Hi @patientpatient, no, they do not manage. So often I get called at work either by one of my children in crisis or by a psychiatrist at wit's end to know how to manage a crisis with my son in hospital. I come home to a battle zone because the son who has severe OCD has compulsively moved everything and my husband is having a melt down and the other son feels unsafe and wants to go to hospital.
Yesterday is a point of illustration, and compared to days when I am at work, it is not so bad, because I am still home on holidays and I was actually able to manage the situation. The OCD son was invited to go to Sydney to visit a friend. My husband is too drowsy from medication to be able to drive most of the time so I had to take him to the airport about 1 1/2 hours drive away. Knowing this son's need to perform endless rituals I got up very early and asked him to be ready. I had planned to leave at a time three hours before his flight was due to leave and informed him of that as well as the reasons why. When that time came he still wasn't ready. I know we have to be on the road by 5:30am at the very latest to beat the peak hour traffic. But you cannot apply pressure to this lad; he can't handle it. So I told him it was important to beat the traffic and arrive on time for his flight and I would wait for him in the car. Well it was 5:45 am before he got into the car. And we had peak hour traffic and crawled at a snail's pace. To make things worse, there was a crash on the highway and traffic came to a complete standstill. When we got to the drop off point he had 13 minutes to departure and ran for it. Amazingly, he actually did make the flight.
But coming back was a different story. He did not make it. He did not check in on time. They made him re-schedule his flight. This was going to cost $150. I had given him $150 before he left, but that was gone. And I couldn't help; I had just come back from a birding trip which required the hire of a 4 wheel drive, the security deposit for which cost $1000, and I was still waiting for it to be reimbursed. So I had to do a phone around to see who could help.
Before this, I had actually got as far as the pick up point at the airport before I got his message about missing the flight. So I went to a road nearby to try to relax and work things out. No-one else in the family had any spare cash so I phoned my sister (most reluctantly). She is on a disability pension and her husband cares for her and their two disabled daughters (Asperger's and Gray's Disease). She said her pension does not come in till 2:00am but her eldest daughter got her first paychecque today and she would put it in her account and we could use that. Imagine how I felt, having to avail myself of money from my disabled niece receiving her first paychecque. The transaction went through, the ticket was re-booked, and my husband and I bunkered down for a 2 1/2 hour wait.
Finally it was time to return to the airport and pick up our son. But there was a new fly in the ointment. The road to the airport was closed for roadworks and a detour was in place. This was not at all clear, especially to someone unfamiliar with the route. My husband refused to drive and kept hollering directions that were incorrect. Although he is on an anti-psychotic he still has perception problems. He would tell me to go straight ahead, for example, when in fact I had to turn left. In the end I realised he was having problems and had to completely screen him out and work it out myself. Then he was shouting at me for ignoring his directions. But when he realised in the end that I had got us to where we had to be he quietened down.
The original plan had been to pick up the son and be home by 6:00pm for tea. But now we wouldn't be home till after 11:00pm. So I had to phone my eldest son and ask him if he could cook something for the youngest son and his friend who was staying the night. He refused. He said he didn't feel well enough. So I just said look, there's plenty of food in the house. Get the boys to make themselves something.
When we got home, my husband sat down at the dinner table waiting for a meal that I had to cook from scratch. We ended up eating at close to Midnight. My youngest son and his friend had made themselves bacon and egg sandwiches and they were happily playing a game of Monopoly. It was an unbelievably consoling sight of normality in our insane environment. I left the room for a toilet break and when I came back, the OCD son had rearranged things including the garbage bin, with which he has a particular obsession. It was now sitting in the middle of the dining room floor. He had removed packets and trays of meat and these were sitting out on the kitchen bench. Why? He had been given and had eaten a cooked meal. He had moved the half drunk bottle of diet ginger ale I had been consuming and I spent fifteen minutes looking for it.
And while all this was going on, the eldest son wanted chats. For this we have to go into the main bedroom and he tells me how depressed he is feeling and how hard he finds it to face each day. He wishes he could just wake up in the morning and look forward to the day. We had already, earlier in the day, been to see his case worker and psychiatrist and his depression was discussed, along with his restlessness and continuing episodes of psychosis. So a plan is in place to help him with his depression. It is a juggling act, because the anti-depressant medication undoes the effects of the anti-psychotic medication. He is on 2 anti-psychotics. They thought they would try to reduce the amount of anti-psychotic in order to address the debilitating restlessness. But we have to keep a close eye on things because with less anti-psychotic in his system his psychosis might worsen.
So imagine how I feel about returning to work with this going on in my eldest son's life and my husband's inability to cope with it.
When we first bought our current home it was ideal for us. But that was before my husband and second son became ill. This son, the OCD one, (who is actually showing signs of delusion), suffers from extreme sensory irritation. He wears extreme glare sunglasses even in the darkest rooms. He wears sound blocking headphones but even with this, the noise of his brother and his friend, who are quiet, polite boys, was unbearable to him. We really do need a larger home where the boys can all be well separated. Anything that could help my eldest son to feel a little more joy in the day would be a bonus.
