Home from the hospital - Now what?

Kitty came home on Friday. We had a quiet weekend (Boy was it hard to keep her home from Grandma's on Saturday night and have to miss our date night, but we knew she needed it). I decided not to send Kitty back to school until we'd made a plan with the school about how to proceed. . . . Tuesday morning, Kitty had a pdoc appointment - no med changes, but next appointment is in 2 weeks and gave us some quick dissolving Abilify tabs to use if Kitty starts to have a meltdown. . . . A couple of hours later we had a school ARD (to revise her IEP and approve further testing). Kitty had told me she felt uber stressed during her 2 general ed clases and lunch. "Plan B" was to rearrange the seating in the general ed computer class so that another child who is willing to help Kitty (less embarassing to Kitty than having inclusion help), to let her go the the learning lab when her general ed speech class got overwhelming, and we helped her think of several alternatives for who to sit with and where at lunch to decrease the stress. All of the rest of Kitty's classes are special ed so already have small class sizes and easier assignments. . . . Wednesday Kitty went back to school, and called me to pick her up right after lunch. Here's the e-mail I sent Thursday evening when I realized that things were not getting better, even on "A day" which Kitty told me weren't as stressful:

Hi guys, Well, obviously Plan B did not work. Here’s what happened from Kitty’s point of view: Yesterday, “B day” Period 5, DIMM (computer class): Went well. The seat change putting B (student) next to Kitty to subtly help her, Kitty claimed it helped. Period 6, Speech: Not good. It really upset Kitty that the teacher didn’t know what was going on (probably our fault for keeping Mr. J (Assistant Principal) after the meeting so he ran out of time to talk to the teacher). Kitty apparently did get to spend the time in the learning lab as planned, and went to some of her teachers to get makeup work to work on during this period. Lunch: Thank you Mr. J for coming up with a Plan C and D for this. Apparently the first option (asking her friend to eat outside) wasn’t an option because the friend was talking to Kitty’s ex-boyfriend, P, who likes to tease her. Second option (sitting with friend, M, in the cafeteria) didn’t work because M was in the hospital, but Kitty found another friend to sit with… until he left. Then Kitty hung out with another male friend, but got too close to ex-boyfriend who teased her about hugging the male friend. Period 7, Science: Kitty was given several make up assignments. This overwhelmed her and she called me to come home. She went to the AP’s office to wait for me – where Mr. J found her “vibrating” and moved her to a quiet conference room. Wednesday evenings we do volunteer work with kids and horses, so we went, but we had Kitty mostly do quiet work instead of working with her usual “exuberant” client. Today, “A day” Period 1, PE: Went “fine.” Period 2, English: Got fairly caught up. Took a test she "might have to take again." Felt it went OK. A Lunch: Sat with a quiet friend. Period 3, World Geography: Given a makeup assignment that the teacher told her needed to get done in class. Kitty didn’t think she could get it done and left to go to the nurse where she called me to come home. Kitty is feeling a lot of pressure (seems to be mostly put on herself rather than the teachers) to get caught up and do well. She doesn’t want to go back to school tomorrow and to just start with a clean slate on Monday (which starts the new 6 weeks). To lighten her feeling of pressure, I suggested talking to her science teacher about cutting back on the assignments, prioritizing them, working on them in the learning lab (since she doesn’t have an assignment in speech), and taking advantage of the fact that she has good grades to just coast through this. Kitty was still too overwhelmed. If I’m going to get Kitty to go to school tomorrow I really need someone to call me with a plan. She agreed that I could bring her in after lunch (since she hasn’t been to last period math yet), but she really wants to just skip it all. When I picked her up she was depressed and let me know she doesn’t feel “safe” (which means she is having suicidal thoughts again). Please call me at (###) ###-#### and let me know how to proceed. I’m also not sure who I should be informing/alerting when I pick Kitty up. Mary (###) ###-#### " Saying "no" is not being negative. Negative is saying "yes" to things that are destroying you."

I sent Kitty to school Friday morning and told her I would meet her there and tried calling EVERYone in the school, but couldn't get hold of anyone for quite awhile. In the meantime I talked with Hubby about what we should do. Oh my goodness, we are sooo on different pages. Hubby is having a really hard time with Kitty not getting over this and getting back on track. All my NAMI classes have reinforced to me that Kitty is going to take a long time to recover, but even I struggle a little with the feeling that she's "getting away with something" or never going to try to progress - learned helplessness. I think after a long talk, Hubby did realize that nothing has gotten better and in a lot of ways was worse. Kitty was declining and a hot mess of anxiety before she went to the psych hospital. The hospital exposed her to violence, kept her from her family, triggered memories of past trauma, increased her sleep med (which did help) and added an anti-depressant - which takes weeks to get to full strength. Now she's got make-up work and emotional healing to do, so of course she's overwhelmed. Hubby is still not convinced that picking her up whenever she feels bad is the right thing to do (she might not ever go back to school!). ******************************************* I FINALLY got hold of someone at the school and Kitty's casemanager sat with her for all of second period helping her prioritize and work on assignments. The CM assured Kitty that she would be given an incomplete in whatever classes she needed them in and she has until graduation to get it done (Kitty is only a freshman). The CM said Kitty was out of it, lethargic, sleepy and couldn't do things that normally didn't give her problems. The CM was convinced. I sat with her and the AP and we decided that Kitty will do half days for awhile (alternating between mornings and afternoons). Kitty's pdoc is willing to write a vague, open-ended note stating that Kitty needs to miss school - so we don't have to worry about truancy. I picked Kitty up after 3 period (there are 4 periods in a day). At least she made it a little longer today. She seems comfortable with the changes. ******************** On another note, Kitty has been obsessing about her "Super Sweet 16 birthday" for MONTHS. She wants this big, expensive party with lots of friends, and brings it up whenever she doesn't like what we're talking about (usually in therapy). She knows that we can't afford it and don't think she can handle having a lot of friends over. No matter what I do, she tries to work it into a big battle - sounding as though it's in a couple of days, instead of not for months. Finally her birthday really is in a few days. Today she quietly said she wants it to be just a family party. Still wants lots of expensive presents though!