Monday, April 16, 2007

Suckitude

I am at the ER with JJ. Still waiting to talk to the doctor but the information we have is that he was DRINKING with his "friends" and had a seizure. He will need a CT or MRI to determine if the mass is still stable or not. We will go from there. Sometimes it seems like my little family can't catch a break. Keep us in your prayers/good thoughts. We need them.

Update: They had already done the scan. No change w/ the cyst. Seems as though my beloved child is just plain drunk and post ictial from the seizure. Now I can just be really angry and a little worried. Crap.

7 Kids Who Want To Play:

Anonymous said...

That little arsehole. He is displaying monumentally piss-poor judgement, making horrible choices, and because of his medical condition it is more important for him than for the average little arsehole to have at least marginal judgement and make at least moderately decent choices. And poor you, because you are his mother and so of course this is horrible for you to watch him go through. When I was in therapy because of family members of mine who were displaying nonexistant judgement and making utterly deplorable choices, and it was literally driving me crazy to watch it happen again and again, and taking up all of my resources to try and help them, so that there were none left for myself, my very wise counselor said something really true. She told me that I would not be happy or even calm until I found a way to see them lacking the judgement and making the bad choices and say to myself "there they go, doing what they do," and then go about the business of living my life, because that would have the same impact upon their judgement and choices (none), but change everything in the world for me.

I spent another two years after that flogging myself and accomplishing little in regards to my family members other than to royally piss them off from time to time. I stopped seeing the counselor after she made that observation, because I thought it sounded really cold. How could she suggest I give up on my family? Didn't I have a moral obligation to do something? If I didn't keep trying, nobody else would.* She was suggesting the impossible, and was obviously a horrible therapist.
And then something just clicked. I would get the phone call in the middle of the night about how the cops in X state were such jerks and couldn't overlook them speeding while carrying an unregistered gun not belonging to them when for crying out loud, people were out to GET them and if life as fair the car they were driving WOULD be theirs and how DARE that jerk report it stolen, and could I possibly send them a thousand dollars for bail, or a lawyer, or a plane ticket, or their OWN gun or car, and instead of spending money that would then represent weeks or months of even more overtime and even less ramen for me, or jumping on a plane my own self to go and babysit them, or even just staying up all night worrying, I started saying "dang, I'm really sorry, but I don't have a dime to my name right now. Maybe if you started taking your meds again it would help you get through this. No? Okay then, I have to be somewhere early in the morning, good luck with that."
To me, that was untakeable advice and sounded really mean. It was also really true, and I am fully aware that I am not the golden standard for mental health. I'm not saying you are either, but you're waaaaaay closer than I am. Which isn't to say that this won't still eat at you. But on the off-chance that you can skip the flogging (which I couldn't until I was just completely emotionally bankrupt and went into survival mode) I thought I'd share my counselor's words, because crap and heck and dang if this don't look like the same kind of scenario now that you've gotten the results of the scans. I'm really sorry.



*I'm totally not talking about Little Man here; that is different. I am talking about the functionally dysfunctional--people who were not crazy enough to have the men in white coats pop a net over them and be done with it, who had the mental capacity to do better but just refused, often for reasons of pathology that they ultimately couldn't control, but that I couldn't either. I know you know that, but I wanted to make sure that nobody tumbled down the slippery slope into flameland unnecessarily.

Anonymous said...

I paperclipped the rest of that story for you to read while you're here--I hope I was at least a half-decent distraction (verbal/metaphorical "toilet reading"). Too bad the bugger started to wake up before you had a chance to shave his goodies. XOX The Ghost of Erma Bombeck

Klynn said...

Yikes. I suppose the old Bill Co.sby skit about kids being brain damaged would be in poor taste, here, huh? Eh, I never claimed to be politically correct. That said, though, just remember that all kids (teens, especially) are brain damaged (regardless of a medical condition) and prone to do stupid things. I hope this is a serious lesson-learned for him, and he realizes that his life is more important than a potentially "fun" drunk/high. Hugs to you, Jo.

Not So Anonymous Michelle said...

I'm SO sorry.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad there is no change medically in his brain mass but I'm so sorry you had to go through that. If anyone deserves that vacation, my friend, it's you!

Azul said...

Oh Jo!

Sorry to hear this latest 'suckitude' going on for your family, but I'm glad to hear that there have been no changes on the medical front.

I think back to the poor choices I myself made as a teen, and shudder to think of Chico making the same ones. It's hard enough to see them go through the teen and young adult stuff, let alone throwing any sort of medial fragility into the mix.

If only we could shield them from making poor decisions, huh?

Sending good thoughts your way...

terri c said...

How terrifying for you. And, alas, how adolescent of him. Crap, indeed. And it is cosmically unfair that his need to be more attentive to choices arises at the age where attentiveness to choice and consequence seems to be on the other side of the planet. Sending you warmest thoughts.