My Son's First Time Inpatient - Worst than When He Went In?

It sounds like your son is very compassionate, and that he probably learned it from you. I hope everything continues to improve. Totally agree with you about peace and quiet! Also wonder if everyone uses a pillbox to keep up with meds. I don’t know why I never thought of that, but when my son was in residential they taught him to do that. It makes keeping up with his medicine much easier. We keep it in the kitchen and also have an alarm which goes off in there as a reminder.

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We’ve tried pillboxes - then the pillboxes get lost.

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We use a pill box. It is one that has built in alarms. Ours is also in the kitchen, and I check it and fill it for him. I think it also works as a bit of a reminder what day of the week it is!

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Tuesday’s update - 1 day out of the hospital.
He slept well, and has been up today. He’s a little agitated, not the bad pacing, but lots of walking around.
No mention of the delusions today, but it’s still early - I heard a lot about them last night.

He’s taking the meds - grudgingly & a little mad about it.

He doesn’t think he was or is psychotic - he said the reason he went to the hospital is because everyone else suggested it.

I spoke to his psychiatrist today ahead of the Friday appointment. He said I should come into the office (I always do) and just say matter of factly that he’s been saying this & that without having any judgement or anything. So, that’s what we’ll do. I’m scared to do it, but I will. He also said that if he doesn’t like the Zyprexa, there are some new things he will suggest, so that’s good.

His case manager called as well, and he has an appointment for Monday. She said they talk to people about reasons to take their medication all the time, so we’ll see how that goes. She sounds very nice, but very young, which makes me a little nervous too. She also said she would talk to him about the injections - I told her I’d already talked to him a little bit about it because I have to take a med for severe acid reflex that I’m always forgetting to take. I told him I’d take a shot in a heartbeat - which I would. His response was, think how thick something for heartburn would be going into your body, but at least he didn’t straight up say it was a bad idea.

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Great to have a case manager already. Good job. The medicine is gradual release and so far we’ve seen less pacing, and a lot more communication. The delusions are still there though. Our son just is on Invega Sustaina and I haven’t heard complaints. Good luck

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The case manager was already in the works before he went into the hospital - that’s taken months to get.
They actually assigned him to one while he was inpatient.

My son refused one when they asked in the hospital. It on my things to do list.

I think he would have refused from the hospital too - his therapist at county mental health talked him into it, then it took forever to get it done. And, more paperwork.

She did it because he went in on the substance abuse side because they explained they had more services, but after talking to him for months, she agrees that substance abuse is not his main problem. I could have told her that - he’s tested clean at every psychotic break. So, it’s her way of setting it up for him to go to the medical side if needed.

He will definitely self medicate if he has the slightest opportunity, but I think it’s because none of the drugs has ever worked perfectly without other issues, and he’s looking for a way to feel normal more than high. My opinion as a mother, so it’s definitely slanted in his favor, but that’s what I truly believe.

I think she might have talked him into it by saying they could help him with housing & other things like that if he ever needed it. And, he wants to eventually try to live on his own, like anyone his age would want to do.

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I think once he has a case manager they can do a lot such as get them assigned to someone to stop in on them and take them places and services.

They can - I know someone who has a son that they do all that for.

The trick will be to get him to take advantage of all that. For now, I’ll just be glad if they talk to him about med compliance so it’s not always me.

Wed - Day 2 out of hospital - he seems to be doing pretty well, but still talks about his delusions if any subject relates to it, not as urgently as before, but still just as convinced. He talks about them very matter of factly, just like you’d talk about your reality.

Do you mind my asking what are his delusions?

  1. he is the inventor of something he has a name for - I can’t put that in case he’s searching for it. But it’s basically something made of recycled materials that can reach outer space in a few minutes.
  2. there is one of these things at the Vatican (we’re not religious, so I don’t know where that came from), and because of this, they have a lot of money for him in an account. he needs to call our bank to access it.
  3. the president talked to him for a few seconds through the TV and gave him a script for cocaine - we are not supporters of Obama
  4. he is friends (not in person, but online I guess) with the creators of a TV show he likes and they ran his TV channel while he was in the hospital
  5. this one i don’t really understand, but he can focus on pixels and go through the TV so that he is personally Bugs Bunny
  6. he can predict when people will die
  7. he has a direct line to NASA because of #1

It’s better now, and he talks about other things too, but anything remotely related to any of this stuff, even the discussion of money, will get it started.

It was a lot easier when he thought government agents were coming to the house to kill him because he knew all about time travel. That, I could handle, because it scared him, and I could reassure him.

These thoughts make him happy, and anything that’s not backing him up means that we don’t believe him - and that’s why he had to go to the hospital.

I’m thinking when we go to the pdoc, I’m going with people talking to him through the TV and he can somehow be Bugs Bunny.

You know, reading back over that, it sounds kind of manic, doesn’t it?

