Our story began quite a few years ago.
A moody teenager of 16-17 who admittedly had had a bit of a tumultuous life, going through two separate custody hearings since the age of seven along with her older brother and sister, and along with a period of back and forth between states and living with both mum and dad as the courts mandated at the time.
But all that was quite a few years behind us and was all over before highschool had started for her, life was now stable and everything seemed to be going well. School wasn't her favourite subject but she had a tight circle of friends and while not the class dux was doing ok there, got herself a part time job at Woollies and was the atypical teenager.
The weekend parties, friends over, occasional fight's between her group of friends, mouthing off to us at times, all seemed quite normal to her stepmother and myself as we had already seen most of it with her older siblings already, but there were times that when we look back on it all now with hindsight, that should of been warning flags for us.
When she was sixteen she started to dabble with drugs, pot and ecstacy, She came home one night absolutely fried and completely out of it, we had a good open relationship with her and discussed with her the dangers of this at the time, letting her know that what she thought she was taking could very well be some chemical mix from China that contained who knows what . After this event she assured us that she was not doing any more chemicals as she didn't really enjoy it, but she was still smoking pot on a semi regular basis.
About a year or so after this point in time she started to become withdrawn from some of her larger circle of friends, very snappy over small things and sliding between being very happy and very lethargic, sleeping a lot and unmotivated for periods of time and it was about this time that she reported remembering or having dreams about being touched inappropriately by her mothers defacto when living with them during the previously mentioned custody hearings.
All the children were required to undergo psychiatric reports during both family court hearings, and nothing of this nature was ever mentioned, also the time line that she reported this happening could not be actual, as my ex and her defacto had been apart for some time when she say's that this was happening in her mothers house. At this point in time we organised a visit for her to our GP and our daughter was placed on antidepressants due to mild depression.
This initially seemed to have a marked improvement with her, but over time she sort of fluctuated between being withdrawn and agitated, pissed off and antagonistic, to cheerful, helpful and ambitious in life. At this time both of her elder siblings had left home and we had a new baby in the family and were just going through what we supposed was a normal life with a teenager who had been through some rough patches over the preceding years. She decided that School was not for her any more and secured full time work at her previous part time Woollies Job.
Around the age of 18 or just before, about six or nine months on from starting full time employment she every now and again started to report to us that such and such a person at work or in her private life had it in for her, they were spreading rumours, lying about her, just didn't like her etc, A good friend was spreading rumours or had stolen from her or that she just couldn't trust them anymore due to (insert something here), arguments at home just got more and more inane and pointless and she had periods of complete withdrawal and day's at a time when she just would not get out of bed at all. Weeks at a time when she would be all A O.K and then periods in between where she just carried on as what we saw as a spoilt little brat.
We asked ourselves if we had inadvertently raised a problem child, been too soft, too hard, screwed her up with all the too and fro of the custody hearings etc? Was it drug's, Us, Did she have a mental problem ?
She ended up getting the sack from her Job from not turning up to work, she eventually told us a month later. Things got worse at home over the next month or two and I eventually sat her down one day and asked her if she felt OK and what was up with her as I was worried about her mental state.
Initially it was all about her feeling persecuted as she felt that we were unfair on her by charging room and board while she was working, minimal though it was, it then went onto a whole heap of conflicting circumstances such as her friends, workmates, life in general. I told her I thought she needed some help that we were unable to give her such as she had had in the past with our GP, intitally she agreed to that and I made an appointment for the next day.
That afternoon though there was a huge blow up about the simplest of things and she demanded to be taken to her Mothers right there and then, who had a few years previously moved to our state to be closer to her children. I dropped her off at her Mothers with her belongings and advised her that our daughter needed help and that I had made an appointment for her. That was over four years ago now.
Fast forward four or five years and we have become the touchstone or base if you like for our daughters now apparent condition. We have been the ones she turns to when the rest of the world becomes too much of a confrontation, and the refuge she turns to when all else fails her. We are not quite sure if we are or have become an enabler for her by repeatedly picking her up and dusting her off over the intervening period in time, but it has become apparent to us that at least over the last two years she has been on a downward spiral and has burnt a lot of personal friendships and professional ones along the way.
Job after Job being lost due to confrontations that are apparently never the fault of anything she is responsible for, despite her ability to perform the duties asked of her, personal long lasting friendships finished over supposed gossip, victimisation, fault of someone else.
