Saturday, March 2, 2013

Acceptance

Yesterday, I was told that our insurance won't pay for a long term stay for my son. An entire team of doctors sat at a table with us attempting to explain the unexplained   He needs long term treatment. This is not something acute, they said, when I attempted in my own mind to explain that perhaps he just got so stressed out that he crashed...but would be ok, eventually. They said that this was just the blossoming of a bigger illness.  This was not a one time break.  They need more time to really define the diagnosis.  It could be a bipolar illness, with aspects of a thought disorder. OR, it could be a thought disorder like schizophrenia with manic aspects.
My mind didnt want to accept that.  We have a capacity to choose, to change...to heal.  I have NEVER thought anything impossible.  
I went to the hospital to see him last night and I listened to him talk about suicide.  It is almost a religion to him.  He feels that it's part of his destiny.  Sometimes, he said, God gives someone cancer and they die.  It is meant to happen at that time, and we miss them but understand that this is natural.  But, he said, perhaps God gave him a mental illness AS his way to die.  He thinks it's the same thing as cancer or even a car accident. Just another way for the soul to depart.  The end game is the same.  I could argue til I'm blue in the face and talk myself in circles but since he believes this is just one more way to go and no different than any other way we could die...he cannot be convinced.
While visiting, they brought me papers and asked me to sign for the transfer.  I couldnt sign in front of him, as he sat there begging me to find a way out.  He is an active teenaged boy who has been confined for seventeen days now.  He has gained eleven pounds and spends too much time looking out windows, longing for the outside.  Since the insurance is not settled and we won't know until Monday how this is going to be paid for, I did not sign the papers.
If I am going to get the bill for this, I can't pay.  And yet, I fear for him. I want him with me more than anything in the world.  I want to bring him home and convince him that he has a long life ahead of him in which he can research all these big questions, he can talk to all kinds of quantum physicists and ask all the questions he wants. He can talk to gurus and swami's and ministers and teachers.  He is obsessed with the bigger picture. Spirituality, metaphysics. Quantum physics.  I want him to learn and to grow...but rationally.  I want him alive.  If he says that he is a 4 on a suicidal scale of 1-10...I certainly won't risk forty percent.
As I was leaving, I passed another mother sitting in the hallway surrounded by bags that contained her daughters belongings. She said, "Are you ok"? and I as I put my hands up to say "I don't know", she said "because I'm not".  I understood completely and we spoke for a few moments about our children.  I tried to offer her hope.  Her daughter has an eating disorder and is cutting. Her daughter had refused to visit with her.  I told her that my son had been at that point and it was very common.  I gave her my name, my phone number, my facebook information.  I hope she reaches out.  It would be good to talk to someone who knows exactly what this feels like.  Mother's don't like to feel helpless where their children are concerned. 
I want to micro manage. I want control. I want to MOTHER him back to health. I want to believe this is temporary. I want to believe that he is just so smart, so totally brilliant that he found himself researching philosophy and spirituality and religion and physics and just became confused and overwhelmed.
He isnt alone in his beliefs. Many of his beliefs are shared by millions. It is the direction he is taking these beliefs that cause the problem.
All I could do was hug him, give him a few new outfits that were bought by a dear family friend who cares for him, and ask him to read and exercise when he can...and not to give up hope.  He wanted me to take him with me. And if I could, I would run with him to the ends of the world and FIND the key to all of  this.

If these doctors, all of them, all their tests...all their combined expertise...tell me that this is only the beginning and that there is no end in sight, not now...perhaps not ever...then I need to center myself and prepare for the long haul.
I will accept what I must accept. I will seek to understand the things I cant change.
I will love him and love him and love him....
But I'm not sure that I can ever accept that there is no hope.  God works in ways we can't begin to understand.  I must believe in our capacity to heal.

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