depression

And then there were none…

I never thought it would happen this way.  I never thought my girl would move out to be with drippy dick.  To be with the person who mentally, emotionally, and physically abuses her.  But she did.  It happened today.  She told us last night.  I haven’t let it soak in yet.  I took a sleeping pill last night, so my mind didn’t go berserk.  Wrong way to handle it, I know.  Ironic thing is, a few nights ago – I believe it was Sunday night into Monday – I had constant nightmares about my girl and drippy dick.  I was fighting to keep her; he was fighting to take her from me.   My nightmare came true.  And I hate it.  I HATE IT. I HATE IT. I FUCKING HATE IT.  How did this happen?  How is this the life she wants?  When she told us, I asked if she was sure.  I told her I am scared for her mental and physical wellbeing.  I told her she needs to do what is right for her. I told her I will always love her.   My door will always be open, my light will always be on.

Happiness

What is happiness?  

Websters defines happiness as: a state of well-being and contentment.  

Let’s try to break that down.  

A state of well-being.  This is defined as:  the state of being happy, healthy, or prosperous.

Contentment.  This is defined as:  a state of happiness and satisfaction.

Prosperous.  This is defined as:  successful in material terms; flourishing financially.

Healthy.  This is defined as:  normal, natural, and desirable.

And so on and so on and so on.

We each have our own inner definition of happiness.  My happiness isn’t the same as your happiness.  Right?  

I feel the state of being happy when I kiss and hug my grandbabies.  But that’s not everyone’s happiness. I don’t know when I feel like I am in an actual state of well-being.  Is that horrible to say?  I thoughts of self-doubt constantly.   I struggle with feeling depressed, being enough.  That isn’t a state of well-being.

When do I feel contentment? Do I feel it?  Have I felt it?  Or do I pretend I feel it because that means I’m happy.  

Healthy. Ha, that I know I’m not.  I eat too much, drink too much, weigh too much, stress too much, sleep to little, exercise to little.  The list is endless.  Would changing these things make me healthy and happy?

Desirable. Dear God, don’t even get me started on that one.  No, I do not feel desirable.  No, I do not feel I am desirable.  I rely too much on others to make me feel that.  It is not something I have ever found on my own.

I think I can lump prosperous, successful in material terms and flourishing financially all into one group.  Do you agree?  I feel I am prosperous in some ways as I am successful in material terms; meaning I have spent too much money on material items to make myself happy, which in turn means I am not flourishing financially.

So, am I destined not to be happy because there is no way I can ever meet all the definitions of happy? 

Random thoughts on a dreary, rainy day.

Scattered

Scattered. My brain is scattered. My world is scattered. I’m trying to sit and get it all out. I can’t seem to find a place to start. There are so many places, so many things that keep rolling through my brain. The things that keep me awake at night. The things that scare the shit out of me.

I don’t know why I haven’t put anything on paper recently. Maybe because it makes it all too real for me. If I write it, it’sreal. If I don’t, I can pretend. Pretend everything is “normal.” What the hell is normal anyway. Normal, a preconceived idea of what life is supposed to be like, what you want life to be like. If only it were that simple. 

I apologize in advance it there are errors in the following. It is hard enough to write, its even harder to try to go back and proof and re-read.

My girl child. It happened again. February 6-7, 2022. He beat her again. She went to see him on February 6th, messaged me to tell me she was staying over that evening. I was at work (a new job that I have been at for only about a month). My cell phone rings and it’s my girl. I couldn’t answer immediately because I was talking to someone. She called back, I answered. She was crying and close to hysterical. She said they had a fight. I asked if he touched her. She said not as bad as last time. I asked where she was and she said she was in his car, driving to where her car was parked. I asked where he was, and she said she had no idea. They fought and she left. I pleaded with her to be safe, get to her car and lock the keys to his car in the car. I called my husband, told him what was happening and asked him to go to the parking lot where her car was parked and watch for her. He did. She never showed up. I tried contacting her with no luck. She called again, screaming, yelling, hysterical begging me to help her, begging me to save her, she was throwing up and dry heaving while she was talking to me. I got from her she went back to his house, they fought again, she ran outside and was at a convenience store and scared that he would find her. I have her on the cell phone and call 911 from my work phone. I give all the information I have to the dispatcher; he sends police. Her phone goes dead. She calls back from the convenience store phone. Still crying and begging me to help. The dispatcher tells me the officers are on scene. I hear them talking to her. She is beyond rational thought. I can hear the officers now yelling at drippy dick who found where she was. They were telling him to get away from her and stop talking and to listen to them. Drippy yelled at her for calling the cops. She blamed me. The phone went dead. I hear nothing for hours. I finally get a call from her saying she needed to figure some things out and she would be in touch with me, but she didn’t know when she would be home. Deep breaths. Trying to stay in “control,” trying not to freak the fuck out, trying not to let my new employer know what’shappening.  

