After the second part of the discharge conference on Friday, I expected that n. would spend most of his time at the apartment on Balmoral Street, until that arrangement collapsed. When he had been in hospital, n. told me a story about Keith, the actual tenant, slicing a phone cord to make a point to a visitor who had outstayed his welcome.
His plans held up for two to three days.
Category: Family
Discharge Conference – Part 2
The discharge conference was continued on Friday morning August 27. N. was being discharged – he could not stay at the hospital even if he wanted to, and was not going have a continuing relationship with this doctor. Medical psychiatry is focussed on sedating and housing people who act out and fit within a few diagnostic categories. Adolescent anger, dangerous life choices, addiction, even personality disorder are not issues that psychiatry claims to fix. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one if the bulb really wants to change. Psychiatrists don’t often acknowledge the limitations of their art, and when they run into an impossible situation, they can find lots of reasons why they can’t help. The dramatic trope that if only the patient had been diagnosed and treated sooner is familiar. The mental health professional tends to imply that she/he could have helped the child if the parents would have been different, or if other things in life had been different.
The resident who had been involved on Tuesday was there again. There was a second resident too. I think the conference was intended, from Dr. Perlov’s perspective, as a teaching conference for the residents. I went in understanding that he had encouraged Jan and me to tolerate some of n’s choices, to stay in touch and to support him emotionally. At the same time, he had been vague.
At his invitation I covered the events since Tuesday. N. got restless and Dr. Perlov interrupted me. He said I had a pedantic style and I was boring him. It was a power play. He had taken this conference to show that he had been involved in n’s care but it was becoming a waste of time for him. The good news for n. – he does not get identified as having a major disorder and all that comes with that. The bad news for Jan – no one is going to give n. the resources he wants and that she thinks he deserves. But he showed Jan and n. he was prepared to take n’s side. The take-away for me – n. has a hard time listening to me.
Staying connected
N. came to my house Wednesday evening August 25. We had dinner and watched some episodes of Clerks on DVD. He went into his room and got some clothes. He took some accessories from his old Gameboy to use with a Colour Gameboy that he picked up somewhere. He took some Ramen noodles and Lipton soup packets. He did wander around a bit, which made me nervous because he has used other visits to the house to help himself. I thought the visit went well. I told him I needed to know when and where to pick him up on Thursday for Court. He said he was not going back to the hotel and he wanted me to pick him up and get him to Court.
Discharge Conference – Part 1
During the first session of the dischage conference on Tuesday (August 24) the resident reported that n. did not present the symptoms of bipolar disorder, with the qualification that n. had not been willing to discuss his thoughts with the team. The senior psychiatrist, Dr. Perlov, did not disagree but suggested that there may be a bipolar disorder which has not been diagnosed because it is hard to diagnose in teens with n.’s temperament and history of drug use. He qualified his remarks by saying he was not involved with n.’s assessment in February or last week and had taken over temporarily while n.’s assigned doctor, Dr. Katz, was away. He said he only had a brief time to review the material and a brief time with n.
Discharged
N. was discharged from hospital yesterday morning, and was put into an “emergency placement” by CFS, in his case a largely unsupervised placement in a motel on Portage Avenue West near the Grace Hospital. By the time I got the message and called the motel, n. had left to see his girlfriend. I checked again this morning and he did not come back last night. I have a phone number for the apartment where his girlfriend is staying, and I called him. He took the phone but he ended the call quickly with an excuse that somebody else needed to use the phone. He called me back later on my cell phone. He said he had returned to the motel and he was talking with a mouth full of food. He wanted to get some clothes and he agreed to have dinner too.
Hospitalized
n. has been staying at PY1 – the Adolescent Psychiatry inpatient unit at the Winnipeg Health Sciences Center – since Friday August 13. He has been a voluntary inpatient for assessment. This represents a little progress. In February 2004 he had been admitted for a few days and started an assessment but he ran away.
On the first day of his hospital stay, he seemed to be confused and frightened. He was honest with me about his drug use and, at least that day, he appeared to be sincere about getting help to stop using all drugs except marijuana.
Lost Boy – summer of ’04
I’m posted the first version of this post on Wednesday August 4 from an Internet Cafe in Canmore, Alberta, where I was camping on holidays. I came for the Canmore Folk Festival and arrived in time to see most of the Festival in spite of car trouble. I finished this post from my friend Randy’s house in Edmonton on August 5.
I had a call Wednesday morning from Red, the manager of the group home where n. is nominally staying. He said n. had come back after several nights awol, but was voicing ideas of hopelessness and worthlessness. Red wanted to call in the Mobile Crisis Intervention unit to meet and assess him.
Present in his thoughts
N. has been resident in a group home a few blocks from my house, as I posted on June 9.
I attended a meeting with n., his CFS social worker, his group home key worker, and my estranged wife Jan on June 10. N. was argumentative, and I got the distinct impression that he was still determined to beat the system and keep his freedom. He took off right after the meeting. I left with a mission of gathering his clothes and delivering them to Garfield, which I did a few days later.
Where’s the Lost Boy?
N.has been back in Winnipeg for nearly a month. He held out in Edmonton until May 18 or 19 and visited a shelter. His name was on a watch list and an Edmonton Child Care worker gave him a one way bus ticket to Winnipeg. He came back Thursday evening May 20 and spent the next five days on the street, and the nights in the emergency youth shelter. On Tuesday May 25 he was admitted to a Group Home at 240 Garfield in Winnipeg, operated by B & L Youth Services. He is the youngest kid in the home, which specializes in training kids to live independently in apartments, when they have a job or when they are eligible for Social Assistance.
N. came to see me on Thursday May 27, at my office. He was not hostile, and we didn’t look back at the demands and threats he made when he last spoke to me a few weeks ago. He assumed or knew that I had visited the Winnipeg CFS office after he ran away to Edmonton, and that I had retrieved his Warhammer models and his remaining clothes. I agreed to drive him to my house, pick up the stuff he wanted, and drop him at the Group Home.
Sunscreen
My friend Stephen Katz offered my some support and advice in a private email message in the form of a quote from the Sunscreen song. I may have heard of it, but I didn’t think I had ever actually heard the song or read the lyrics.
The story of the Sunscreen column, the Sunscreen speech and the the Sunscreen song is interesting. It started as a newspaper column by Mary Schmich, written and published in Chicago June 1, 1997. It was titled “ADVICE, LIKE YOUTH, PROBABLY JUST WASTED ON THE YOUNG”. It began to circulate on the Interet, but it was generally misattributed as speech by Kurt Vonnegut, to the graduates of MIT. It was turned into a 1999 hit song by Baz Luhrman.
I found the text of the column, and Luhrman’s musical version.
It’s cute and funny, and wise and sad.