3 Short Weeks Ago

I took these photos 3 short weeks ago.  It was the end of summer, the end of an era.  Since then my little girl in the green shirt has been hospitalized 3 times.  She is there now.  Again.

As she says, it's not fair.  She had been home only 2.5 days.  It was not her overt behavior that got her there this time, it may be her meds.  At any rate, she reported hallucinations and auditory hallucinations for two days in a row.  This is a new one, and I'm not entirely sure it's not another call for attention.  But since she told her teacher on Thursday the voice was telling her to kill herself, she ended up as admitted, again. 

That is when the hospital staff got to see the other side of Ava, and they were frankly shocked.  She did not want to be admitted and she put up a tremendous fight.  One of the nurses escorted me ahead, as she said, she thought it might get "hard for me to watch", but I think she meant ugly.  I informed her I had seen it before, it's what got her admitted the first two times.  As we were walking down the long hallway to the children's unit, the intercom came on "Code One---Assessments!  Code One---Assessments!" and since we had just left assessments, I looked at the nurse and said "is that her?" to which she ruefully nodded an affirmative.  Then hospital personell starting flying past us in the direction of assessments.

I wished I had a team of hospital personell at my house before she was admitted the last two times.  Then I remembered, I had, the last time, it took 3 EMT workers to get her strapped on the gurney, and the screams could have awoken the dead, and surely did wake up the neighborhood.  The last thing I heard that night before they rolled her into the back of the ambulance and closed the doors was a blood curdling "I WANT MY MAMA!"

But that was then.  This was now.  They put me in a seperate  office on the children's unit.   And it was about 7:30pm so they were in the middle of family visitation.  I heard them bring her in about 10 minutes later.  Well, I heard her, let me say.  She was still screaming "I don't want to go!" and they must have taken her somewhere that was soundproof because after that it was much harder to hear anything although I heard some intermittent yelling/screaming.  The floor nurses were standing around with their mouths open, 3 of them were standing out side the room I was in, and I could see them because the room had big glass windows.  They were saying "Oh my word!" and "I have never seen her act anything like that before!"  and on, and on and on.  I finally walked out there, and of course it took them a few seconds to realize I was her mother.  I said "This is the kind of behavior that got her here the first two times.  But this time, there is a problem with her meds, and she does not want to come in, and that's why she's mad"  One nurse said "But she is always such a sweet little meek little introverted thing!"  I just looked at them, and they moved off.  And I don't care what they thought of all that.  It is what it is.  The nursing supervisor flew into the room and asked if they could have permission to administer a sedative, that she was very aggressive.  I said yes but don't give her a pill, she probably wont take it, she said no, it would be a shot.

The nursing supervisor came back in a little while later and she was still out of breath.  I could relate.  We went over some formalities, and then she said I needed to go, they did not want Ava to see me, as that would continue to upset her.  So I left.

I don't cry alot, but I do seem to weep.  As difficult as it is, I have to do the hard thing in order to have a hope that she will get better.  I hate to have to restrain her or have her restrained, and yet her behavior sometimes demands it.  She hates restraint more than anything, and I get the feeling this might go back to  probable sexual abuse.  The nursing supervisor did ask me about that again, and I told her it was very likely, so she might have had the same thoughts.

I have to give Ava credit where it's due.  In her short hiatus at home, she was very motivated to control her anger and work with the tools she had been given.  One of Ava's issues is manipulation, and the lying that comes with it.  It seems to be twisted very deeply into her pyche.  It was probably her survival mechanism in Haiti, and it probably served her well there.  Because of this, I have my doubts that the hallucinations were real, but maybe they were real for her.  She was using terminology to describe them that she had learned at her previous stays at the hospital.  These were words she would not have known/used before.  So it's just a big enigma, but when kids on meds start talking about killing themselves, you can't afford to mess around.  You just can't. 

Sorry for the downer, people.  I hope things will be looking up for us soon and I can write a happy post. Previously the staff there have told me that she is totally able to rehabilitate, it's just going to take alot of work on alot of fronts.  I needed to hear that, because sometimes it gets so hard, you just wonder if it will ever end, and what is going to happen; with her, with the rest of the family, with me.   In the meantime, I'm leaning on the Lord, and if you are the praying type, I ask for your prayers. 

Thank you.