P.S. Her room is unlivable, and Mom told the Case Manager at the ER that we don’t have another bed for my sister right now…her mattress and boxspring are soaked and stained from urine, and especially the carpet right next to her bed. It’s truly and royally awful…and to my shock, when I went into her bathroom (she has a master suite), her toilet looked untouched! Her toilet has been ok to use all this time, yet it had been so long since she used or flushed it that all the water had drained down the bottom of the bowl! We’re going to have to get rid of her mattress, boxspring, to cut out the carpet and throw out the padding underneath. And I don’t know where she has been pooping…but these compared to her tremendous internal/suppressed issues are among the least of our concerns for now.
Really, really hoping with everything that you have managed to do so well in this situation, that the system does as well for your family. Thanks so much for the update, I was just thinking about your situation yesterday and wondering how it was going.
SInce this is your first experience with the hospital, you might be expecting too much this early on.
They’ll try to get her medicated, maybe they already have?
Then, it will look like they’re doing nothing. But, they’ll be observing her to see when she stops responding to the “inner dialog” so much, when she starts to bathe or change clothes, or talk to other people.
Last time my son went in, he paced constantly for the first few days then for another few he kept telling the staff he thought I was dead, even though he would call me several times a day & I would visit nightly.
As they get better, once she’s in a psychiatric unit, they usually have group therapy & activities that will keep the people who are well enough to participate in them busy enough - but not overly busy.
As she gets better - and before discharge - ask for a family meeting so you can discuss your concerns and learn more about how she’s doing. Discharge could be pretty quick too. My son has been in a terrible state every time he’s went in & they’ve never kept him more than 14/15 days because he responds to the meds pretty good when he’s inpatient. Also, don’t expect her to be cured when she comes home - it’s only the start of things.
And, she may go back a time or two before it’s all said & done. My son had to go inpatient 5 times in the past year before they finally found a med that didn’t give out on him.
My son was always using the bathroom properly, but when he went to the hospital for the first time after a year or so of being very ill, I literally spent every waking hour that I wasn’t visiting him cleaning his room. I threw away at least a pickup truck full of garbage away and literally scraped stuff off the carpet with a metal dustpan. It was awful - and I felt so bad for him that he had been isolating himself in there for so long.
It’s not that he did it on purpose, he just hadn’t been in a mental state where he could even see the mess for so long - and he certainly didn’t have the motivation to clean. Plus, he couldn’t tolerate me to be in there for more than a few moments at a time. His room is in much better shape now - I don’t think he wants it to go back to that state, so he’s OK with me helping him keep it up. It’ll never be as clean as I would like it, but it’s no worse than a lot of people live now.
Congrats on getting your sister to the hospital. It’s great that you followed through with the courts/police, and got your dad involved w the process. Your mom will be ok. It’s a traumatic event for everyone involved. It will take a little time for everyone’s nerves to settle down.
Who’s communicating w her and the staff at the hospital? I don’t think they will discharge her too quickly; certainly not before she is transferred to the psych hospital, so you can relax about that.
Do you really want to find out?
Congratulations on getting your sister into treatment - many of us here have been through the same process. Its hard, but not helping a family member and seeing them decompensate is unbearable.
There are some really good new early psychosis treatment centers around the world and since your sister is just starting to get treatment she’d be a good candidate for them. The are usually of very high quality and frequently free (since they are associated with research/universities). Check them out here:
I am really happy to hear there is a chance your sister will receive treatment.
Seems like all of us here have used hospital time to clean rooms… Get some rest too, if you can.
Just did some “while hospitalized” (day 1) cleaning myself. The task in itself is somehow therapeutic. Oh how we become desensitized. Yet, the sadness…
I really liked getting everything straightened out, throwing away garbage, doing laundry. Making the room welcoming again.
I do it when my son takes his yearly driving trip. He always thanks me when he gets home. I do it more for me than for him. He should be leaving soon, even with all that’s gone on here lately, I’m sure he will take his trip.
Hope, was your son sick before he got his liver transplant?
He functions so well without any medication it makes me wonder.
You can see why it took me so long to figure out there was a serious problem. He gets worse very, very slowly. And why I pushed back when the NAMI folks tried to convince me it was scz. BUT the paranoia was there before the transplant (kidney) all the prodromal stuff was years before the transplant. The first time that we are aware of his experiencing psychosis was the night after his transplant surgery so that had me convinced for years it was the Prograf. Jeb’s form of scz is the insidious type - not usually a good prognosis.
I think if you were to see him in person, you would see how sick he when he does these things. Why I worry each time he drives away. How he does what he does - I have no idea, except that he was able to experience much before the illness got so extreme. His original psychiatrist specializes in the extreme cases of mental illnesses and he found Jeb’s access to his cognition to be remarkable. And Jeb just keeps getting sicker.
This will be his third trip. The first year I didn’t hear from him the entire time. I found out later he lost his car for a few hours when parking tickets showed up in the mail. Year two, some people who encountered him hiking, begged him to not hike in the dark, they gave him their flashlights when they couldn’t convince him to stop. He did call year two to see if I could get the workers outside his hotel room to stop yelling insults at him while he was trying to sleep. So just like the scz, each year a little worse.
A man who taught Peer to Peer came to see Jeb years ago. Just came to hang out for the day and to see if he could interest Jeb in attending the class. The man was amazing and a good testament for clozapine. At the end of the day Jeb complained to me the guy hadn’t been able to play video games that well, hadn’t been able to play golf that well - Jeb said “I can’t hang out with the guy he can’t do anything”
Part of the complication with Jeb is that he does keep doing these things as he grows worse by increments.
I guess I don’t see it as functioning well. Functioning while storming around muttering and shooting dark glances at everyone, well, its hard to think of that as functioning well.
More like functioning while desperately sick.
Jeb’s psychosis is constant and debilitating. He doesn’t get time off from it anymore - in his late twenties he would still get good cycles that would last for a couple of months. Those days are long over. Now he just has bad cycles and severely worse cycles. The old “bad cycles” have become today’s “good cycles”.
The severely worse cycles are nightmares around here. We were checking the recorder to make sure I hadn’t accidentally erased that one recording we got of him in June? When we played it - both of our dogs jumped and began trembling. We are still a little shell shocked from him yelling so angrily at us on and off at all hours of the day and night for 6 weeks.
I’m so sorry. Has he been on meds for any length of time before?
No, recently he picked up new prescriptions but he never refilled them. I doubt he tried them, the time before he took meds for a few days before stopping
Do you think he just forgets them?
Amazon has clocks for the elderly for about $30 that have day of week, date, time & 3 to 5 alarms for when it’s time to take your medicine.
I got my son one because he never knows the day of the week or date - and I always have to tell the doctor that he’s never paid attention to that kind of thing even when he’s well. He’ll know what season it is and whether it’s day or night, but that’s about as much attention as he ever pays to time.
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Since he manages to take his immunosuppressives twice a day - I am sure remembering the psych meds is not the issue.
I think he prefers to not take psych meds and could probably give many reasons why he does not.
Mental illness isn’t his problem, just ask him. His problem is parents who abuse him verbally and sexually and a world of people who call him names and threaten to kill him.
He informed me he has reported us to some rape and incest hotline.
Does he respond and use that as a tool to take meds?
Sounds good. I will have to look on Amazon for one.
Thanks
Terry