A Whole New World

The song from The Little Mermaid is running through my mind right now; the past 9 months our family has been immersed into a whole new world involving addiction, recovery, and mental illness.  It's not much of a surprise that this is what was causing my daughter's actions, especially when we dive into details and become more knowledgeable on things.  The worrisome actions in my last entry continued and intensified in frequency, so much that when our son was home over Christmas break he was the first to mention that there might be "something wrong with her" (i.e. mental illness).  A few days after taking him back to college, I called the local hospital mental health intake line, and left a detailed message on my concerns with my daughter. They never called me back.  That was a Tuesday; three days later my husband woke up to find five other teenagers in our house in the early morning hours, with a slew of empty liquor, beer, and wine bottles.

At 7:00 a.m. I received a phone call from an ER doctor at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis, indicating that my daughter was in their care and to come right away.  This is not the phone call that any parent wants to receive; the doctor was very vague on the phone and I didn't have any idea what condition my daughter was in.  I managed to call my principal to find coverage for me that morning, got dressed and raced to the hospital in morning rush hour.

When I arrived at Children's Hospital, I discovered she was unharmed (thankfully) but quite intoxicated and had been making comments about wanting to die.   Her blood alcohol level was 0.11 when she arrived at the hospital, I can only imagine what it was when she left our house just a few hours earlier. She had been driving the car with the group of kids and started to have a panic attack because she realized that she was driving drunk.  The "friends" she was with dropped her off at the ER door and took off.

We met with a social worker, and there was grave concern over our daughter's behavior patterns. The social worker indicated she wanted to have our daughter admitted to a adolescent behavior unit for testing, observation, and treatment.  We were told that this could take a few days, as there were no beds available at facilities in the Twin Cities.  Keeks would remain a patient at Children's Hospital until a bed in an adolescent psych unit opened up.  A few hours later, the social worker came back to share that there was a bed open...in a hospital in Duluth (a 3 hour drive north of the Twin Cities). We agonized over this, but in the end decided that it was best for her to get treatment right away.  Keeks was sent by ambulance immediately to Duluth.

She spent eight days in the adolescent psych unit at Miller-Dwan hospital in Duluth before coming home and beginning outpatient care at a local facility.  She was diagnosed with major depression, generalized anxiety, borderline personality traits, PTSD, and a few others.  Anti-anxiety/anti-depressant medication was prescribed and we were hopeful that the nightmare would end soon.  We wanted our daughter back and we wanted more than anything to keep her safe and healthy.