Walk a mile in our shoes. Our children are rarely mentioned. In the circles we travel, people pretend our son is nonexistent. Something, anything would be better than nothing. It would be so nice to have the same privileges as those who have medical diseases. People do not understand our kids. They do have a medical disease.
Tonight, I watched a new show called "Human First." Half way through, I started crying after seeing the enormous help for patients with physical illnesses. The amazing support patients receive at the NIH Hospital are incredible. No one complains about their high-priced therapies.
People complain about people with mental disorders using up too many resources. We pay insurance like everyone else. Why are our services rationed? Or we hear, "Well, we can't help everybody." Insinuating medical services would run out due to us? Where is our place to drop off sick kids? Where are our research studies? When do they receive hospitalization and treatment?
If only they would add up the Department of Justice bill. Why is it okay to torture our children with jail and prison? My son is still in jail since February, 18, 2017. He was in a hospital. Within five days of release, he was arrested. He was so unstable he ended up in solitary confinement for almost two weeks.
One good thing is my son's coming to terms with his own race. After being called the "n" word at school (fairly sure it triggered this last episode), Ty said, "Mama, no, really, I'm not black. I'm white." We hired Sedrick, his African American counselor to help him with this. Then Ty fired Sedrick.
We'd tell Ty, "We love every black bone in your body." He called last week to inform us, "I use grease now. My bunkmate, Larry, (who is black) showed me how." We said, "We're so happy to hear that." One upside. I think his racial identity crisis is finally cured.
In the meantime, my son's treated like a maximum security prisoner in a county jail. He's locked in thirty hours at a time. He hasn't had exercise, gym time, or been allowed outside since February. Ty was in solitary confinement from February 18, 2017, to March 10, 2017, when he was moved into the general prison population and assaulted. The jail was irresponsible by not placing him in their disabilities unit. That unit was full. For this, we hold the jail accountable. Ty still has blurry vision from the concussion he received and still no MRI. He's still hearing voices. He's being denied an education — this would have been his senior year. We attended his friend's graduation. It took all the strength we could muster.
County mental health (CMH) denied him a supervised locked-in-at-night placement in a group home. Now we've found out he has co-morbid illnesses — autism and mental illness. CMH was supposed to give us this information. They, of course, never documented our requests. They also didn't record Friday, the day before his arrest. We begged CMH to help us get a civil commitment.
Today, we hired lawyer #4 for social security. Sad to say, next week I'll probably hire lawyer # 5 to address the Freedom of Information Act and the denial of the video showing Ty being assaulted, and possibly #6 to obtain an education he has been denied by the jail. This is contrary to state laws. For the record, Lawyers #2 & #3 are for his legal cases. Lawyer #1 is for his guardianship.
Sometimes memories flood over me in waves. It's so hard to get rid of anything that reminds me of my little boy. He was a really good boy. He took medicine for ADHD. He had no behavior problems in school. Socialization was hard for him. It's hard not to beat ourselves up, especially about the bullying and how long it was before we realized he was sick. What if we had caught it sooner? It came on so fast.
Ty is eighteen. We've hired eight psychiatrists in his life. I miss my son horribly.