She calls again on my cell. Upset, but not hysterical. She tells me that drippy dick was driving her back to her car, and he got stopped by police for expired inspection. The car smelled strongly of weed (shocking), and drippy was put through Field Sobriety Tests and then taken for a blood test. She now had to drive his car to the police station and wait for him to be releasedbefore she could come home. I offered to get her an Uber, she refused. 

I go home at the end of the workday. I message my girl a few times and finally hear back that drippy dick is driving her to her car. This would be about a 30-minute drive from where drippy lives to where her car is parked. She messages and says she would like to talk when she gets home. We wait and wait. We go to our bedroom because it’s getting later, and she isn’t home.  Again, my cell phone rings and it’s her. Again, screaming and crying for me to help her. She fears him. She got to her car, they continued to talk, and she drove away. He was now following her, and she did not know what to do. I told her to keep driving home, told her to drive to a police department. Again, she really isn’t hearing me. She stops her car at a gas station and tells me where she is. The phone again goes dead. I call 911, again. I tell the dispatcher the details of what has happened throughout the day and ask him to send officers to help her. My husband also leaves to go to the area where she is. Officers call me back. They can’t find her. I tell them the events of the day and what happened. I call my husband and relay to him that the officers can’t find her. He is in the area and sees the officers, so he stops to talk to them. I get a call from a strange number and answer. It’s her calling from one of drippy’s phones.  Her phone is turned off so we can’t track her. She will not tell me where she is but tells me she is safe and okay, and they are talking. But he is sitting in his car, and she is locked in her car and they are talking via phone.  We have an idea where she parks her car and my husband, and six officers are in that area searching and find nothing. She calls me numerous times from drippy’s phone, and the calls just keep dropping. I have no idea what is happening. Eventually, the officers must respond to other calls and my husband comes home. She eventually gets home sometime after midnight on February 8th. 

I don’t see her until the evening of February 8th because I had to work. 

Sorry, back up a minute. As the things were happening the previous day, I was advising my sons, so they knew what was happening. 

My girl messaged me at some point during the day on the 8th and said she would like to talk when I get home from work. I told her yes, we would definitely be talking. I asked my sons to be there as well. That way everyone hears what I have to say in case she isn’t thinking clearly, and she decides to go to one of them for help. She initially wasn’t happy that everyone was. I told her she needs to be honest and no lies about what happened. 

Drippy dick decided it would be a great idea to get them Xany-bars for Sunday evening (the 6th). She said she had never tried them before. They ate them. Apparently, they ate a lot.  She has little memory from Sunday evening at around 11PM to Monday evening around 6PM or 7PM. She knows they fought almost none stop. She showed us a few bruises on her legs. She was still very……. on edge. She said she could still feel whatever was in the bars was still in her. We asked that she tell us what she does remember. She knew they fought both inside his house and outside his house. She told him she was done and wanted to leave and was getting some of her things out of the back of his car. He was in the driver seat and when she reached in the back seat he started to drive away and drug her with the car, hence the road rash all over her ankle/leg. She remembered him punching her in the back of her head when she was trying to walk away from him. She said she knows at one point she was fighting for her life and had his skin under her nails when she came home. We all talked for about an hour. I could tell she was reaching her limit. She just repeated over and over that she wanted to sleep forever, she was tired of this, tired of making mistakes. She wants to be dead. We encouraged her the best we could. Knowing if we push too hard, she would flee. 

She has been at home since this happened. I know she has been in contact with drippy, but she has not seen him. Will this be her rock bottom? Will she want help this time? Will anything change? I am trying to get her to talk to a Domestic Violence hotline. I am trying to talk to her about maybe trying a wilderness program where she has no contact with anyone. Will any of it help? I don’t know. 