Personal family relationships in particular have become more and more strained with our daughter at the center of them during family gatherings such as weddings and festive celebrations.
And most recently her own personal intimate relationships have become absolute nightmares for not only herself but her partners as well.
Despite our off again on again bouncing back and forth personal relationship with our daughter we have always been ready to give assistance when needed, as we have been aware for a while that something was not quite right. We have tried to get her to voluntary help in the past but have obviously failed.
Fast forward again to today.
Just over four weeks ago we got yet another call for help, the most recent came a short while after her most recent visit with us a few short months ago. On that one she was here for just a day with us when she had an episode and requested I drop her back at her current boyfriends when she was going to stay with us for four days.
She had called the Police on her boyfriend as he had apparently been stealing from her along with someone else from her past, a very close highschool friend who has been living in W.A for the last four years had apparently been breaking in and stealing her clothes, Her boyfriend had also supposedly bashed her, The Police attended and found nothing untoward at all. She rang us at 11:30 at night and was adamant that we needed to pick her up immediately as she was in danger. We spoke to her boyfriend at the time and he advised us that she was becoming more and more paranoid as time went on and that she needed some mental health help.
I personally called our local Mental Health clinic and made an appointment for her before I went to pick her up from her boyfriends place. I gave them all the relevant information, much like described above and actually looked forward to finally getting her the help that we all felt she needed.
The next morning after collecting her from her boyfriends I took her to the mental health clinic and after an hour and a half, the intake officer asked me into the interview room. He sat there and told me that he felt my daughter was a little depressed and that she seemed to be a bit under developed emotionally ? ? ?
I Looked him in the eye and asked him straight out if he really thought that there was no underlying psychosis or mental health problem at all...He looked me straight back and said NO, IN His own words ( If you hear horse hooves, you don't look for Zebra's right ?)
Less than ten hour's later our daughter was crouching down on the ground pointing out bear traps and asking us to look at her foot that had been torn off by the Bear traps on the ground, vocalising the same word's over and over and over such as Please, please, please, Yess, Yes, yes and responding to voices in her head and things that she was seeing and hearing, acting like a person possessed and generally not who we knew as a person anymore.
I drove her for over forty five minutes to the closest hospital listening to her repeating over and over the same word fearing she would leap from the car or try to interfere with the steering of it, but she just sat there the whole way saying yes yes yes .
That was just over three weeks ago....Since then we have been contacted exactly a single time by the doctors treating our daughter, except for those times we have requested that they call us, which has happened a total of twice out of ten times, including requests to see a Doctor when visiting our daughter in person.
We have only just yesterday (it's after twelve now) been given an official diagnosis after our very first consultation with the doctors treating her.
In that time she has been forcibly restrained and left with bruises( hand and fingerprint marks all over her arms and legs) been held in Isolation numerous times, Hog tied, apparently punched out a nurse and been violent towards staff, and as of today may face legal repercussions for hitting the nurse while under psychosis at the time.We still don't recognise the girl we love and raised inside the tormented shell of who she is right now, every visit is still a conversation salad of this that and the other with a few dressings thrown in for good measure.
We live a good two hours travel from where she is being treated at the moment , have two younger kids and are only able to visit every second day, we speak twice a day by phone with her but at this point in time she is not the person we know at all, except for a faint glimpse now and then.
If our shared story can help anyone, and has any sort of message at all, get help as early as you can for a loved one, we saw the writing on the wall but let it slide, we thought there might be something wrong but put it down to something else, we took an easy way out over the short term when we should of followed up. Nobody knows your loved one like you do, not even the best doctor in the world.
At first you let this and that slide, never knowing that every little thing only ever go's towards strengthening the grasp that a certain illness might have on a susceptible mind.
It's been over three week's now since she was admitted, she is now currently back in the intensive ward with periods of time out in isolation, Her most recent stay in the picu came after talking to me on the phone yesterday, there was some interference with the phone and she kept getting echo's of herself repeated back to her which set her off.
I tried to talk to her on the phone earlier tonight, Her duty nurse when talking to me after I asked how she was actually said to me "Well she's alive, so I suppose that is a good thing".
We understand the doctor's and staff are also under pressure, under staffed and over worked. But to say we are a tad disappointed with the information and what actual treatment she is getting would be an understatement.
Appologies for the rambling post, but any sort of feedback or guidance would be a great help, and may in future help anyone else who has seen the same sort of thing unfold for them.
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13 YARN