Broken System?

My son is still psychotic.  He locked himself in the bathroom yesterday, so that he would feel safe.  He ranted on about not really being schizophrenic. The drugs were poisoning him.  EVERYBODY from his ninth grade math teacher to Donald Trump was trying to frame him for murder, even our dog.  Somewhere in all his garble he decided that if he worked for DEA, all the problems of the world would be resolved.  I know better than to engage in his ramblings, but sometimes I can’t help myself.  So when he said the thing about the DEA, I said something like, “Shayne, you can’t work for the DEA, you can’t even put on pants.”  He unlocked the bathroom door and went to his room and put on a pair of sweat pants.  The pants belonged to my father.  My mom bought them in the 70’s when velour was a thing and my dad weighed like 200 lbs.  When Shayne wears them he looks like he is playing dress up.  So he stood in my doorway, in the ridiculous pants, his eyes wild and glitttery to prove he could put on pants.  Then he decided I was going to kill him, so he left.  That’s when I called the doctor at Denver Medical.  I told her he wasn’t ready to be released and she should have listened to me and it was on her if something bad happened to him or someone else.

I realize that makes me about as irrational as Shayne.  But I am so TIRED of being told the system is broken.  I know it’s broken.  I have dealt with every broken part of it in the past five years.  I know emergency rooms are holding tanks when there are no beds.  Patients can be held in stripped down rooms with security gurads watching, with no treatment for days.  We’ve done that.  I know community mental health centers have high turn over and are staffed with young people who have limited experience and usually have no idea how to handle someone as critical as Shayne.  Doctors in those centers are overworked, and underpaid, and leave often.  We’ve done all that too.  Doctors in private practice are hard to get in to and then are med pushers.  Shayne was on four different drugs at one time.  Even if I am not a doctor, I know that drugs interact with each other, and if something isn’t working, adding another drug to the mix isn’t going to fix the problem.  You can’t just fire a doctor and go to another, because you can’t run the risk of running out of drugs, because even if the drugs aren’t working right, having no drugs is very, very bad.  I have been told to call the police.  The police know Shayne.  They’ve brought him home in the middle of the night.  They’ve returned his stuff when he has abandoned it on the side of the road.    They’ve bought him sandwiches out of their own pockets.   But unless a patient is suicidal or homicidal, or doing something illegal, the police won’t intervene.  It is not illegal to be psychotic.  And sometimes being psychotic isn’t even enough for hospital staff.  Shayne’s been turned away from clinics time after time because he isn’t a danger to himself or others.  I have been in every scenario possible and know how its going to go down every time.  I know if I want Shayne to get the help he needs, I have to demand it.  And this time, I’m not letting the doctor off the hook for releasing him when he wasn’t ready.  How many school shootings and homicides and suicides have to happen before the system changes?  That’s not happening to my son, if I have anything to say about it.

The doctor was a big girl.  First of all, she talked to me herself.  She didn’t communicate through the layers of medical assistants and nurses and office staff.  I’ve come to hate the layers of medical communication.  She didn’t tell me anything, I didn’t already know, but  she said I could call her to let her know what was going on and she would keep my number and call me herself.  Maybe if Shayne ends up back there, she will work harder to do what needs to be done.   In the meantime, I’ve taken over being in charge of Shayne again.  He threw his meds away on trash day, but I have an extra bottle from the doctor that prescribed drug after drug after drug.  I have them locked up and I’m treating my twenty-four year old like a toddler again.  I have learned enough about how the drugs work to know what I’m doing.  I think I can get him back on track myself.

My big question is this–Is this always going to be my life?  I don’t know if I can sustain this level of care by myself for thirty or forty more years.   The last five have taken its toil.  I can’t ensure that my other child is safe.  And she wants to get as far away from her brother as possible.  Sometimes I wonder if fighting for him is the right thing.  I just don’t know how to stop.  He is my son.  My responsibility.  I can’t just turn that off.  I can’t fix the broken system by myself, but I am done accepting “the system is broken” as an answer for inadequate care.