Happy Birthday to Me

So yesterday we went to see TT -- just DH and I. A completely different mood this time. He wrote me last week saying that he heard that we did not immediately place DD in a facilty and wanted to talk to us about continuing therapy in the interim. TT wanted to know what our plan was and how he could help. We told him that we should know by Monday if DD is accepted into a local, long-term children's home. If she is not, we would pursue a residential treatment center again. He is now our mentor, our coach to help get her into a long term facility and keep her there until she is 18. He advised us on what to do and not do, what to say and not say, and offered that if we ever had any questions to call or email him and he would be happy to counsel us.

He told us to not get in the way...here is what he meant.

When the facility calls to get permission to medicate her, I planned to say, "no--get to know her for 30 days before you medicate her." He told me to do no such thing. Said that would show that we were still invested in her and the facility would interpret that as a need to get her back into the house. He said to let them drug her--and commented that of course they wouldn't give her a lethal dosage, so let go.

I told him that I wanted some kind of assurance that this would be a long-term placement -- a year at a minimum-- because I don't want to get her back in 30 days all drugged up and with new, ganster behaviors. He said to let her go to any place she is accepted for as long as they will take her--even if it is only 24 hours. He said that we are trying to build a case and even if she is only in for a few hours, showing that, for example, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital seven times in one year only helped our case.

Again - he told me to not get in the way of the plan. He said we had done the hard part of making a decision and now we needed to stick with it. Told us to not go visit her other than the mandated family therapy sessions. Told us to just flat out say NO to including DS in the sessions. I told him that I did that last time and that is what started all the problems. He said they cannot force the issue, but as I recall it was our insurance saying that everyone in the home had to be in the sessions, so we may have a battle at hand.

He offered to continue seeing us -- just us--to help us through this process and to help us with the grieving process; and there is definitely some grief here. I think I have already grieved a lot, but there is still something really powerful, just under the surface, that caused me to burst into tears just upon hearing him offering to help us through the grief.

It seems that once we made this decision, he changed positions. He is no longer attempting to help us unite with DD, he is now attempting to help us survive all of this. He seems to now be the advocate that we were told we would have 9 months ago--only not to help dissolve the adoption, just to get her out of our house permanently.

The way this works, supposedly, is if she gets into this local facility, they will accept the minimal payment, and we are OK with that. The local program is set up for 9 - 12 months. During those 9 months, Lutheran Social Services will start the paperwork to apply for the state of Texas to take back "temporary custody" of DD, allowing the State to then pay for a much longer solution -- basically a girls home until she is 18.

If she is not accepted to the local place, we will then apply to the same residential treatment center (RTC) she was in last time. Why the same one? Well, because the battle is the same -- she has too many issues for this local place, but not enough issues for a RTC. The catch -- the stupid place she was in last time, the place that fought me so hard while I was trying to get her admitted, upon our removing her from that facility, made us sign a medical release form stating that we were removing her against their medical advice and in the exit evaluation they did on DD they gave her a GAF score of 38 (out of 100) which is barely functioning and they were basically medicating her for Bi-polar disorder. They would have a lot of explaining to do if they now said that she did not qualify--but I suppose it is always possible that they still could not accept her. Nothing surprises me anymore with these places. So - she would go in under our insurance, until it maxed out. Then Lutheran would pay for another 3 months, and in all that time Lutheran would be working on that same application to get the state to take temporary custody so they can then be responsible for her care.

Then, until she is 18, we could be the "Disney Parent" usually described in divorces. We could be the ones doing the monthly visit of taking her out to eat or getting her a gift and since we would no longer be her authority figure, she just might like us then. She might actually thrive in an institution with no familial expectations, or love expectations. She would just have to take care of herself and not think about anybody else--and she is pretty good at that.

So, send lots of good vibes tomorrow while DDs application goes through the review process. This local facility would be the best for multiple reasons, but this is the same place that rejected her back in September for having too many issues. This would be the best for her and for us, so while I have no high hopes or expectations, it sure would make life easier and I will calmly wait for their decision.