Coming Home

Tomorrow will be 72 days since Oksana was first put into inpatient care.  Since then:

She has been in the psychiatric unit of the hospital for 19 days
She has been in a residential program for 26 days
She has been home for 23 days
The longest stretch of time she has been home is 14 days
And she has been through 7 different medications to try to find ones that will work

Tomorrow she will come home again.  Do I think she is well?  Hardly.  We went to see her on Saturday.  We brought her a picnic lunch and she could hardly stay awake through it.  She kept slumping over while she was eating, slurring her words, drooling like crazy, etc.  She started to perk up some by the end of our visit and then she became pretty easily agitated.  She is still being rude to staff and hitting them with her forearm crutches but that is mild compared to what she was doing when she started there.  The thing is the reason it is mild is because the rest of her day is spent sleeping or as a zombie.  So basically we got zombie or aggression.  This is not a child who is well. 

Regardless, we feel like we think she needs to come home.  Insurance has denied her any more days but we are ok with that.  This program has been great for keeping her safe and giving us time to breathe but I don't think she will benefit from staying there any longer.  She needs to be back under the care of her psychiatrist who knows her best.  She needs to be stretched regularly again and have her orthotics put on correctly.  She needs to be back in a setting where she is expected to dress herself and do things that she has been doing independently for years but that they do for her there.  She needs to be home where she knows that it is not acceptable to pee your pants to get attention.  We are fully aware that she may not be home long before she has to go back to the hospital, but we still think it is worthwhile to have her home.

You might be wondering what is happening with the psychiatric hospital that we were trying to get her in.  Yeah, we are wondering too.  We found out today that a female bed might not be available for another month.  We were told that a month ago.  So frustrating.

So here we go again.  Our new motto is one day at a time.  The other one is don't make any assumptions.  When Oksana left school last we thought for sure she would not be back before the year ended.  They sent everything home with her.  Of course now she starts again on Wednesday (1/2 days only).  I made assumptions that I shouldn't have based on things people told me.  I have to remember that no one knows what will happen and so I can only assume it will happen after it is already done!!

I'll update again when she is home and acclimating back into life here.