At this time of the year, the light becomes dim by 8:00 and it’s dark by 8:15 PM. The leaves have started to turn colour and fall. It has been a rainy and cold summer. So far, we have managed to keep up our rides in the evening and we have not have to resort to our cycling tights and cold weather headgear, but the MEC shells have been useful. We started our rides at 6:30 PM during the summer, and we have rolled that back to 6:15 as the days have become shorter.
Prodigal Son
My chronicle of my feelings about n’s efforts to fight his boredom with drugs, gaming fantasies, heavy metal, anarchy, satanism and street life have been archived under the category heading of “Family & Life”. It has taken a life of its own and I have moved the posts to an archive sub-category called “Prodigal Son.”
The story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15.11-32)is a parable – a story told to make a point – about forgiveness and acceptance and spirituality. The spiritual lesson can be read in different ways. One of them is that God forgives the repentent sinner. That is the way the story has been retold in the famous song “Amazing Grace.” Another is that I should constantly forgive and constantly hope that he will recover.
The parable does not necessarily present a good psychological model of trust and boundaries in parenting, although in fact there is a significant boundary observed in the story. The son had taken his inheritance and spent it enjoying dissolute living in a far country, and came to a moment when he wanted to go home. At Luke 15:17, the story goes “But when he came to himself …”. I am challenged to trust myself to see when my son has come to himself and to find the right way to support him when he does.
Entertained
“Entertained” is a new category in this web log. I am trying to archive posts about my entertainment interests into one category which will hold posts about what I read, listen to, or see for my entertainment, organized into sub-categories about specific interests like books, folk music, folk festivals, movies. I used to have separate categories for books, folk music and other entertainments, and those categories have survived within the new “top-level” category.
A Visit
I saw n. and met his friend Nigel when they came to my house unannounced early yesterday evening. N.’s duffel bag had appeared in my back yard when I came home from work. He rang the doorbell a short while later. N. didn’t introduce Nigel until I asked, near the end of the visit. N. has told me that Nigel is older than 18, but he is short and slight and looks younger. N. asked for money for food. I offered them the supplies to make sandwiches while they sat on the porch, and they accepted my offer. They spent some of their time with notepads writing songs and the storyline of a role-laying game that they were acting out.
Upgraded to MT 3.1
I have downloaded and installed the upgrade to the new release of Movable Type, version 3.1, which came out August 31. I had been running version 3.0D. I didn’t need or want the Developer edition but the tried and tested version 2.6n was no longer available when I moved my blogging from Typepad to my own hosted web site.
Homeless
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.
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.