Where too now?

This week has been beyond difficult for us, if you followed my previous post you would have read (briefly) about my sons admission into an inpatient clinic program for 10 days, it has been 2 weeks since he was discharged and it has been a long two weeks to say the least.

We have been trying to figure out where to go from here, currently my son is staying with his father and step mother during the week as she is not working and the remainder of our parenting team does, everyone else we know works and we are not financially able to afford a full time facilitator or carer even if we could find someone who was able to cope with my sons care.

My sons official diagnosis list is as follows; ADHD, ODD, OCD, Anxiety, ASD (Aspergers). Early onset of conduct disorder and psychopathy are the latest as diagnosed by the clinic psychiatrist at the clinic (our Red Cross doctors are not on the same page here); looking at the above I am sure you can imagine that finding someone to look after him knowing all of the above and someone who could actually cope is a tall and near impossible order, my sons behavior(s) do not switch off they are constant from the time he wakes up until he goes to bed, this coupled with the mouth of a teenager and his IQ make looking after him is exceptionally difficult so currently his step mom is the only one who is able to do this during the week and he then comes to us every weekend whilst my middle son who is also my ex and my son stays with us permanently and goes to his dad every second weekend.

Last week we met with a social worker to try and determine the best way forward, at the end of the day we are just not sure what to do anymore and we just want to find a source of help for our son; it turns out that help in Cape Town and in Africa for that matter in this department is severely actually beyond severely limited and the options that we are left with involve sending our son into a long term program away from home which has absolutely shattered my heart beyond repair.

This week we had an appointment scheduled with our sons Red Cross doctors, my ex and his wife went through with him and 2 hours in I received a call to say they wanted to admit as our son was threatening suicide amongst other things, now I will tell you that I am very doubtful that my son comprehends the finality of suicide and that it actually means death and no coming back, I know my son is stubborn as hell and will do something just because he thinks he can reverse what is done and that is just as scary as your child actually wanting to end their life, knowing that they don’t but would do it anyway without understanding the consequences.

They wanted to admit him into the general ward which we were not happy about, apparently the TLC unit at Red Cross is literally the only young adolescent government unit in the whole of Africa that therapeutically helps children like Loghan long term whilst allowing them to pursue their education. BEYOND SCARY!!!!!

It was back and forth between our psychologist and psychiatrist until eventually we were told there were no beds available and no beds available anywhere else either so we would need to take him home and watch him and if anything happened or he attempted anything we were to call an ambulance strait away, this equals no sleep and a worry that I cannot even begin to explain- last week I double locked all of the doors and hid the keys in a drawer in my room after he attempted to run off with 2 bags packed earlier that day.

Just to add that his bags included- 3 hoodies, 1 t-shirt, a radio, a broken tablet, deodorant, mozzie repellent, a compass, several books, his favorite teddy, a compass and R130.

Once it was decided that we were going home, we discussed our families case and the way forward, we determined that given that the TLC unit will not be up and running for some time that we would need to look at other long term programs, this involves social workers and court orders and my heart just continued to break because you feel like you are sending your child away when in reality I would love nothing more than to keep him home but we just aren’t able to help him to the full extent that help is needed and no one knows how to help us, these seems to be the only thing that everyone involved can agree upon.

If you have worked with social workers (government allocated) then you will know it is both painstakingly frustrating and aggravating, the social worker allocated to our case in now on leave and the supervisor is never available or the phone just rings endlessly….now what??????

The answer… we just have to follow up until we get an answer if we can get through that is and in the mean time we just have to take it one day at a time and try to incorporate schooling between the 4 of us as Loghan is still registered with the school and will be until the end of the year whereupon we should have an answer as to where we are going to from here.