one lousy hand

Two days after my meeting with Nova last month, the supervisor called me and did some serious eating of crow. Her people had let her down. It turned out that the numbers weren't really as bad as they had told her and that Elizabeth HAD made progress. She was still learning her job and wanted to apologize, and the director/CEO of the facility was going to sit down with them and look at treatment goals. I felt like I was holding a handful of trump cards and that we could get some things accomplished now. There were some good folks there and I knew it would be very disruptive to Elizabeth to start over somewhere else. Transition is not her strong suit. I was ready to move ahead.

I'm obviously a pretty lousy poker player.

Elizabeth's Child and Family Team has been busy this last month. We've met twice and worked over email to come up with some thoughtful goals. We invited NOVA to participate via conference call at last night's meeting; no response. I finally called Disability Rights NC; it turns out they have had several complaints about NOVA, and they called and talked to Elizabeth's therapist there about some of them. They asked me to report her threatened discharge to the state, saying they couldn't just decide to kick her out like that. The worker I talked to at DRNC actually had met Elizabeth on another visit there. They were concerned about her diabetes too.

When they called yet again about another restraint, I asked once again that she be put back on the beta blocker that was looking successful when she came. The psychiatrist had pulled her off it in the first week. At clinic on Tuesday, he agreed to put her back on it for seven days to see how she did.

Today I took the reworked goals to NOVA for our monthly treatment team meeting there. Our team charged me with presenting these goals and asking them to work with them to hone her treatment. They had said they didn't know what to do, and our team was going to help. When I arrived, I was pleased to find their director/CEO had come to the meeting and I passed out the goals.

He held out a hand to stop me. "You aren't going to like what I'm going to say," he said. "Effective February 12, Elizabeth will be discharged from our facility." I said something about their inability to change their treatment to help her, that I knew they were out of strategies, repeating what they had said last month. "Oh, no," he said. "We can work with her just fine; it's you we can't work with." He quoted their handbook, saying that the therapeutic relationship was too broken to continue and that was grounds for dismissal. When I asked for specifics, he said that I had copied regulatory agencies and legislators on my emails and that could be construed as a threat. 

I asked about the diabetes testing. They had records showing that they had been testing all along, their nurse said, but no, I couldn't have them. Besides, a blood sugar of 274 isn't too high and they don't believe she has diabetes. The director/CEO said that he had diabetes and he knew about it. She certainly didn't have type 1 and she was too young to get type 2. I asked for the incident reports about the restraints she had while she was there, reports that I had been promised. They were refusing to release them. I asked the supervisor about her telling me that her staff had let her down and that their numbers were wrong. She never said that, she told me.

In the two days she's been back on the beta blocker, she hasn't had a single aggressive incident.

So there we are. I have a child coming home in a month. I'm not going to fight their decision and I'm trusting that she is okay in the time that is left. There are some good folks there and I have to believe they will watch over her. I have a lot of work to do in the next thirty days.

But not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

those quiet goddesses are the most dangerous

I think a lot as I drive, and one of the things I think about is how families fit into categories. You probably know a family that seems right out of Faulkner or the Simpsons or Dickens or Hogwarts or perhaps Road Runner cartoons. Other people besides me do this, don't they? Sure they do! Well, my cousin's family falls into the Greek myth category. They live in a farm in the North Carolina mountains, and it's every bit as pretty as Mount Olympus. My cousin's husband looks like Poseidon, although perhaps Poseidon on Prozac, because he's calm and pleasant, none of that vengeance stuff. RM herself would have to be Hestia, goddess of the hearth. She's the one who keeps the wood stove going, bakes the bread, tends the garden and the chickens and ducks. She also keeps the goats and makes the cheese. Bernard, the dramatic youngest daughter, is clearly Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty. Auburn-haired with gorgeous eyes, she is known for her drawings of Reubenesque mermaids. She loves to shop and socialize and she sings like a siren. They may live in the mountains, but she loves the beach. Definitely a 15-year-old Aphrodite.

And Ed, the 20-year-old—I see Artemis, goddess of the flocks and the chase, every time I look at her. She's truly lovely, tall and willowy with golden hair, soft-spoken and low-key. She's at home on the land and can ride her horse for hours in the woods. She's magical with their farm animals and has even trained her border collie to bring her walnuts and crack them for her. Her pursuits are more solitary, reading, drawing and knitting. I don't know if she's an archer, but she should be. And like Artemis, it's easy to forget just how dangerous she can be.

Aphrodite and Artemis share a part-time job working with animals. A supervisor was hired as boss to the girls and several others at the job. I can't remember his name, so we'll just call him Jethro, for lack of anything slimier-sounding. He was 37 and almost good-looking in a sleazy kind of way and thought he must be irresistible to Aphrodite, who is actually quite capable of taking care of herself. But her firm redirection as he ran his hand down her leg or adjusted her bra strap or said something totally inappropriate didn't seem to be working. Oh, and did I mention he was her boss?

Being summer, the girls made an after-work trip down to the river to swim, a fact that proves they are among the immortal because that mountain river water is cold as Hades. And in that uncanny way that creepers have in appearing where they are least wanted, Jethro showed up, ostensibly to swim, but really to gawk and further his attentions to Aphrodite. He came riding in on a golf cart, an unlikely but somehow perfect vehicle for a seriously seedy villain. And so he resumed his courtship of Aphrodite.

Artemis watched for a bit and then smilingly beckoned Jethro over. He came eagerly, perhaps thinking of switching his focus to her. She looked at him silently for a moment and then said in a calm pleasant voice, "Jethro? If you touch my sister again, I'm going to castrate you like a motherfucking pig. And I know how because I've done it before." She smiled. He backed up, fear in his eyes. "I, uh, believe you," he stammered. When Hestia showed up shortly after to pick up the girls, Jethro was tearing out of the parking area, riding the golf cart far faster than safe and tilted on two wheels. When she asked what happened, Artemis told her, adding innocently, "But I said it very sweetly."

Jethro didn't stick around those parts much after that. I'm not sure I blame him.