difficult child crashed. On hospital, not sure if neuro or mental crisis

[SuZir]

As planned difficult child is transferred today. They decided to transfer him to neurology department to that University hospital I mentioned. Psychosis seems "very unlikely" according the psychiatrist here. Conversion, maybe with concussion playing some role in the mix, is current hypothesis for somatic side. Dissociation, anxiety, stress reaction, maybe depression or who knows for mental side. But it will be new doctors in next hospital, so who knows what they will say. They are scheduling lots of testing for him for tomorrow. They will need to exclude also some more exotic neurological illnesses before conversion disorder can even be diagnosed. Treatment for conversion disorder, according the neurologist here, is mostly same as if the cause for symptoms was neurological. Physical therapy, including biofeedback and occupational therapy. Prognosis in conversion disorder is rather good, for most it is a short term problem and for most it doesn't recur.

Today difficult child has again been little more alert, more functioning. It still comes and goes and he can be staring the wall for long periods and time and not to react, or it may be difficult to get him react, but when he does communicate, he seem to mostly know where, who, how and why. Apathetic, jaded, angry and rude, and still slow and somehow dull. Seems to have strange thoughts and most likely also hallucinations, but seems to have more normal touch to reality than Friday when I was able to come here. And Thursday was even worse according husband. He is remarkably little distressed about his condition, but it doesn't seem to be because he would not consider it serious, it seems more like he wouldn't care or was too tired to care.

husband spoke with difficult child's coaches and some team mates and they had not noticed anything odd in difficult child before Wednesday. Of course most of them don't know difficult child at all, he was here for a short term loan and there was only few people he knew beforehand. But he had seemed normal to everyone in Monday and Tuesday and nothing particular happened. difficult child did have some argument with one team mate Tuesday night when there was him and few other guys from the team making dinner and playing video games in someone's home, but that seemed trivial to everyone and difficult child wasn't acting odd after it according others. No concussion signs according them all (only person outside hospital who knows something else than concussion is suspected is team's doctor, and husband talked with him and reminded him that whatever consent for release of information difficult child may have signed, doesn't hold when he is incapable of making decisions and husband as his next-of-kin absolutely forbids any release of information to difficult child's employer.)

We have packed up difficult child's stuff from his flat and are also ready to head home. difficult child isn't coming back here again. He was to be loaned here till the end of this month and I'm sure he is not okay to train or play before that. It is kind of sad; two large duffel bags of stuff plus personal sport eq. and his whole life is packed up. Took us less than an hour to pack and clean the place.

Finding six packages of different kind of jalapeños from the kitchen made me almost sick. He had certainly been looking for the hottest version. And he doesn't even like spicy food so I doubt he has ate any of it.

 

[SuZir]

One thing that spooked me out while cleaning difficult child's apartment, other than jalapeños, were the doodles. Doodling certainly is nothing new, he has done that from the time he was four or something like that. If there is a pen and paper and difficult child sitting still, there is also doodles. So of course we found a lot of doodles from his flat.

They were in appropriate places, in margins of his work out schedule or their weekly schedule, in news papers, advertising mail and opened envelopes, nothing wrong or out of ordinary in that. What spooked me out was what he had doodled. Usually he tends to doodle one of three things; caricatures or other pictures of people, either of those he is with, people he knows well or celebrities etc. sometimes also animals, things in his mind, that may be part of what he is talking with someone, what he hears about or thinks about, could be anything from technical drawings of some object and their functioning to female figurines, or things he actually sees and that catch his eye. I guess those spooky doodles are the last category, things he sees.

What makes it spooky, is precisely that. They are not things I would see, and I don't now mean his usual peculiar point of view. I guess those doodles are how dissociation looks and feels like to him. They are not abstract, but they are twisted, odd, looked from the strange direction, being two or three things at the same time, lacking clear, definite boundaries and, to me, very, very oppressive and spooky. And at the same time they were clearly things he sees, everyday object, the view from his window, things like that.

I know I should had just thrown them away, just packed those papers he actually needs regardless the doodles and thrown away junk mail, empty envelopes and news papers, but I cut and took with me some of the spookier ones also from the papers we were throwing to recycle bin. I'm not even sure why, probably because they did shake me up quite badly. And probably shouldn't have done that, even looking at them is more or less invading his privacy. They were not there for me and husband to see and I'm sure that if he had known someone would had been coming to his flat, he would had hide them before it. I'm feeling sleazy for taking them and they are not even serving any particular purpose, maybe only reminding me about his actual state of mind. These were certainly done before Wednesday and the crash, when he was still acting normal and functioning.