Watching her is hard. Hearing her words is harder. Not knowing how to help is beyond words. Seeing her beat up body is debilitating to me. She took a video of her body. The bruises are unbelievable. Her neck, throat, shoulders, arms, legs, feet, and head all have bruises. But I am sure that her brain is the most damaged. That damage doesn’t fade like a bruise. That damage is deep and permanent.

Her end

I feel her end is near. I fear her end is near.

She will not accept help. She will not listen to anyone but him.

He is killing her slowly. She is killing herself slowly.

She is allowing it. I can’t stop it.

I can’t save her. She doesn’t want to be saved.

why

The last month has been challenging, to say the least. If I remember correctly, somewhere in my last post I mentioned a shoulder injury and that my girl had been diagnosed with bi-polar as well as BPD. I am going to do my best to to stick to a timeline of recent events, but I make no promises.

Late July, I had an appointment with a surgeon to review an MRI on my shoulder. I was told I had two different rotator cuff injuries and would need surgery as soon as possible. Surgery was scheduled for Monday, August 3rd, which gave me about five days to get my shit together before my dominant arm would be in a sling for six or more weeks. There was lots of cooking and freezing, cleaning, washing – all the stuff I felt had to be taken care of.

The Friday before surgery my girl was at work. She was supposed to be working 12PM-8PM. I remember she sent me lots of messages that day complaining about the job and how much she hated it, etc. I had honestly encouraged her to quit numerous times. My reasons being: 1) she was working at this job because drippy dick thought this is where she should work and I want her as far away from his control as possible 2) her mental status was not stable and the added pressure of the job was creating issues that she didn’t need. Anyway, she ended up coming home early. As soon as she came in the house I could tell she was upset. We actually sat and talked for probably close to an hour. She was upset about her relationship with drippy. She told me that she is scared of him. He has made threats towards her and our family if she left him. She admitted he controls her life and decisions. She also said he works at the same store she works at. This was NEVER mentioned before. He isn’t there every time she works because he is a “manager” and goes to various places. He does not support her efforts to try and better herself through therapy and medication. He even told her if she leaves him she owes him money for the food, gas, gifts and things he did for her during the relationship. Oh, and she also would owe him money for his legal costs, since his arrest for Terroristic Threats was all her fault. I did my best to gently explain that fear isn’t love, control isn’t love. I used as many examples as I could and felt like I had finally crossed the finish line. She knew she had to end it, she knew she would be supported by her family and if need be she could get a Protection From Abuse Order to keep him away. I told her I would be home for at least a month with her and it would be okay. She could do this. She can live without him. Her life would be better without him.

Monday, August 3rd, I had my surgery. It wasn’t/isn’t fun. Right arm is in a sling 24/7, except when I shower. I have to sleep in a recliner because it hurts to lay in a bed. I have one more week of the immobilizer sling (a sling that has a waist band to prevent the arm from being lifted away from your body), then two weeks of a regular sling and after that I can start therapy. I returned to work on Monday, August 31st. It was too soon. I am lucky to have disability insurance where I work, but it pays less than half of my actual salary. Let’s be honest. In this crazy world where prices of groceries, gas, basically all necessities are sky high – half my usual salary started to take it’s toll on the back account. So, I’m back to work in an office with one arm and it hurts.

Let’s now fast-forward, one week after surgery. At some point during this week I noticed a very fresh hickey on my girls neck. This meant she lied to us, again, about being with a friends and was with drippy. Drippy just loves to put his mark on her. It’s like a big fuck you to anyone who truly cares about my girl. It disgusts me. I asked my girl about it and got the silent treatment. I started noticing more and more irritability in my girl, more unstable behavior and actions. I talked to her about it. She was put on new meds when the bi-polar diagnosis was made and she felt the meds were making her worse and she felt extremely suicidal. She was very proactive in calling her psychiatrist and talking to him about it. She even made an appointment to go see him. He actually increased the frequency of the meds and asked her to give it another few weeks to work.

