Today I took him to the airport.
Four nights ago I drove him to the hospital with an empty bottle in my pocket. Four nights ago I was already in my pajamas and wanted only to go to bed and to sleep, when he showed me what he’d taken. Four nights ago he said he reached his bottom and was ready to recover, but that’s not why I took him to the hospital.
I was not sitting in the ER once again, with my son hooked up to monitors because of the street drugs he had been relapsing on for weeks. I wasn’t there because of the altered state he went into the previous week during his birthday dinner, in the nice restaurant, surrounded by nice families. The altered state that was caused because he had stopped taking his prescribed medicine two weeks ago. I was in the ER because of cough syrup. Cough syrup he’d been drinking by the bottle, cough syrup that contained Tylenol. I took him to the hospital when I realized he’d been taking massive doses of Tylenol unintentionally with the cough syrup, because a Tylenol overdose doesn’t kill you right away, it kills your liver and your kidneys first, and it does it slowly.
So I sat there, dead tired, not because of heroin, or cocaine, but because of Tylenol. I sat there while a nurse roughly scrubbed down his arm and called him “dirty”, while she told him was going to die, while she rammed an IV needle in his arm, intentionally causing him pain. He bore it quietly. Her harsh words and her painful treatment of him. I bore it too, even while a part of brain was saying how wrong it was.
They keep the curtains open in cases of overdose, they also take all your clothing and belongings to make sure you don’t try to sneak out before your mental health is properly assessed.
This boy. This boy that the angry nurse purposely hurt. This boy used to bring me dandelion bouquets, used to sit for hours on my lap while I read him story after story, this boy who always tried so hard to fit in. This beautiful boy was still there in the hospital bed, with the sore arm, with all his belongings taken away. My little boy, who I could still occasionally glimpse in a gesture, in an expression, he was still in there.My boy, who’s brain chemistry has worked against him for the last ten years was still there, still trying. He has been fighting against a mind that contains beasts and horrors and realities only he can see. A mind, that when he became overwhelmed with its noise, he tried to quiet with drugs, and they worked. The drugs settled his mind, the drugs helped him make friends, let him feel like he belonged and was accepted. How can you blame him? He was 15, and his brain worked in ways that none of us could comprehend.
I saw that he was in pain, and I tried to fix it. I tried everything I could think of, sports, clubs, mentors, social workers, doctors, life coaches, tutors, psychiatrists, psychologists, peer groups, retreats, camps. I tried, but none of these worked as well as drugs and so the drugs won. I lost my boy by degrees, and he became the kind of patient a nurse thinks it’s okay to shame and to hurt. He became someone I didn’t know anymore. He became the young man in the hospital bed before me.
I stayed till 3:30am. I stayed while another mental health assessment was done. I stayed till I knew he would be safe and survive the night, and then I went home. It was 4am when I pulled into my driveway, when I slowly got out of my car and started walking through garden to my front door. It was 4am when I noticed the songs of the night birds, and while I’d would have rather have done anything but spend a night in hospital with my drug addled son, the bird songs, an owl hoot, and my dog waiting up for me were comforting.
He was in hospital for four days. Four days that I spent negotiating with insurance, four days trying to find him something, someone, somewhere to help him. Four days crying in my car where no one could see me, four days asking for help, four days not sleeping or eating enough, and this morning I drove him to the airport.
Today he flew across the country to a residential treatment center in California called Michael’s House. He says it’s incredibly beautiful there. They’ve taken his phone now, and I won’t be able to talk to him for 7 days, but he seemed hopeful and happy tonight, so I will hold on to that.
*Lyrics by Bernie Taupin from "Someone Saved My Life Tonight"
