The Roller Coaster Ride Continues...

We are back to square one again with her. We are not pursuing dissolution now, as Lutheran feels that the judges in our particular county will rake us over the coals stating that we haven't tried everything since we haven't put her back on drugs. She has been on so many combinations of so many drugs for over 6 years, and has had the same behaviors and issues throughout. Not sure what anyone expects will change, but fine, we will play along. Otherwise, we need to be prepared to shell out an initial $5K for a lawyer, to get charged with child abandonment, and to possibly pay child support to the state until her 18th birthday.

We cannot find a psychiatrist to treat her that is on our insurance plan, takes Medicaid, or is contracted with Lutheran Services--if we do find one, they are not taking any new patients. So getting her on drugs has posed a challenge, even to Lutheran. Our fourth therapist just dismissed us--and scheduled new people in our time slot--saying that when she recommended dissolution to Lutheran she didn't expect to see us again. No RTC will take her because she isn't cutting anyone--not crazy enough, and the Children's Homes will not take her because she has too many behaviors--too crazy. We can't fix this. She can't fix this. Nobody else will fix this, and if we try to get out of this, we are the bad guys. It is not a pretty picture. There is no end in sight. We just try to limit interaction.

We get the results of her latest psych eval on the 5th. Not sure what to expect or what that will do for us. I think my next move is to write to every RAD-specialized treatment center in the country, documenting the effort, to see if any of them will work with the insurance/Medicaid that we have available. We will no longer even play with the idea of getting a $60K loan to try to get her one year of help somewhere--with absolutely NO guarantee of any improvement.

We got a call from a teacher on Friday saying that she has tried very hard to work with DD and her behaviors but that she is at her wits end. She cannot seat her next to anyone without problems and when an incident escalated on Friday, she eventually asked DD to join her in the hall. At first, she refused, but eventually left the classroom. She continued to confront the teacher in the hall, escalating it further until the teacher said she would have to call her parents. At that point, DD went into her "Jerry Springer" mode and said "Oh no you won't!" The teacher was shocked and tried again to calm the situation, but nothing worked. She again said she would have to call us, to which DD again said. "No, you won't be calling my parents."

When the teacher told DH the story she sounded like she wanted to smack her in that moment. She said that if she had ever talked like that to a teacher that she would have met the back side of her mother's hand when she got home. He told her that we completely understand, and that we have the same issues at home and asked that she simply document everything--because other parties think WE are crazy and over-react. Told her to kick her out, if she had to. Apparently this has been going on since the beginning of the school year and all of the teachers have just been trying to work with her--show her some compassion and patience. Unfortunately, she has worn them out as well.

So - for now we have no therapist. We have no psychiatrist. The psychologist who did the eval only agreed to do the testing, but will not see her as a patient. The only psychiatrist in town with openings refuses to treat her condition. And all of this will reflect on us as not trying everything to help this kid and to "preserve the family." The state knew what they were dealing us, and now we are the ones failing this kid. We get to be the scapegoat for the dozens of people who failed this kid, to get her to this state.