how my son got put on a 51.50 72 hour hold

I am hoping that writing about this will take some of my anxiety away. So here we go:

My son should be released and coming home today… that is if they don’t try to pull shit and keep him in there longer. If anyone has information on California law and the 51.50 involuntary hold, your expertise is greatly wanted! I have done a lot of internet research but there is always some weird sort of loophole that these dr.’s try to pull and I want to be aware of it. They told him that they were going to keep him up to 5 days as a policy and that is NOT how this is going down. 

But let me go back to the beginning.

It started this last Friday. I woke up with a foreboding feeling. I even told my husband "something bad is going to happen today. It involves Jonathon."

I was hoping I was wrong. 

Some would say I subconsciously made things happen because of my "feeling", but i promise I tried my best. We had a pretty "normal" school day. He half assed work, I told him to do it again. That’s what we’ve been going through for the last few weeks. He wants to give less than minimal effort. For example, a science question was "Explain the difference between weather and climate"… and he said "weather is weather and climate is climate!" and put a happy face.

I mean … really?

So he had not mastered a bunch of lessons (he has to get at least 80% on his online assessments to move forward with his school work using the program we are in) and I told him he’d have to do them over this week along with whatever else was assigned, meaning extra work. This made him upset and he got a pretty bad attitude with me several times (yelling at me and stuff like that)… so this put him onto a punishment status and he got his extracurricular computer privileges taken away.

So when he sat down at his computer I told him that he was not getting computer time for the rest of the day and to turn the machine off.

He spun around in his chair and started yelling how I didn’t care about him and he was going to run away.

I did not respond. I didn’t want to get into a yelling match and I knew that he was upset. I told him to try and cool off in his room.

He stomped away and then I heard him come back and go out the front door.

I can’t just let him go running around like that, so I went out and called him back in.

His response "I don’t have to listen to you, you hag."

Hag is probably the funniest things he’s called me to date. But I wasn’t laughing at that point.

I told him to come inside, so he did.

He said "That’s it, I’ve made my final decision. I’m going to kill myself."

He proceeded to go into a cabinet in the kitchen where I keep things like ibuprofen. Nothing lethal, so it wasn’t really a threat. I told him to cut it out and go into his room and calm down. He told me that he wasn’t going to listen to me. he was going to kill himself.

I said that I would have to call the police if he kept it up and he said he didn’t care. 

Listen, I didn’t WANT to call them. I knew he was just mad and would calm down if he just went to his room for a while.

He proceeded to lunge for the dishwasher, presumably for a knife. There was a butchers block thingy with knives right in front of him, so I knew he was just pushing my buttons again.

That is when I got a bit more forceful and told him to get to his room. I took him by the hand and he jerked away. I put my hand on his shoulder to guide him, he jerked again. He put his hands up to move me away and I moved behind him and basically tried to push him forward. My son is no longer a little bitty boy. He is 5’2 and around 154 pounds. He’s big and sturdy and STRONG.

He pushed me away multiple times. I kept trying to move him and eventually he got to his room, yelling and cursing me the entire way. I told him to calm down and stay in his room.

"Why should I?! I don’t have to listen to you!"

I told him that he did have to listen to me and he needed to sit down.

He said "get away from me! I hate you!"

So I got closer. I told him that I loved him, I wouldn’t go anywhere and he needed to respect me.

He said he had no respect for me and lunged back with his fist, as if to hit me in the face.

I of course flinched.

He laughed. It was a terrible mean laugh.

"Oh, you flinched! You’re scared! Look at you!"

He taunted me.

I stood back up and said he needed to stop that immediately.

He made as if to hit me again.

I flinched and he laughed.

He did it a third time and i didn’t move.

That’s when he pushed me, both hands on my shoulders. I flew backwards.

I was in shock.

He had pushed me.

A part of me said "You should have just left him alone. He wasn’t going anywhere" the other part screamed "he needs to be respectful, you can’t let him get away with that!"

I stepped out, tried to talk to my husband, but he was in a meeting and could only text "call the police"

So I started to look up the number. I did not want to call 911.

They weren’t answering.

I decided to see if the situation would diffuse. I walked to his room and watched as he pulled his belt from his pants that were on the floor. He looked me in the eye as he looped it around his neck.

I lunged forward and put my hand between the belt and his neck. With the other hand I dialed 9-1-1 on the phone.

He struggled with me, trying to get my hand off so he could pull it tighter. I knew he was serious.

I screamed into the phone "My son is trying to kill himself, help me!"

they asked for my address which I thankfully was able to recall better than I do when I’m not in a panic (for some reason I just can’t recall the numbers without thinking about the way they look on the house, ha ha, i’m dumb). the operator stayed on the line while I struggled with him. She asked me questions and I did my best to answer.