Two weeks after surgery – I’m going stir crazy being in the house, confined in a sling. I make plans with a couple to hang at their house on Friday night. Me & hubby are there, my girl is working a 12PM-8PM shift and will be stopping at their house after work. Around 6PM I get a call from my girl. She is crying. She said she is done, she can’t work there anymore and drippy just broke up with her. I try to convince her to stay there and we will get her, she said she needs to get away from him and she will drive to our friends house. She gets there and we talk and talk and talk. I am fortunate to have this friend. She has, unfortunately, been through a similar situation in a past relationship. She talked to my girl about the PFA, made a list of the good and bad parts of the relationship with drippy and just made sure my girl knew she wasn’t alone and it wasn’t her fault and she could get through this. We talk about the possibility of getting an emergency PFA. Because of my employment, I am all to familiar with the process and start making calls to put things in motion. After my girl is calmed down as much as possible, we leave our friends and go home. It’s decided we will talk about the PFA and other issues the next day.

The next day, Saturday. My girl decides she doesn’t want to do the emergency PFA and we will wait until Monday morning and file for a PFA at the courthouse. No one will be shocked to know when Monday comes she decides she doesn’t want to do it. She tells me she hasn’t heard from drippy at all and she has him blocked in every way possible.

The following week or last week. My girl was sad, but seemed to be kinda okay. She was supposedly with friends almost every evening. And then on Friday afternoon I saw the hickey. And of course when I called her out about it, it’s turned around on me. I don’t understand, I don’t get it, she has a mental illness, she is fucked up. The past week has been very hard for me and I try not to make it about me, I swear I don’t. I started back to work on Monday, and I hate being at work. I have been the recipient of my girls anger and hatred and resentment and everything for the past month. I have been lied to and deceived. I have been hurt.

Last night. Got home from work and could immediately tell my girl was in a downward spiral. We went to a local restaurant for a quick bite. We being me, my husband, my girl and a very dear friend who has seen the bad side of my girls illness. We order, my girl doesn’t order any food. My girl typically always drives herself when we go somewhere so she can leave if she feels overwhelmed. While we are sitting at the restaurant I can just feel my girl falling into her black hole. I try to get her to talk and she just gets teary eyed. She leaves, promising me that she will get food for herself at some point. Oh, I should have probably mentioned this earlier, but over the last month my girl rarely eats. She may eat every two days. I have to watch her and what she eats. She tries to eat and her mind/body fight her. She will get a few bites in and the nauseous feeling hits. Anyway, after we are finished we head home. My girl is sitting outside and we sit with her. Conversation starts and it’s not a good conversation. I lost count how many times she told us she doesn’t want to be alive, she doesn’t want to wake up anymore. She is tired of fighting and of everything. At one point my girl and I go inside and we continue to talk, like real feeling talk. I am trying desperately to get her to agree to finding more help, going in-patient somewhere. I felt raw and exhausted as we were talking. And then my husband comes inside and asks my girl why drippy is on a motorcycle in front of our house. My reaction was stunned silence. I had no reaction except to walk away from everyone. I went upstairs to my bedroom, but I couldn’t believe what I had heard and had to see it for myself. I walked out the front door and there he was on his new motorcycle. He stared me down. So many words were waiting to pour out of me. But I didn’t do it. I didn’t say anything. I turned around and went back inside leaving my husband and dear friend to watch over my girl. At some point my girl and drippy decided to go for a walk around our development. I went back to my room and crawled into bed and cried. After a short time my husband came into the room. I heard him rustling around and knew what he was doing. He was getting his gun. Drippy has a few guns, illegally of course, and has threatened our family. No, my husband didn’t go outside waving it around or threatening anyone. It was a precaution. But I couldn’t stand it. I went back outside and told my husband I couldn’t lose him because of something stupid drippy did. It was enough that I was going to lose my girl, I couldn’t lose them both. We decided enough was enough. We closed/locked up the house while my girl and drippy were on their walk. My girl knows how to get in the house if she decided to and she did come in about an hour later.

I don’t know when the last time I cried myself to sleep was, but I did last night. I am beyond drained and exhausted. I have nothing in me to give anymore. I can’t save my girl. I can’t make her want to live. I can’t keep taking on the weight of her illness, as well as all the other family drama. Some of the family have seen the ugly side of my girls illness, some haven’t. Until you see it and experience it first hand, you can’t understand it. It’s ugly and cruel. I need help in a way I have never felt I needed help before. Help deciding what to do from this point forward. Today is therapy day for my girl. I have no clue if she will go. She skipped her group therapy two weeks in a row, but did individual therapy. It’s just not enough. If I commit her based on her comments, she will play the system and be out within 3 days. How do I figure out how much guilt I can live with? If I kick her out and she kills herself, will I really be able to not blame myself? If I kick her out and she gets beat again, will I be okay with that?

