The Making of a Matriarch

This morning, my daughter calls me from school to tell me that she is vomitting.  Come to find out, she took the anti-anxiety medication before eating and I tried explaining that was all it was.  She called back again, complaining her heart was racing.  I told her to call her doctor, but they told her to call that non-doctor-counselor we met yesterday.  Turns out, the OB wasn’t aware the psychiatrist there doesn’t treat adolescents, only adults.  Therefore, my daughter was handed off to the “counselor” on staff.  So the OB said to bring her back later that day.

Meanwhile, she’s feeling worse.  I’m not much better off, myself.  Tremendous pain, stiffness, cramping, diarrhea, vomiting… the whole nine.  However, I drug myself out in the cold rain and went to pick her up.  On the drive home, I told her my husband was going to have to take her to her appointment as I was not well.  She wanted her boyfriend to take her instead and I reminded her he wasn’t going to be driving her anywhere.  Long story short, she wound up slamming the door, yelling all the way into the house.  I snapped!  All the issues we have going on and she’s throwing a fit over her boyfriend not being allowed to drive her?  I made her sit on the couch and gave her a piece of my mind.

Yup… there I was… telling my severely depressed, pregnant teenager that her “freaking out everytime she vomits” is getting old.  She insisted it wasn’t just the vomiting and I forced her to elaborate.  She explained that while she was in the bathroom at school, feeling as sick as she felt, she took out that bottle of pills, looked at them, and thought how easy it would be to just take them all and get it over with.  That snapped me back into reality pretty quick and reminded me how sick my child truly is.

When my husband got home, I filled him in on everything and told him I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I didn’t know if they would want to commit her, assign her to out-patient care, or what.  We asked my daughter what she wanted and she honestly felt scared that she would have these thoughts again and was worried that next time she might not talk herself out of it.  That was all we needed to hear!

So they go to the OB who asks a few simple questions and instructs them to go straight to the emergency room.  They waited four hours to be seen for a total of maybe five minutes and they told her she needed to find a psychiatrist.  Well DUH!  But it is Friday night and no one in this town appears to be qualified to treat adolescents, let alone pregnant ones.  And that was that!  They told her nothing about her meds (because they aren’t qualified to), gave no advice on what we need to do to help her with the panic/anxiety attacks… NOTHING!  Just sent them home!

I may be niave here or just ignorant on the subject, but when someone is saying they have sudden thoughts of suicide and feel uncertain about whether or not they can talk themselves out of it, shouldn’t they be admitted for observation?  They claim they can’t keep her because they aren’t “qualified” but they’ve had more experience with this than we have!  What the hell are we supposed to do?  Even the patient leaflet that came with the meds said if you have suicidal thoughts to seek immediate medical attention.  What good is that when all they do is say “we can’t help”? 

My disgust with the medical profession knows no bounds, but this has just blown my mind!  I did the best I could at explaining to my daughter why she isn’t getting any help and she seems understanding, but so hopeless!  I’ve promised to do some hotline calling or something tomorrow and told her to just go off the meds and get a good night’s rest.  She and my husband had a pretty good vent session about their experiences at the hospital and both seemed in pretty good spirits before turning in.  Let’s hope tomorrow is a bettter day for all of us!