difficult child had a very hard weekend

[Kathy813]

I have been hesitant to post because of the board curse but difficult child has been doing very well. After a brief episode where she left the sober living house with a roommate who was using, she ended up going to a different sober house. The roommate she left with abscounded with difficult child's rent money, Kindle Fire, and "good" shampoo. Only my difficult child would have shampoo on her list of important things that were stolen.

Anyway, we held our ground and refused to help with rent unless she was in rehab or sober living so she found herself a new one to go to and is paying half of the rent and we are matching her for the other half. She has had the same fulltime job now for 3 months and is doing a good job there. For the most part, she is paying her own bills and even went ahead and got a Florida license.

Now, the topic of the thread . . . difficult child called late Thursday night asking where her appendix was saying she was in extreme pain and asked us what to do. We told her to go to the ER which she did. It turned out to be a ruptured ovarian cyst.

Then, last night she called crying that the director of the sober house had called her while she was with friends to tell her someone at the sober house had OD'd the night before. She was back at the sober house when they removed the body. I asked her what he overdosed on and she said she was sure it was heroin.

It was a year ago this week that husband found difficult child overdosed on heroin on our couch. Thankfully, he found her in time. I can only the imagine the pain of the phone call that the boy's parents received yesterday. He was a 26-year-old Iraqi vet who had lost a leg while on tour of duty.

~Kathy

 

[Calamity Jane]

Kathy,
I'm sorry to hear of the overdose, coming at the anniversary time for your daughter's episode. That is very, very hard, and I'm sorry she had to be there when they removed the body. It's a tough world sometimes, and we have so many blessings that we (I) often forget how some problems are so overwhelming that heroin is viewed as a respite.
Kathy, I'm sorry all of this happened just as your daughter had the ruptured cyst, too. Fortunately, she's OK, and she has a lot of support and she's doing well. I can understand your worry, 100%. Lots and lots of understanding hugs.

 

[dstc_99]

Its such a shame that drugs and mental health issues like this even exist. So many good people are lost to them.

I am glad to hear your daughter is doing well!

 

[Nancy]

Oh gosh Kathy I hope none of those things puts her into a tailspin, hope she stays the course and realizes how lucky she is. I didn't realize they had men and women in the same sober house. I've heard far too many of those stories about yong people being found dead over heroin. And thank god your husband found difficult child when he did.

My easy child has an ovarian cyst that reptures occassionally and the first time it happened she too went to the ER thinking it was appendicitis. In fact they had her sign the release to remove her appendix when the surgeon came in and stopped it saying she was ordering more tests and that appendicitis was often confused with ovarian cysts.

I thought of you the other day. Is she or you going on the exchange tomorrow to get her insurance? Did I remember right that she got catastrophic insurance? If yes she has to sign up through the exchange by Dec 31, not March 31 like all others.

 

[Kathy813]

Nancy, she has PCIP which is the government policy for people with pre-existing conditions that phases out when the ACA starts in January. So I am not sure if that is what you are talking about but I have already told her that she needs to sign up ASAP.

I am so scared that the people in power that are against ACA will somehow win this fight when difficult child finally has health insurance that covers mental illness within reach and we will be back to the drawing board.

~Kathy

 

[Signorina]

I am glad to read that she is doing well. I've been thinking of her and always hope that "no news is good news"; and I am glad it is! I too will hold a good thought that her health scare and the OD will be "food" for continued sobriety and good choices.

 

[Nancy]

Yes that is what I'm talking about. I had the name wrong. Make sure she gets covered by dec 31 or she has to wait a year. You and me both, I need this exchange to work. I'm not sure how my difficult child is impacted yet. She has coverage thru our public hospital for free. I called them today to ask if they were continuing it after dec 31 and they don't know. So right now I'm not having her go on the exchange but if they discontinue it she will have to. The problem is Ohio did not extend Medicaid and it think she will just miss the cutoff making minimum wage. But she can't afford to pay anything for insurance her salary is so low.

 

[PatriotsGirl]

So glad to hear she is doing well!!! I was hoping the no news was good news, too!

 

[lovemysons]

Kathy,
I'm so pleased to hear that difficult child has been working same job for 3 months and paying half the sober house rent...that's excellent!

What a sad story re young man who died of overdose. Regardless of environment...reminds me that my own difficult child living at home is not immune to the possible consequences of drug use.
Hopefully difficult child will count her blessings and realise that could have been her a year ago but thank God she got another chance.

Is difficult child seeing a psychiatrist and taking a mood stabilizer or antidepressant now?
LMS

 

[SuZir]

Glad she has been doing well, and I hope she will be able to survive also this obstacle. Keeping the stable job that long is a huge thing. Congrats!

Sometimes I wonder how much about addiction goes down to pure luck. Have wondered a long time starting from the conversations I used to have with my granddad. He was a war veteran from the three desperate, ugly wars with many terrible personal experiences during those long years. During those years when accumulative loss count in his unit was over 100 %. Looking back, he did suffer from PTSD, but at that time and place that was not something that would had been recognized or treated. And he was very high-functioning so even now he could had been overlooked. He, and all the others in his unit, used both amphetamine and heroin regularly during the war. Nothing to keep you going like speed and there are nothing that compares to heroin as cough medicine (and it takes care of the pain too.) He was able to get rid of both quite easily after war but many were not so lucky. First they did get their heroin from doctors and were somewhat functioning after the war but when the time went on, the long term effects of cause started to show. And then there was of course alcohol.

Many of those men my granddad served with, were long gone before I was born, some were high functioning till the end like my granddad but for many, the toll of all that begun to show during the year. I met many of them as a kid with my granddad. Many were wreck, some were downright scary for a young girl and it was so difficult to connect the stories my granddad told me, old photos he showed, to those people I met.

So much that was lost. So much grief and hurt. Decades and decades of suffering for your country even when everyone else was wanting to move on. So very sad.

When young, I hated it, that granddad always wanted to make me meet these people, but when I have grown older, I have understood and I'm grateful. After the war also Granddad just wanted to forget, he didn't talk about war to my mother much. My mother ended up hating everything that war and what my granddad did represented. She had no respect for those sacrificies and what all that had meant for her life. With me, granddad got a second change and wanted to show me, what the cost of my comfortable life in free country had been and who have paid it.

Addicts and alcoholics those men were. And not the nice people necessary, but putting that solely on them would be more than cruel.

 

[DammitJanet]

I have so many things going through my mind with this post. Im glad your dtr is back in a sober house and has been working well. Im so incredibly sad about the young man. The VA is not doing well by the young people who have served recently. Im also one who had a father who fought in WWII but I dont think as many of them came home with problems. My father saw some incredibly horrid things but he just didnt talk much about it. I went to reunions with him and met men who had almost drowned at Guadalcanal. The ship sank and they had to hold on to wreckage in the water until saved. Of course many men died in that tragedy. The men I met were pretty normal and I would say so was my father. Though maybe not as fine as I thought because he was scared to death my son would go into combat.

I hate hearing how our vets are treated now.

*As far as this new healthcare, Im flummoxed.

 

[Kathy813]

Yes, LMS, she is still seeing a psychiatrist and is on medications.

 

[DDD]

Let's hope that the AHC will make it possible for our kids and millions of others to finally get adequate care. Fingers crossed for our CD family members. DDD