I have nothing left. When I am home and my girl is home I don’t want to be there and I hate that. When my girl isn’t home, I feel I need to stay home because I don’t know what might happen. I am lost in a never ending cycle.

Where do I turn, what do I do? Is my girl alive right now? What will I find when I go home from work? Did she decide she can’t do it anymore? Every fucking minute of every fucking day these are the questions that loop in my brain. It never stops.

Let’s play a game…

Everyone likes games, right? Play the what if game with me. It’s a game my mind likes to play at 2AM when I need sleep. A game that I play as I cry in the shower. A game that makes my heart race and my blood pressure rise. A game that I play everyday, whether I want to or not.

What if – my girl tells me she’s going to point A (a friends) but really goes to point D (drippy dick)? And I have no idea where she is or how to help her if she gets in trouble.

What if – I tell my girl that I feel very little joy in my life, and her disorder is to blame?

What if – I tell my girl I can’t stand being in the house with her?

What if – I tell my girl I feel I am walking on eggshells all the time?

What if – I tell my girl I want my life back?

What if – I tell my girl I’m allowed to feel happy, sometimes?

What if – I tell my girl that my world has to stop revolving around her?

What if – I tell my girl I am becoming sad and depressed, too?

What if – I tell my girl I am not looking forward to a week vacation with her along?

What if – my girl keeps lying?

What if – my girl never knows happiness in her life?

What if – the drug of choice gets stronger and scarier?

What if – I tell my girl she has to decide if she is living here or with drippy?

What if – my girl decides to live with drippy and gets beat, again?

What if – my girl doesn’t go to therapy tomorrow (for the third time in a row)?

What if – my girl continues to cut her arms and now her thighs?

What if – one of those cuts hits just the right spot?

What if – things never change?

What if – I finally unload all this on my girl and all my feelings and thoughts come pouring out of my mouth and I can’t stop them?

What if – my honesty pushes my girl over the edge?

What if – my girl can’t handle my truth?

What if – those are the last words I ever get to say to my girl?

What if, what if, what if, what if?

What if is a fucked up game to play.

Reality

This is my daily reality. My beautiful girl child has Borderline Personality Disorder. This is what it looks like.

Self harm and this was a mild one

It’s 2020. People dealing with mental health issues are not getting the proper help. I can’t help my own child. It is devastating. It is sad. It is scary.

A Jumbled Mind

My mind is a jumbled mess. Unfinished sentences, words I can’t quite seem to find, all floating around making a mess. I thought I had reached my lowest point in dealing with my girl child’s issues. I try and pretend everyday that I am fine. I’m sure I am selling the idea that I can handle it all. I’m not falling apart on the inside and I am certainly not falling apart on the outside. Pretty sure none of that is true. There are definitely people in my life who ignore the signs they might see as I spiral downward. It’s much easier to ignore the bad. And I get that. I really do. But please stop telling me that I just have to put “it” out of my mind. I can’t do that and I will not do that. Because that “it” is my little pink baby girl. A life that I promised to protect and love and support.

The past week has been one of my worst. Not because of any one thing that I can point to, but the culmination of the last four years. At least that is my opinion. When I am dealing with the chaos of living among my girl child’s issues, I have to stay strong. I have to be her support, still go to work, still take care of a house, I still have to make dinner every night, still babysit my grandbaby three or four nights a week, still make time for the other people I care about. I HAVE TO! If I don’t, I fail – right?

As of right now things with the girl child are what I would call stable-ish. I think this is why my body is now “releasing” the stress. She had a job for about two weeks and quit. She has lied about chlamydia boy and seeing him. He has broken up with her on three occasions creating some fairly severe breakdowns. She has had a severe bladder/kidney infection (again) which landed her in the ER for dehydration. The antibiotic made her sick, so she couldn’t/wouldn’t eat and drink. (Side note: She was at the family doc in May 2019 and weighed 131, she is currently about 115. But I am positive she is again smoking weed because I have seen a significant increase in what she is consuming throughout a day.) I finally found a place to do a psych evaluation on her. She had the first appointment the end of July. She is scheduled for a total of 7 hours of testing over a three day period. After all results are combined and reviewed, she should have a better understanding of what her mental health issues are. During the evaluation the doc mentioned she wouldn’t be surprised if my girl child has been dealing with a learning disability that school never picked up on. The girl child promises she will do what is recommend to help herself. She has made these promises before…… So yes, this is stable-ish for our family.