Maybe he has Bipolar I instead of Schizophrenia - he’s still on the psychotic NOS diagnosis according to the hospital.
There are other people in the family with Bipolar I, and his father has been diagnosed with adult ADHD, that research says is closely related to Bipolar - and, I have always thought he’s Bipolar, which he won’t disagree with. His moods change so fast that we’ve sort of numbered them, and I always ask for #99.

Edit: Well, F Me - not even 72 hours out & I caught him not taking his meds. He says Zyprexa is too bad for his mind & he’ll take whatever the doctor switches him to on Friday morning.

I’ve learned my lesson - I will absolutely never, ever try to convince anyone to let him out of the hospital again, and I’m not going to feel guilty if he has to go back in. I’ve been bargaining with him in exchange for him to take his meds, and he lied straight to my face. I’ll continue trying the LEAP program, but I’m really mad right now. Good thing it’s bedtime.

Ah, you are truly a lifelong member of the club nobody wants to join!

Hope you got some rest - I usually end up scrubbing something when I’m mad over stuff like that.

Your son has some delusions similar to my son - my son believes himself to have invented some special kind of computer, and either the military or the aliens have it now - I lose track.

I’m calmed down - a little - today. But maybe this is what I’ll need to emotionally detach a little.

He was up all night, I’d say he’s going into 36 hours. And, has a new delusion today.
Some airline that’s supposed to take passengers to space, that’s his too.

So, he should be more worried about me than I should be worried about him - because he makes way more money than I do.

I already knew he didn’t want to take the Zyprexa because he says it’s really, really bad for you, and I will admit that it’s not great. He still says he’ll go to the doctor tomorrow and try what they agree he should take - because it’s his doctor and not the hospital’s doctor.

But, I’m just waiting for his new reason to not take whatever he gets this time.

If he has to go back to the hospital at any point for going off his meds again, I’m going to move hell and high water to get him on a long-term injection.

Our boys are a lot alike. My son has the same doctor when he is in the hospital, but he always is more suspicious of his orders when they come from the hospital.

If your son has done well previously on Zyprexa, it is likely the doctor will want to continue to use it. But it is available in long-acting injectable form, so I agree that could be a solution for you.

Hang in there.

I spoke to his doctor on Tuesday & he said there were lots of things that are newer, so he’d just find something he likes better.

And, the Zyprexa has worked, but not at 100%, so there could be something better out there. Seroquel didn’t do much, even at really, really high doses, and he was never willing to try anything else.

The only problem is his Pdoc is pediatric because he started seeing him when he was 17. So, we’ve already discussed that it’s time for him to see a new doctor - not that this one would refuse to see him while he’s not stable.

He seems to trust this one even when he’s at his sickest, so I’m not excited about the change, although I do agree an adult doctor would know more about adult drugs and how whatever he has will progress as he ages.

Wow, he is one interesting person! Don’t give up. My son is against taking the meds and is now on the shot and even though he said he wasn’t going to take another one, he has had four so far.

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That’s good to know about the shots. If it comes down to it, I’d really like for that to happen.

My son is like both of his parents - very stubborn & very determined. He knows it all, and can take care of anything and everything all by himself. At least he came by it honest.

As far as interesting goes, I always loved his imagination, but it’s kind biting him in the butt right now.

When he was very young, he was diagnosed with a learning disorder that didn’t fit anything specific, so it was another NOS category, but it involved deficits in short-term, long-term and processing memory. That meant he had a very hard time memorizing things that he wasn’t interested in, but he scored off the charts on “coming up with unique solutions to unusual problems” - in other words, he thinks so far out the box, he pretty much doesn’t even know the box is there. It made school very hard for him, and that stress paired with living with young-ish parents who were still finding their own way in life, some genetic tendencies, and being a very sensitive soul may have became the perfect storm for him. Or, maybe it would have happened no matter what - no way of knowing for sure.

I was so proud of his imagination, and still am, because you can teach someone to read & write if you keep at them, but you can’t teach creativity very well. He’s very artistic and won some regional awards for his work in high school, and he taught himself how to play a few different instruments pretty well. Some of that brightness is gone, and in it’s place, he has these very intricate delusions.

In the past, he had a break first because I was putting pressure on him to do better in school in 9th grade.
Then, when he had to do behind the wheel training for his driver’s license.
Next, when he was entering his senior year of high school and didn’t know what the future would bring after graduation.

I’m thinking this time, it’s that he was hitting his late 20’s, and it hit him that he’s not a kid anymore - other people his age are settling into jobs and relationships, and he’s kind of stuck. So, he’s made up this dream world inside his head of inventions and tons of money and knowing important people - and it’s making him happy, and he’s not going to want to give it up. I guess I wouldn’t either - it’ll be like waking up from one of those awesome dreams and just wanting to go back to sleep so you can keep it going.