I feel like we're starting a new chapter in this journey of sobriety. I use the design of my blog to reflect how I feel, what we are going through, and the black with red text no longer feels right.
Rather than change the design though, which changes the design for all the postings, I would prefer to start fresh.
Please continue this journey with us at http://search4mysmile2.blogspot.com/.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Saturday, October 8, 2011
turning the corner and seeing the light
How time flies... Yesterday my daughter was discharged from IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program). What normally should have taken six to eight weeks barely lasted four, and she went only a few times those last couple of weeks. A couple of major things took place that brought IOP to an abrupt end.
First, school started at the end of September. My daughter is doing an online high school program that was supposed to be totally flexible and allowed her to move at her own pace. It is not and it does not. There are online sessions that she needs to attend each day and if she misses, she has to watch a recording of the session, which is considerably less fun than actually participating. So once classes started, my daughter was totally stressed about having to spend four to five hours each day in IOP and falling further and further behind.
Then she came down with bronchitis - most decidedly caused by stress - and so she stayed home for almost an entire week.
But the clincher was IOP itself. In a Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP), clients (aka patients) go to the program for eight hours a day where they eat two meals and two snacks and participate in group therapy. For IOP, clients are there from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. where they have lunch and eat the two snacks and participate in one group therapy session with the PHP kids. So in IOP, you are with kids who are in the early stages of their recovery.
My daughter has come so far in these short few months that it was extremely frustrating for her to have to sit there for four hours a day, doing therapeutic exercises that she had already done, listening to people talk about problems she feels she has overcome. Especially since it meant that she was falling further behind in school. On Monday, as we were driving home that first day (after she had been off a week for illness and school had already started), she burst into tears and begged me not to make her go back.
As a parent, I agreed that she had progressed way beyond what she was getting in IOP and understood her frustration. But as a former nurse, I also know that mental health patients often stop treatment as soon as they start feeling better, which in most cases is detrimental to their healing. And so, in that moment, I told her she had to go back until the therapist told her she would be discharged. This released what I can only call a rant, a non-stop stream of irrational talking where she could not hear anything I said to her. It was the kind of thing that preceded her hurting herself in the past.
So I asked her, told her, "I need to know, when we get home, are you going to do something to hurt yourself?" And to her credit, my daughter answered honestly: "I don't know. I want to" and then she resumed her rant. I tried to talk to her, but she would not hear me so I turned the car around to head back to the hospital. When she realized what I was doing, she stopped talking, promised she would not do anything to hurt herself. It took several minutes but we finally got to the point where we could talk about her frustration and constructive ways to deal with it.
In the end, she decided to call M, her Narcotics Anonymous sponsor (I'll write more about her another time). Unfortunately M was at work and could not talk right then but she gave my daughter the phone number of another one of her sponsees and encouraged her to call. My daughter called and 20 minutes later, she was calm and back to her usual self.
I called her therapist the next day and we decided that this would be her last week of IOP and she would only have to come in one more day (Friday, which was yesterday) so that she could be officially discharged from the program.
I feel like we have been in a maze, finding our way in the dark, but we turned a corner and suddenly, I can see the light shining through the exit.
First, school started at the end of September. My daughter is doing an online high school program that was supposed to be totally flexible and allowed her to move at her own pace. It is not and it does not. There are online sessions that she needs to attend each day and if she misses, she has to watch a recording of the session, which is considerably less fun than actually participating. So once classes started, my daughter was totally stressed about having to spend four to five hours each day in IOP and falling further and further behind.
Then she came down with bronchitis - most decidedly caused by stress - and so she stayed home for almost an entire week.
But the clincher was IOP itself. In a Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP), clients (aka patients) go to the program for eight hours a day where they eat two meals and two snacks and participate in group therapy. For IOP, clients are there from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. where they have lunch and eat the two snacks and participate in one group therapy session with the PHP kids. So in IOP, you are with kids who are in the early stages of their recovery.
My daughter has come so far in these short few months that it was extremely frustrating for her to have to sit there for four hours a day, doing therapeutic exercises that she had already done, listening to people talk about problems she feels she has overcome. Especially since it meant that she was falling further behind in school. On Monday, as we were driving home that first day (after she had been off a week for illness and school had already started), she burst into tears and begged me not to make her go back.
As a parent, I agreed that she had progressed way beyond what she was getting in IOP and understood her frustration. But as a former nurse, I also know that mental health patients often stop treatment as soon as they start feeling better, which in most cases is detrimental to their healing. And so, in that moment, I told her she had to go back until the therapist told her she would be discharged. This released what I can only call a rant, a non-stop stream of irrational talking where she could not hear anything I said to her. It was the kind of thing that preceded her hurting herself in the past.
So I asked her, told her, "I need to know, when we get home, are you going to do something to hurt yourself?" And to her credit, my daughter answered honestly: "I don't know. I want to" and then she resumed her rant. I tried to talk to her, but she would not hear me so I turned the car around to head back to the hospital. When she realized what I was doing, she stopped talking, promised she would not do anything to hurt herself. It took several minutes but we finally got to the point where we could talk about her frustration and constructive ways to deal with it.
In the end, she decided to call M, her Narcotics Anonymous sponsor (I'll write more about her another time). Unfortunately M was at work and could not talk right then but she gave my daughter the phone number of another one of her sponsees and encouraged her to call. My daughter called and 20 minutes later, she was calm and back to her usual self.
I called her therapist the next day and we decided that this would be her last week of IOP and she would only have to come in one more day (Friday, which was yesterday) so that she could be officially discharged from the program.
I feel like we have been in a maze, finding our way in the dark, but we turned a corner and suddenly, I can see the light shining through the exit.
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