On the physical side, I have had some sort of weird throat thing happening for over a week. My voice sounds very hoarse, my throat doesn’t hurt. It’s weird. About two years ago I was diagnosed with fibro. I deal with it cause I have to. Some days are better than others. This week and last week have been hell. For some reason my worst areas are my elbows, shoulders and feet. Picking up a bottle of water hurts, picking up the phone at work hurts. There is also a “brain fog” that goes along with fibro. Not sure if this is the cause of my jumbled mind or it’s a combination of everything.

I also find myself eating, a lot. And this is something that makes me feel so incredibly awful. Almost eight years ago I had weight loss surgery. That’s an entirely different story. And I was successful. I have never been prouder of myself. I now find myself turning to my old friend food. Food was always there for me. Food made me feel loved. Food doesn’t judge.

The jumbled mind has just been awful. At work I don’t think anyone has really noticed. I have the occasionally stumble over finding a word or remembering a name. I think I’m handling work pretty well. Outside of work I feel like a person that might be described as “slow”. I was at Walmart to get specific items, I even had a list. I found myself just wandering aimlessly having no idea what I was getting, not remembering the list I had and just buying random shit. During conversations my mind just wonders off. My brain derails from the train of thought and I don’t get it back. It’s GONE. I was driving one of my dogs to the groomer, drove past not one, but two roads that I needed to turn on to get to the groomer.

And the worst thing lately is my lack of sleeping and the nightmares I have when I do sleep. I had what felt like and seemed like a full length movie type nightmare where I had to plan my girl child’s funeral. Start to finish. Throughout the nightmare the actual reason for her death was never actually said but the feel was it was suicide. I had to pick where to hold the funeral, what she would wear, what pictures I wanted of her displayed, how her hair should be, how her make-up should be, get her nails done the way she liked them. Details that I never want to deal with or think about again. The way I had to console other people through the funeral and was never really allowed to grieve the way I think I needed to. No one would see what I was going through. I felt so selfish the next day.

A few nights ago I had another horrible nightmare. This time I was holding my grandbaby and was putting her to sleep. She was very small and wrapped in what reminded me of a hospital blanket. Almost like she was a newborn (she is actually 10 months). I was rocking her in my arms to sleep. At some point I realize she isn’t breathing. I scream for my husband. I lay her on a table and unwrap the blanket. She isn’t breathing. Her eyes are just slits, but I can see the beautiful blue color of her pupils. I am screaming for someone to call 911, I call 911. I am on the floor sobbing and crying and asking for help. My husband is the only there and he can’t/won’t go close to her. I go to the table and start CPR. I can feel my mouth going over her nose/mouth to give her breaths. Some kind of EMS personnel are now there and telling us its too late. I won’t listen. I’m sobbing and wailing and the feeling of guilt that I killed her. She died in my arms is overwhelming me in the nightmare. I woke up with swollen eyes and a throbbing headache. I have not told anyone about these nightmares. They were too real. They feel too “close” to share. I feel like they are very selfish dreams. I don’t really know how to explain it. Why was I making a nightmare like these about me? Why am I trying to get people realize what I am feeling? UGH

Deep Sigh…..

Today, I am tired.  The kind of tired that you feel in your bones, in your soul.  It makes my body and mind exhausted.  I woke up this morning wishing it was time to go to bed.  I don’t like feeling that way.  

I realize I haven’t posted about my daughter and her struggles. I thought I had finally found a place to send her for treatment. I was in contact with an admission specialist. I asked all the questions I could think of regarding treatment, doctors, medication, social interactions, etc. We discussed cost, including insurance. I was ready to make the jump, take out a second mortgage to finally get my daughter the treatment. But, there was just this feeling I had. I read the emails from the admission specialist again and again. I reviewed my notes from conversations with the admissions specialist. Was this too good to be true? Or was I just being negative because so many things had fallen apart during this journey.

