My son, out of the blue, said I should take him back to the hospital in the morning because he doesn’t have enough “room to roam” in our house.
I said, you know if you go, you can’t just leave when you want to - he said I know that.
I asked him what he’d tell them about being there - he said because he was psychic.
I have no idea what’s going on or what we’ll do tomorrow. If he wants to go, I guess I’ll take him.
But talk about weird. One minute the hospital is the worst place he’s ever been - the next he wants to go back.
Tomorrow, he’ll be telling me he’ll never talk to me again if I take him there.
He is when I can get them into him - but they’re not working well. He doesn’t want to take anything, suddenly doesn’t think anything is wrong with him after having insight for the previous 11/12 years, etc - the classic thing.
I’m working with his case manager to get him into an intensive outpatient program that the county runs, but they only work with medicaid - she thinks they’ll convince him to take the injections that seem to help so many people. He’s pretty stubborn, so I have no idea how they’ll do that. She says they work with people like him all the time, so they have their ways. I hope she’s right, but I’m not counting on it.
My hope is that I can help him hold it together long enough for them to give it a try.
I should add that I doubt we go to the hospital tomorrow. Things change so quickly around here these days that I can’t even call it a roller coaster - it’s more like a bull in a china shop.
Yeah, I get you. Maybe they can give him something temporarily in there that may work better. Usually they only let them stay for three days, but if you speak to the doctors you can get up to a week in there, which isn’t a lot, but it’s a little bit helpful and it’s a sort of relief to you and to him. My fiancé got Haloperidol as an injection and he was on Risperidone combined, now he’s on Quetiapine in the hospital. They didn’t warn him, they just randomly gave the shot because they knew he would resist and be forceful if they told him beforehand.
I’m pretty sure he’ll be there more than 3 days unless the meds work very quickly.
This past September, he was in there for 13/14 days and they would probably have kept him longer if I didn’t push for him to come home. It was his first hospitalization, and I learned my lesson. I’ll never campaign for him to come home early again. He’s very socially anxious, so once I saw some improvement, I was worried it would do more harm than good for him to be in there, especially since there were some very large, very violent people in there.
He got moved from a less secure ward to a fully locked unit because he woke up the morning after he went in, not knowing exactly where he was, and tried to escape.
And, our insurance doesn’t have any limits. As long as the doctor says he should be there, they’ll pay.
Something my psychologist had told when I was in the hospital myself is that if the meds work very quickly, that’s not a good sign because it means that they won’t work in the long run. They should always run a test trial for about a week and then the patient should always follow up with their own choice of doctors.
When he first started Zyprexa, it made a noticable difference in 24/48 hours - a small difference, but a difference.
It was enough that he started to doubt his delusions and thing that “maybe” it was “possible” that they weren’t true.
That med worked for him for 9 years.
Unfortunately, nothing we’re trying is working on the delusions now. Things are helping the paranoia, the agitation, the mood swings, the insomnia - but not the delusions or the insight. Maybe he’s just moved into the next phase of the disorder and this will be our new normal, but I’m not ready to accept that yet.
Interesting, well maybe he got the right pill on the right try and we both have different disorders, so it could be why. MDD and SA/SZA can be very different when working in the brain. I understand what you mean by the new normal, my fiancé’s voices have diminished a lot, but now he seems more manic. It’s quite worrying because I don’t know what’s he’s going to from one moment to the next as his voice changes pitches and he starts speaking rapidly and nonstop. Kind of scary.
That is scary - as bad as it is to say, I can deal with the depression and paranoia much easier than the mania and grandiose delusions.
And, the rants, flights of ideas, etc. are exhausting.
Hopefully, they’ll find the right treatment for him while he’s in the hospital.
For my son, he’s very up & down - it’s almost like the meds work for a few hours or even a day or two, then his brain says “oh no, we can’t have that” then floods him with whatever chemicals are causing the problem. And, instead of being scared this time, he’s enjoying it for the most part - that makes it really hard to help him.
Yeah, same with mine and it’s super weird because it’s not something that’s he’s supposed to like. I’m just worried that one day he’ll decide not to take his medications, in the hospital he’s had off/on days with compliance and I spoke to him today and he sounded violent and started saying that he doesn’t believe he needs them, but will take them because he loves me. He sounded really creepy the whole time because his voice kept getting higher and he sounds ecstatic for some reason. Ever since he started on the Seroquel I feel like he’s on ecstasy or something whenever he speaks and he gets like intense and really happy/manic/excited, so it’s a very confusing period for me because I need time to process everything and it’s hard to know how to react when you see someone like that.
Some people get a little high off Seroquel - my son liked it for that reason and tried to use it, but it wasn’t as effective for him as Zyprexa.
I think once your body adjusts to it, it settles down.
I’m sure it’s very hard for them. They really can’t see that they’re sick, but the people they trust most are telling them that they are. I guess I’d be pretty confused and upset myself if that happened.
In fact, I’m kind of in that situation. His delusions right now include a lot of false memories - some I let go, but he’s sure I checked him into surgery to have a phone implanted in his head. That one I can’t let go. He can believe it’s there if he wants to - but not that I wanted it there.
I really hate that he’s getting high off it because I worked so hard to get him to stop doing drugs and ever wanting them again that I’m afraid that it might give him ideas or miss the feeling of it. My fiancé thinks/thought I’m a secret government agent ever since I met him and they often create false memories to replace traumatic ones or those that they don’t want to accept.
It’s probably not the same kind of high that he’d get of street drugs - I wouldn’t worry too much about that.
Oh - cool - you get to be part of the delusions.
My son is sure he’s psychic. His dad gets to be psychic too. Because I can’t pick up what he’s telling me telepathically, I’m just too hardheaded or too stupid to get it.
I just told him that I can’t help it - if he wants to tell me something, I have to hear the words. Otherwise, it’s just not working for me.
I think at some point, I’ll be able to respond to just about anything anyone ever tells me with a straight face & matter-of-fact response. I’ve already got a dry sense of humor, so I guess it’ll fit.
Lmao, you have no idea! One time he told me he was moving to China because two of the voices told him that I created Agenda 21. He also thought I was a hit man trying to take him out and I told him that both our dad’s name were “Michael,” and he interpreted it as, “My kill.” I asked why he asked me out if he thought that I was out to murder him and he said no idea, but that he was intimidated by how smart I am. Yes, the things you hear coming from them really prepare you for weird things out there, it’s like nearly nothing can faze you.
little update - he wants to go to the county mental health support place where he has a case manager & see a new psychiatrist tomorrow. they do walk ins on tuesdays & thursdays for up to 20 people as long as you have a referral.
i don’t know why, but i’m a little worried because sometime last week he say “he wanted to see a new doctor so he could get hydrocodone, and i couldn’t come in with him so there would be nothing i could do about it.” i know that’s not going to happen, but i’ll have to deal with any aftermath if he comes away mad.
he did call his old therapist today while i was out, 3 times, and just repeated “i need to see a doctor” over & over again each time. he does that kind of thing sometimes to me when we’re arguing, but it’s odd that he’s done it to someone else.
at least he’ll have a doctor there, but i’m afraid he’ll just walk away with more meds he won’t willingly take.
The most you can do right now is to be patient about it. It seems like he has an agenda in mind, but we don’t really know what it is. Maybe try asking what does he want to get out of this.
The medical profession is not perfect, but they are the only community group who can possibly give our family members medical treatment, which might relieve their suffering and help them recover.
I’m big on questions, but I’m learning when it’s good to ask, and when it’s good to just let things happen.
This is one of the times that I just get him in there and hope for the best.
