Battle with Mental Illness
Donación protegida
My name is Kari and I’ve spent the past 14 years watching my son struggle with mental illness. It’s not easy to say that phrase out loud, but that is my reality. My son is mentally ill and desperately needs help. He has attempted suicide, he cuts himself regularly, threatens to run away all the time, and just last week started burning everything his room. He is currently in his second in-patient stay at a psychiatric hospital, but he needs more in-depth treatment. As hard as it is to ask, to get him the help he needs, I need you.
Alex has been different ever since he was a baby. I hate the phrase different, but it’s the best way to describe him to you. If he didn’t like the texture of a onesie, he would stiffen his whole body and you couldn’t put it on him. If you gave him the wrong color spoon, he’d have a meltdown. Any change or deviation in his schedule caused massive problems. He just couldn’t cope.
I watched through the years as kids skipped his birthday parties, made excuses when he wasn’t invited to other kids’ homes, held him while he cried because his teachers didn’t like him. You can’t imagine how painful it is to watch your child suffer.
He was diagnosed with cancer when he was 7. Yep, as if he didn’t have a hard-enough time, he had to deal with cancer. Alex had malignant chondrosarcoma. If you watch Grey’s Anatomy, you recently learned about chondrosarcoma. It’s not good. It cannot be treated by chemotherapy. You have to remove it completely and hope it doesn’t come back. Alex had a large portion of one of his ribs removed when he was 7 and continue to have scans and x-rays every year to make sure it doesn’t come back. I tell you this because when he had his surgeries, not a single child visited him. He had one fantastic teacher who sat with me in the hospital and visited him at home and that’s it.
As Alex got older, the tolerance from teachers got even worse. He became the “bad kid.” You know the one. The child that everyone assumes is trouble when he walks in the door. The thing that no one thinks about is how that makes the child feel. The student knows when his teacher doesn’t like him or want him around. Now don’t get me wrong, some of Alex’s teachers were GREAT, however, the older he became, the less tolerant they were. It all came to a tipping point in his first year of middle school. The school just didn’t have the resources to help or understand him and eventually he was kicked out. We started homeschooling then. At first it was great. My little man was back to being a happy, straight-A student. Then all of a sudden, he wasn’t. He was severely depressed, suicidal and violent.
We had Alex tested for Autism when he was younger, but he got upset during the process and refused to finish the assessment. That’s when he got the first diagnosis, Oppositional Defiant Disorder or ODD. The therapist figured he was defiant because he wouldn’t take the test. He also noted depression and a preoccupation with death. That should have been my first warning sign. The ODD diagnosis led to his first prescription, then another, and another. As the years progressed, we tried every medicationpossible. Alex has been in and out of therapy for years. It hasn’t helped. We’ve had other diagnoses suggested including Asperger’s, Major Depressive Disorder and Bipolar Disorder, but there’s no clear-cut answer right now.
So here we are, a week before Alex’s birthday and two weeks before Christmas, facing the toughest decision we’ve had to make. How do we help Alex? How do we keep my little man from becoming another statistic or the lead story on the 6 p.m. newscast? The only answer left is to put him in a residential treatment center. Now there are some of you who will read this and think she’s just sending him away to avoid dealing with it. There are some that will think his problems come from bad parenting. It’s ok. I can take the criticism. The reality is the thought of sending him away absolutely kills me. I have presents wrapped under the tree that he won’t be able to open on Christmas Day. You just can’t begin to imagine how painful it is, but I’ll do whatever it takes to save Alex.
You’ve probably heard people say the mental health system is broken. It usually comes up after some sort of mass tragedy. Here’s the reality. The system is completely screwed up. It’s not just broken, it’s damaged beyond repair. When Alex began burning everything in his room last week, I had to call a crisis team in to help. I sat on hold for 45 minutes waiting to speak to a counselor. These are the people who are supposed to help you in an emergency and I was on hold for 45 minutes. I made the call shortly before 8 p.m. and it was 10:30 before someone got to my house. We finally got Alex to the ER around 1 a.m. They drew some blood and then we waited until he could be placed in a facility. A sheriff’s deputy arrived shortly after 7, placed him in handcuffs because he was a danger to himself and put him in the back of a cop car. He drove away with Alex at 7:15 a.m. It took 12 hours to get my child to the people who could help him. In that process, he was treated like a criminal, not a sick child. That’s pretty bad, but it gets worse. I’m trying to find a place to treat my son on a long-term basis. Some of them are terrifying, some are military, some are cult-like, some look pretty good, but they are all insanely expensive. The kind of expensive that only the uber-rich can afford. My husband has a good job, Alex has health insurance, but it doesn’t matter. We don’t live on the state’s dime, so we’re automatically excluded from some facilities. I’ve researched medical grants, but either Alex’s diagnosis isn’t covered or we make too much money. I’ve got it narrowed down to two schools. One will cost us about $80,000 a year and is in another state, the other $120,000, but at least it’s in Georgia. Do the math. That’s between $6,800 and $10,000 a month depending on the facility. Who has that lying around? The schools do not take our insurance. We may be able to file for a partial reimbursement from one, but that takes time.
