It's been a long time and much has happened. After the previous entry and much dancing with the bureaucracy that is all the agencies involved in our lives we were able to extend Joesph's stay a short time at the facility. We moved into our new home and got settled as best we could to be able to have Joseph come home.
Needless to say I nearly lost my sanity during the process. Joseph came home for good but the battle has not stopped. We settled him in, attending the ymca summer camp and having a routine at home. We continued to fight with child support enforcement to forgive our past child support since we were reassuming the costs associated with his care and just having him, this is still a battle we are fighting. Honestly by the time it is figured out we will have paid it all off anyway. But all that is some of the smallest in worries compared to everything else.
Child services had to go to court to return him home because him biological father wouldn't sign the agreed entry, it didn't make a difference but just caused the process to be dragged out longer than necessary. We couldn't find a respite worker to work with us because the services come from department of developmental disabilities and even though Joey is low functioning with an IQ of 75 he is too high functioning for services. We again were denied for social security because we exceed the income criteria but certainly aren't making enough to always be able to afford everything he needs. Is anyone seeing a pattern here? Its the never ending grey area our family lives in. So we continue to fight for services as much as we can.
Now since Joey came home I continued to hope we were transitioning ok. I knew we would have some bumps but I was not prepared for all that was going to happen.
Meetings, appointments on and on trying to have everything in place for Joseph. On a day to day basis he was doing ok. But slowly it started to wear down. Joey might be 12 but he has the mentality of a 4 year old. He has no ability to entertain himself at all. So if you are not constantly paying attention or participating with him he gets frustrated. He started to have arguments over trivial things like taking showers or brushing teeth. Anything and everything he would argue about. Its exhausting. On 3 separate occasions we had to have the police to the house because he escalated and began breaking things in his room. Each time they would come out he would calm down for a minute and we would have yet again another court date. Exhausting. Nothing was going anywhere. There are so many people involved with Joey and yet nothing seems to happen. Now don't get me wrong I know the people involved work very hard including his case worker, but its the powers that be who make the decisions that take their sweet time because its not effecting their lives. Anyway, Joey has had one appointment with the new psychiatrist at cincinnati childrens which was several hours only to have them look at me bewildered at the end and telling me that they were going to look over everything and we would talk again in a couple of weeks. Now I didn't expect them to make huge changes right than and there but it would have been nice if they could've had a game plan. I guess we shall see at this next appointment.
With everything piling up I couldn't imagine anything else. Silly me I should know better by now. Paul had gone out of town and my dad and father in law were managing the kids for the weekend while I worked. Everything seemed to be going well, I hadn't gotten any phone calls.
I got home on Sunday and Joey asked to go play with his friends. Sure why not, I told him to be home at 9 and went about some house work I had to do. Joseph came in the door about 840 and from the second he stepped in the room I knew there was going to be a problem. Joseph has a very distinct look when things are going o be bad. I can never describe to anyone how it is but his eyes are vacant and he just grunts and screams. Joseph came at me pushing me into the door. I grabbed my phone and called 911 immediately knowing there was no way this was going to end well. Joseph punched me in the face and slammed the bathroom door shut. I could hear a commotion in the bathroom but as long as he was in there me and max were safe. Dispatch said police were on the way and hung up. Joseph came flying from the bathroom and at Max and I. I managed to get us into max's room hoping to wait it out. Joseph forced his way in the room and threw a old doorknob at max nearly hitting him. Joey had managed to get between max and I and I was terrified. Max tried to run at me and Joey grabbed his shirt throwing him to the ground. I manged to get hold of Joey and contain him. Max was crying and I looked him telling him " run max run." Little max got up and ran. I lost my ability to hold Joey back anymore. I ran after Max to keep myself between him and Joey. Joey came running after us but luckily the police showed up at that time. Joey was subdued by an officer. While he was being calmed down another officer came to survey the damage. Joey had destroyed the bathroom and thrown his medications everywhere. The officers took pictures and my statement and than took Joey to detention. Max was not seriously hurt and I picked up the house. Jesus what is happening.
The next day we had court again. God I am so sick of court. His caseworker, lawyer, probation, and CASA were all there. Joseph admitted to the charges so we could get him on probation and he returned to detention until a safety plan could be put in place. After several long conversations with everyone my head was spinning. Again there is concern for safety and with that we start to have little choices if this continues to happen. I have been told PPLA is something, which means he goes back into child services custody for placement but there is no time limit like before. This is not a option as far as I am concerned. I mean if we can't do it foster placement sure as hell isn't going to be able to, he'll bounce from place to place and not get what care he truly needs for his issues. What I believe needs to happen is he needs to be admitted into the hospital at cincinnati childrens for a medication wash. I don't know anymore if any of the medications are helping or if they are making things worse for him. Obviously he isn't stable. I mean what if we take him off medications and he gets better? Or he doesn't get worse than there is no point to the medications. Or there are other possibilities for medications that might be better. Just too many variables and I certainly don't want to make any decisions about Joey and our family without knowing there is no other options.
Now this seems simple enough but I can't get anyone to listen or step up and do it. His previous psychiatrist wanted nothing to do with it. He is just starting with new psychiatrists and they seem a bit overwhelmed with him. So I reached out to his neurologist to see if we could get anywhere because frankly we are running out of time and so now I wait. His neurologist reached out to the psychiatrist and I am simply waiting to hear what anyone has to say. In the meantime Joey is back home from detention and seems ok but I feel as though I am always holding my breath waiting and hoping nothing happens.
Well ladies and gentlemen thats the short version of the last several months. I will try to do better at updating but quite frankly I am exhausted most of the time from dealing with everything. I just hope at some point one of the many people involved will be able to see that we need to get Joey unmedicated and see what his baseline is. Thank you again for listening. Love you all.