I can’t explain why I never thought of doing a general Google search of the facility to find if places like this were reviewed. WOW – was I in for a wake up call. Five deaths reported at the facility in five years along with horrible stories from patients that had attended programs at the facility. Now, I totally understand that there are people who will bitch and complain about anything and everything. I took these reviews with a grain of salt. No facility is going to please everyone and was the person writing the review open to treatment or did they fight it? But five deaths in five years???? The deaths really made me nervous. I did more digging, more reading, more digging, more reading…Someone posted a recommendation to search the facility name and the civil law suits against the facility. I did that and found the facility is and has been under investigation surrounding these deaths. It has been fined for not following proper protocol when dealing with suicidal patients. It has been fined for a number of violations. None of the fines can bring those people back. Law suits can’t bring those people back. And I will never know the true circumstances of the deaths. But how do I send my daughter there?

The facility admission specialist kept contacting me about the information she had provided (cost, insurance, etc). I sat down and reviewed the numbers again, with the new information I had from the reviews. I am going to copy the email from the facility, but remove names so I don’t end up in a law suit!

The email reads:

I got the insurance checked in regards to XXX. We are out of network and we would be looking to use the out of network benefits. Since we are out of network this means that we do not have a contract with XXX and we can bill them whatever we decide. Facility name has decided to bill insurance $2,700 a day. Now some insurance companies pay very close to this and those polices we can work with and then there are other insurance companies do not pay any of this, those polices we cannot work with at all. Then there are insurance companies that are right in the middle, where they pay maybe half of the $2,700 a day.

With this being said, your insurance falls right in the middle. The pay but not enough. So we are looking to collect $20,000 upon admission. This $20,000 will over the deductible and out of pocket for out of network and it will also help with the poor reimbursement that we have with this XXXX policy.

Let me know if the $20,000 is feasible and if it is not let me know what is!

After reviewing the numbers, I had questions. After reading the reviews, I had questions. My questions included how long the stay was for, would my daughter be in a hospital enviroment (as I had read in reviews) or actually be in a facility like the ones on the facility website? Here is my first response regarding the length of stay.

The response states: The $20,000 will cover however long insurance authorizes – The length of stay will vary depending on XXX’s individual needs and the authorization from the insurance company.  The authorization process requires review for medical necessity every 3-5 days.  We will do everything we can to advocate on XXX’s behalf and maximize her stay with us. That being said, there are no guarantees on length of stay, however Facility Name will guarantee a minimum length of stay of 14 nights regardless of insurance authorization, and will not request any additional funds for any nights authorized by insurance over the minimum guarantee.

So, I pay $20,000 upfront at admission, plus the facility will get about $1,300 for whatever time is deemed necessary and is authorized. Let’s be honest. We all know that the insurance will approve maybe a week. And that $20,000 gets my daughter 14 days of treatment. Seriously? What can be accomplished in 14 days? There is also a highlighted section on a financial document I was sent indicating after signing the document I agree to keep all financial terms and agreements made between Facility Name and myself completely private and confidential.

So, now what? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. I just know I’m tired.

Graduation Season, a time for reflection my ass…

The world is in the midst of graduation season. Kids graduating from pre-school through college. While this is a time for celebration for many families, it creates a world of hurt for me. If you are reading this and we are friends, please do not take offense to what I am saying. I am beyond happy for you and your kids. I love seeing the graduation posts on social media and I appreciate being included as these milestones are celebrated.

Unfortunately, the posts and celebrations makes my heart hurt for what my girl has never experienced and may never experience. My girl graduated from high school last year. I remember asking her how she felt about it, was she excited, etc. She told me she never thought she would be around to graduate and she’s actually surprised. She felt some sense of accomplishment, but even that feeling was clouded with negatives. She could have done better, she should have done better, she could have cared more, she should have cared more…..

This is another one of those times where I can’t help but think if this is what I am feeling, what is she feeling? We all know that social media is not an accurate representation of real life. But that doesn’t mean that seeing post after post of graduation pictures, stories of success and plans for the future isn’t creating another seed of self doubt in kids that are struggling.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I am in no way saying these events should not be celebrated or shared. I’m just saying it makes me sad for what I wish my daughter experienced or may experience. It makes me sad that it seems like every accomplishment is overshadowed by a laundry list of negatives. Negatives that shout far louder and clearer than any positive thought or feeling.