I need your help. I’m asking for any donation you may be able to spare. I’m also asking that you share this story, because there are other moms out there fighting the same battle. They need to know that they are not alone. We need to come together to stop the stigmas associated with mental illness. Our children are dying at an alarming rate. According to the CDC, the teen suicide rate increased by 70% between 2006 and 2016. I will not let that happen to my son. I will save him, no matter the cost.
Alex has been different ever since he was a baby. I hate the phrase different, but it’s the best way to describe him to you. If he didn’t like the texture of a onesie, he would stiffen his whole body and you couldn’t put it on him. If you gave him the wrong color spoon, he’d have a meltdown. Any change or deviation in his schedule caused massive problems. He just couldn’t cope.
I watched through the years as kids skipped his birthday parties, made excuses when he wasn’t invited to other kids’ homes, held him while he cried because his teachers didn’t like him. You can’t imagine how painful it is to watch your child suffer.
He was diagnosed with cancer when he was 7. Yep, as if he didn’t have a hard-enough time, he had to deal with cancer. Alex had malignant chondrosarcoma. If you watch Grey’s Anatomy, you recently learned about chondrosarcoma. It’s not good. It cannot be treated by chemotherapy. You have to remove it completely and hope it doesn’t come back. Alex had a large portion of one of his ribs removed when he was 7 and continue to have scans and x-rays every year to make sure it doesn’t come back. I tell you this because when he had his surgeries, not a single child visited him. He had one fantastic teacher who sat with me in the hospital and visited him at home and that’s it.
As Alex got older, the tolerance from teachers got even worse. He became the “bad kid.” You know the one. The child that everyone assumes is trouble when he walks in the door. The thing that no one thinks about is how that makes the child feel. The student knows when his teacher doesn’t like him or want him around. Now don’t get me wrong, some of Alex’s teachers were GREAT, however, the older he became, the less tolerant they were. It all came to a tipping point in his first year of middle school. The school just didn’t have the resources to help or understand him and eventually he was kicked out. We started homeschooling then. At first it was great. My little man was back to being a happy, straight-A student. Then all of a sudden, he wasn’t. He was severely depressed, suicidal and violent.
We had Alex tested for Autism when he was younger, but he got upset during the process and refused to finish the assessment. That’s when he got the first diagnosis, Oppositional Defiant Disorder or ODD. The therapist figured he was defiant because he wouldn’t take the test. He also noted depression and a preoccupation with death. That should have been my first warning sign. The ODD diagnosis led to his first prescription, then another, and another. As the years progressed, we tried every medicationpossible. Alex has been in and out of therapy for years. It hasn’t helped. We’ve had other diagnoses suggested including Asperger’s, Major Depressive Disorder and Bipolar Disorder, but there’s no clear-cut answer right now.
So here we are, a week before Alex’s birthday and two weeks before Christmas, facing the toughest decision we’ve had to make. How do we help Alex? How do we keep my little man from becoming another statistic or the lead story on the 6 p.m. newscast? The only answer left is to put him in a residential treatment center. Now there are some of you who will read this and think she’s just sending him away to avoid dealing with it. There are some that will think his problems come from bad parenting. It’s ok. I can take the criticism. The reality is the thought of sending him away absolutely kills me. I have presents wrapped under the tree that he won’t be able to open on Christmas Day. You just can’t begin to imagine how painful it is, but I’ll do whatever it takes to save Alex.
You’ve probably heard people say the mental health system is broken. It usually comes up after some sort of mass tragedy. Here’s the reality. The system is completely screwed up. It’s not just broken, it’s damaged beyond repair. When Alex began burning everything in his room last week, I had to call a crisis team in to help. I sat on hold for 45 minutes waiting to speak to a counselor. These are the people who are supposed to help you in an emergency and I was on hold for 45 minutes. I made the call shortly before 8 p.m. and it was 10:30 before someone got to my house. We finally got Alex to the ER around 1 a.m. They drew some blood and then we waited until he could be placed in a facility. A sheriff’s deputy arrived shortly after 7, placed him in handcuffs because he was a danger to himself and put him in the back of a cop car. He drove away with Alex at 7:15 a.m. It took 12 hours to get my child to the people who could help him. In that process, he was treated like a criminal, not a sick child. That’s pretty bad, but it gets worse. I’m trying to find a place to treat my son on a long-term basis. Some of them are terrifying, some are military, some are cult-like, some look pretty good, but they are all insanely expensive. The kind of expensive that only the uber-rich can afford. My husband has a good job, Alex has health insurance, but it doesn’t matter. We don’t live on the state’s dime, so we’re automatically excluded from some facilities. I’ve researched medical grants, but either Alex’s diagnosis isn’t covered or we make too much money. I’ve got it narrowed down to two schools. One will cost us about $80,000 a year and is in another state, the other $120,000, but at least it’s in Georgia. Do the math. That’s between $6,800 and $10,000 a month depending on the facility. Who has that lying around? The schools do not take our insurance. We may be able to file for a partial reimbursement from one, but that takes time.
I need your help. I’m asking for any donation you may be able to spare. I’m also asking that you share this story, because there are other moms out there fighting the same battle. They need to know that they are not alone. We need to come together to stop the stigmas associated with mental illness. Our children are dying at an alarming rate. According to the CDC, the teen suicide rate increased by 70% between 2006 and 2016. I will not let that happen to my son. I will save him, no matter the cost.
Organizador
Karen Elizabeth Buckindail
Organizador
Forsyth, GA