Right before the police came I got the belt away from him.

he made like he was going to take the chord from the blinds to hang himself. Which is silly, they’d just pull out of the wall and he knows that.

He never actually tried it, he stepped away and screamed at me trying to get the belt back as the police came into the room.

He was told not to resist them. He did a little, but they got handcuffs on him and led him out of the room.

They called paramedics and he was transported to the hospital up the street. It didn’t matter about my insurance because they can’t transport minors there anyway.

I was in a panic because I could not bring the baby and Will was not responding to calls or texts (I thought he was still in his meeting). I tried my brother, no answer. I tried my parents and they said they’d come. A few minutes after the ambulance left (two police cars, a fire truck, and a paramedic ambulance in front of my house, gawking neighbors and crap, ugh) Will called and said he was 30 minutes away. Thanks for telling me you had left work. gah. My parents turned around and we waited for him to get home.

Going to the ER at the hospital was scary. It was just packed with people. I was so worried. I was pretty certain he hadn’t done any real physical damage, he had a few marks on his neck, but it didn’t look bad, but they still needed to check.

I was let back immediately, but he had already been cleared physically (his nurse found me looking for him in the hall) and was in the psych ER.

About 30 minutes later i was let into a room to sit with him. He was mad at first, but soon it melted away. We talked and talked. He couldn’t really say why he had gone that far. He said he blacked out and was just so angry.

Let me stop here. I know my son needs help. He needs to learn how to manage his anger. He needs to learn how to diffuse his anxiety and rage.

I get that.

I agree with that. Do I think he needed to stay in that place?

No. I do not. As terrible as this entire situation seems, as bad as his disrespect and his attempts to hurt me, my son did NOT need to be placed on that hold. I know my own child and I know that he had already learned a huge lesson. Being handcuffed and taken away like that was proof enough that he had crossed the line.

I’m sure there will be some who don’t agree with me and think that I am just being an over emotional mother. Well good for you. 

Anyway, we got seen by a resident. It’s a UCLA hospital. He wanted to send Jon home, after it was all said and done, but he had to consult with the attending.

We were relieved, he’d get to come home.

But he came back and told us the attending wanted to place him on a 72 hour hold.

It was as if he had just slammed me in stomach. I could barely breath.

I tried to get him to let me talk to his attending, but he just went back and told her a few more things to try and get her to change her decision.

She did not.

Two men came to take my son away.

He had to go.

He got to say goodbye to his dad and his brothers.

And then he was gone.

I was told the crazy info that I could call between certain times, but that visits were 5 minutes only. I wanted him out of that place stat. It wasn’t an insurance hospital. I thought for sure things would be different if he went to Kaiser. He called me later telling me he was in a big communal room with a bunch of adults (I quickly called and was told they were 17 and 18 years old, considered adolescents too. Uhhh, no… but what could I do/), that he had to sleep on a hard plastic couch and was not given anything to eat. I wanted to just DIE for my 11 year old son. What had he gotten himself into?!

As soon as I got home I called Kaiser and tried to see what could be done. I got a really helpful operator who walked me through the process and who would eventually call me around midnight to let me know that they were moving Jonathon to the Kaiser near me, but that he’d be in the ER because they did not have a place within the hospital for the issue he was having.

They only had 3 locations that handle adolescent psych patients and they had to wait for a bed to open.

Truth be told, he could end up spending the entire 72 hours in the ER.

What a waste of time, so stupid. It doesn’t make any sense. I thought for sure if a plan Dr. saw him, they would have a different assessment and lift the stupid hold.

Well, that didn’t happen.

I will never forget when I went to visit him Saturday morning. Security guards were posted outside of his door. He was in a thing little bed with a plastic foam mattress thingy. His eyes were peeking up over the top of a thin white blanket. Red rimmed and brimming with tears.

My baby, scared to death, alone, being told he would have to stay there for at least a week (Nurses keep TELLING HIM THIS CRAP and I don’t know WHY). I told him that would not happen. They had 72 hours ONLY to hold him. I calmed him down. I talked to his nurse. No beds yet. He’d probably be there for the whole day. No psych dr they could call to look at him. So he’d just sit there.

At least he had a personal room and a tv to watch. I promised to bring him food because all they had to offer him were vending machine turkey and tuna sandwiches and tiny boxes of apple juice. INSANITY. 

I was only thankful I could visit whenever I wanted for as long as I wanted and that I could bring him food to eat.

I saw him 3 times on Saturday. The final time my mom came with me.

Ugh, I gotta go. Elias is not having this "mommy is on the computer" thing. I will feed him and try to finish what happened.

Once again, if you know a single THING about the california law on this, I want to know what you know. They are threatening to keep him another week or at least re start the hold because he just got to the mental facility. That is against the law as far as I know. they can’t penalize him because it took that long to get him into that place. I will lose my mind if they try it.

 

i’ll be back.

 

 

 

 

 

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