Max came home from his first trip to the hospital at the beginning of January.  Sadly, it seemed like we had brought a different child home.  Our happy-go-lucky 6 year old kid was now quiet, withdrawn, and anxious.  But it didn’t stay like this.  The anger that he showed before Christmas that resulted in several suspensions started to become more pronounced.  Unhappiness also began to emerge.  He seemed to spiral downward.

Looking back at it now there are things that we could have put in place to help him.  At the time we were into the first three months of these behaviors and we were stunned and didn’t handle things too well.  Other people continued to recommend spankings or more medication.  One person suggested he’d take my son away for a week and Sam would come back a changed boy.  He didn’t elaborate on what he would do in that week.

I went away at the beginning of February for two days.  By the time I came back the situation had gotten out of control.  The violence had become extreme.

We had to take him to the emergency room one day after he tried to hurt himself.  He became hysterical while we were there.  When the nurses tried to medicate him it was the final blow and he went wild.  As a result they locked him in a room expecting him to calm down.  But that didn’t happen.  My wife and I joined him to prevent him from smashing his head and body against the walls.  When he turned on us a security guard stayed in the room with us.

Later despite our protests they injected morphine into his inner thigh.  I had to hold him down while the nurses took care of the shot.  Late at night he and my wife finally fell asleep on a mattress on the floor.  I went home to collect changes of clothes, food, and toiletries.

What was the emergency room doing during this time?  Looking for a bed in a psychiatric hospital.  They first tried the place Max was in originally.  There was nothing available so they branched out, calling other hospitals in the state.  It took 36 hours for them to find a place for Max.  The whole time we were locked away.

An ambulance arrived to pick him up.  Psychiatric wards and hospitals don’t generally take walk-ins; you have to be transported by an ambulance.  Max and his mother settled in for the hour trip.  Max was calm now, I assume from exhaustion and morphine (though it had been about 20 hours since he had been given the injection).  I followed behind in my car thoughts running through my head about what a terrible dad I was for putting my boy through all of this.

It didn’t help that the emergency room psychiatrist working with Max told me to “suck it up and be a man” when I mentioned I thought Max would have a nervous breakdown when he discovered he was going back into the hospital.

We were admitted to the hospital but as we discovered from our first hospital visit our insurance didn’t cover any of this.  Not to worry Massachusetts has a health plan for kids who aren’t covered by other insurance.  The hospital helped us put the paperwork together and applied for us.  Max was covered within a week.

This wasn’t the only good thing about this hospital.  It turned out to be a “breath of fresh air” after the horrendous experience in the first one.

Max wasn’t thrilled about staying but he was a little more comfortable when he discovered that there were a dozen kids his age.  There were no older children.  He also had a roommate he liked.  The staff was wonderful and totally involved with the kids.  There was daily classroom instruction and they were very protective of the children.  We got to know the whole staff not just the ones that were assigned to Max.  They constantly gave us progress updates and we saw the doctors on a daily basis.

Even though visiting hours were from 6 pm to 8 pm they were very flexible. Max got to call us as often as he wanted but there was so much to do it wasn’t nearly as often as the first hospital.

What I found interesting and nice was the book the staff supplied us with included profiles, pictures, and phone numbers for everyone including the doctors.  It also contained any information that we needed about the hospital.

Did I mention that everything was clean?  Everyone took as much responsibility for the ward’s appearance as they did for the children.  It felt relatively good being there.  Home is better of course!

And the ward kept the parents involved.  We meet with the other parents once a week and talked about home life and got suggestions from the hospital on how we could change the structure here.  There were even sessions where the parents, kids, and staff got together and played games.

It turns out that some parents look at this as a place to dump their kids so they can take off on vacation.  Max’s roommate hadn’t seen his parents once since he got there.  He had been there before my son had arrived and was still there when Max left.  We visited my son at least once a day for 3 hours for the 15 days he was there.

Max was a little happier here but of course he wanted to come home.  And we wanted him home too!  He still clung to us and cried when we left at night but not as vigorously as before.  But he collected every little bit of trash he could find.  His hospital drawer was filled with elastics, broken toys, lint, and even the dose cups he got twice a day for his meds.

When he was released we didn’t go right home, we went to his favorite restaurant to celebrate.

Ever since we got home we have been working on procedures to help him.  We have a lot of retraining to do for both him and us even now over a year later.  In another post I’ll talk about them but for now he’s home and we are working to keep him from ever going back!

As a result of his stay we got a new med change that was much better than the last.  As far as diagnoses are concerned he still has pdd/nos, adhd, and sensory issues but three more have been added to the list: bipolar disorder, odd, and ocd.  Where will it end?