On August 9th, 2023 at 2 AM I got a phone call from our child Grayson. I was sleeping soundly and Nicole was sleeping in the living room because my CPAP was less than optimal. My first thought was: well fuck they snuck out and can't get back in or the piece of shit car won't start or something.
The next words I heard changed our entire lives. "Dad, I think I need to go to the hospital, I took a bunch of pills and I'm really sick." I got to their room and assessed them (first aid 101). They had vomited quite a bit but we weren't sure what would happen next. I got dressed, loaded them in the car and headed for Unity Pointe ER in Rock Island. I woke Nicole before I left and told her to meet us there.
At the ER, Grayson was assessed and put on a hold for psych and a Pediatric ICU bed in Peoria because there are no PICUs in the Quad Cities anymore. The drugs she took were her mental health meds and allergy pills and the doctors were concerned about the mental health meds.
Once we got the approval for Peoria, they were transported there by ground ambulance, Nicole and I took one car home, packed a bag and drove to OSF Peoria as fast as safely possible. OSF was actually wonderful for them and we were hoping for a Psych bed across the street at Carle Methodist which had adolescent in-patient.
Getting them evaluated for a bed was a challenge. The wait continued for days, This started on a Wednesday, and they were finally seen late Friday evening and determined that they needed in-patient care. Unfortunately Carle had no beds. Finally we got a call at the hotel at 730 AM on Sunday that Heart Grove in the Chicago burbs had a bed, so we agreed. The worst mistake we made in the whole ordeal.
They were transported to Heart Grove and we drove home. They put them in a bed that was on the children's unit, not the Adolescent Unit. They took the underwear and socks we sent brand new in the package and didn't give them to them for several days.
By Monday night when Grayson got their call home, she was sobbing, she'd seen a doctor, and a counselor but the promised group hadn't started. They weren't doing anything school related and couldn't even log on to their Chromebook to check school work at Rocky.
By Tuesday night things had gone down hill, they still hadn't been allowed them a shower, clean clothes or underwear. Mind you this is a 16 year old child who was assigned female at birth. They desperately begged us to come get them.
Wednesday was family visit day and Nicole and I made the determination that Grayson was coming home come hell or high water. When we arrived we demanded that they be released. We showed documentation that we had locked all our meds, made an appointment with their therapist and scheduled an appointment with a Psychiatric APRN to get the meds right. The doctor refused to release them.
We begged them to let us take her AMA. We were threatened with DCFS. I responded to the threat with "I work for them, it's not Medical Neglect if it revolves around mental health and they are not actively suicidal" This was met with crickets.
In the end, we relented. By the time we had the family visit at 7 PM, Grayson's clothes and underwear had been miraculously been found and they agreed they could make it to the following Monday because it was a 5 day stay and weekends didn't count.
I picked them up Monday and we came home. Thankfully for us this ended the bad part and we started rebuilding.
Lessons Learned
The first lesson learned is you really never know when something like this might happen. Grayson had a diagnosis but was on meds. The night of the 8th they regaled us with school stories and we watched the Cubs. Everyone went to bed happy. They were doing great and had weather many storms Sophomore year and made it through
The trigger was a falling out with an on line friend that we had no clue about. It sent them downhill in a hurry and they wrote in their note (we found the note cleaning out their room-Gut fucking punch), that they wanted to go to sleep and not wake up.
Fortunately for us the allergy meds counteracted with the mental health meds and made them puke.
The second lesson is make sure if your kid is on meds and in therapy make sure they keep their appointments. We admittedly got lazy and if they wanted to skip those we let them.
The final lesson we learned was that the mental health hospital system in this country is terrible. We are middle class professionals with good jobs and insurance and skills navigating health care and social work. We can't imagine how poor people could deal with this.
The Good News
After our scare last year. A lot of changes were made. Meds locked up, more scrutiny of friends, more engagement. Grayson, has decided to be a teacher. They are graduating High School early in December with a 3.97 GPA. They are already accepted and going to Northern Illinois. They worked the summer at a day camp with elementary kids. They are hopefully going to tutor in an after school program at the Martin Luther King Community Center.
They are happy, healthy, engaged and thriving. Last Saturday we spent time at a hotel for our anniversary leaving Grayson by themselves overnight for the first time. Grayson made chocolate chip cookies for her friends to celebrate tomorrow.
Grayson gave me permission to write this and I needed to write this.
Fortunately life goes on.
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