Gotta love the erBB,
Felt like a little erBB lurking
and much thanks to you CD,
you're a good man.
And I'm glad I wasn't a dic k to you in 4th grade
I didn't wanna come on here and seem like I was whining on the mental heath thread
so thanks for the thread to vent a bit.
I haven't been on here in a few years. Sorry fellas, to say the least this few years has just been brutal on our family.
It's been full court press trying to keep our son alive.
this last year just being horrible ending with him taking his own life and me and my wife finding.
that is something I just can't shake, just awful.
I'll try to cliffnotes all this and I may miss a bunch of details which I will be more than willing to add in later. This is just a brain dump and I know I am not making much sense. If you really knew me , you'd know that's normal.
My son was 25,
I didn't know a lot about about the mental health care system until this year.
and in a nutshell......it's a $hit show.
Florida's one of the worst come to find out.
I guess these disorders don't really show until late 20s for men.
I didn't really start seeing issues with Matt until this year. (well, noticeable issues)
The first bipolar manic attack for him happened to him last year the day before our 30th wedding anniversary.
it was horrible to see and experience, it was like seeing someone on PCP or something I've never seen before.
(and growing up here at the beach I thought I'd see it all)
He was arrested because he attacked us and his mom.
Which I'm telling you all , that boy LOVED his mom. So I never thought that was a possibility EVER,
me I could understand. But he attacked her, then as if this wasn't bad enough now I have to take my son down on concrete without hurting him. Not exactly easy since he's 6 ft and 200lbs and I've been training him in martial arts since he could walk.
but I did somehow get him down and not hurt him and the cops were there fast and they took him to the first place.
which is basically a jail they call a mental health facility.
Since Matt was an adult as soon as the cops hear us say he's 24. They tell each other "hes an adult" and "Baker Act" him
well, that's code for you got no rights parents....goodbye.
So it took us 3 days of misery to finally convince someone to get him to sign something so they will let us know what's going on. we knew nothing at this point. we needed a good ole' HIPA consent form. (i'll get back to that)
nobody would talk to us about Matt but tunny enough they did reach out to us to get my insurance info
After 3 days your insurance kicks you out of these places.
on the 3rd day to told us to meet him at the back door , they handed us a folder and some pills and basically that was it.
Matt could have just walked out the door that day and never called us again.
So they give him drugs that take 2 weeks to kick in to his system and know what's going to happen.
but send them home on day 3 with you with a pile of pills and not much else to go on.
well about day 5 he has a reaction to the meds. ( lets call these meds Strawberry)
He comes down the stairs and ask me and his mom to just kill him or put him out of his misery.
I explain that's not something we could do ever or would do ever.
So your only option at this point is to take you kid to the emergency room , which we did.
he mentions suicide to the doctor. now once you do this in Florida you are "Baker Acted."
meaning you are now captive to the state, I say that because they came in , strip searched him and put a guard on him 24-7
You basically under arrest but going to the mental facility rather than jail.
We spend 23 hours that night in the ER waiting for a bed to open up somewhere. Finally they admit him and baker act him for the 2nd time
this happens 3 more times..... we spend a total of 95 hours in the ER this year.
most of that time waiting to get him back in the bed they just kicked him out of.
finally after the 5th time we get a little traction, he seems better but he's on so many damn drugs he's a shell of himself.
He can barely function. Can't really surf, swim or play soccer anymore, he was just too tired all the time.
So we start decreasing his meds.
especially the heavy addictive ones they were pumping into him. He was taking 5 kinds of meds so it was really hard to track which ones were causing the issues. So my wife and I started to decrease one pill at a time.
this takes us almost 8 months to get him off the hard stuff and get him functioning again.
He and I start swimming daily, My work is letting me work from home through all this so I actually was working after I got him to bed which was around 9:00 every night. I'm a creative director at an ad agency so no big deal, we just change my schedule so I work later, this allows me to be with him 24-7 basically.
Which I'm telling you he wouldn't have made it the entire year without my agency allowing me to do that. I'm not sure what someone in another line of work would do. It would be really hard to do or very expensive.
The residential places are $1,500 a day and they want them there for 90 days. btw, your insurance covers ZERO and they want half up front.
We have 2 other kids and we make good money but thats a lot of money with no promise it will actually work.
and thats a huge gamble we were not willing to take. Honestly I got the feeling they were just looking to make money off us. It seemed really car salesman to us when they were pitching the place to us. (no offense to car salesman btw, my nephew is one)
fast forward a bit.... he's doing better, making progress, even driving his new mini cooper we got him
got his first speeding ticket, everything seems good)
So on march 10th, I have a work function offsite. And he's doing ok, so I decide I will go.
around 2 I reach out to him, I know somethings wrong because his phone never says hes read messages.
and he usually responds fast with a thumbs up or heart.
at this point I realize something is wrong. I rush home. He's not here. but his car is here and his jogging shoes are here and I notice he's wearing his VANS, but the skateboard was here. So that made me even more worried.
I call his mom because she can track his phone. She says hes here at the house. OK, this is when my hair on my neck starts to stand up and I'm am almost getting sick. I know start going room to room , closet to closet looking for him. This was horrible, because i was just knowing I'd find him hanging. (he had said in therapy that was something he thought about, that or jumping off a bridge.)
Hearing your kids say that to you as a parent is something I would every wish on someone. It's just terrible to hear from someone you love. you just feel helpless (and btw, you are)
So my wife and my neighbors are walking around calling for him. Then I hear my wife scream. She walks out of his room with a brand new GLOCK gun case.
At this point I knew what he did. I ran around looking for him everywhere. Then I went to our back yard and realize our back gate to the intracoastal was unlocked.....then I knew. I peak over the fence and there my son was. Laying in the dirt, He shot himself in the head. it was something I will never forget. And worse than that I collapsed so for a moment I lost my senses and let my wife get to him. I will regret that forever too. No mother should ever see her son like that.
he was a great kid from a loving family, thankfully my son didn't kill others or us or my other kids. I take that as a sign he loved us all very much.
