Being Jessica's Mom: Growing up on the Autistic Spectrum

I finished filling out paperwork and left the hospital, there was nothing more I would do, Jess was sleeping and I wasn’t allowed to see her until the morning.  I cried all the way back to my boyfriend’s house where my son was, crawled into be and tried to sleep.

The next morning I took my son and met Jessica’s dad at the entrance to the hospital.  We rang the bell to the door and the person who greeted us was not the warmest of personalities.  But the communication was clear.  Jessica’s brother was too young to go in (he was very disappointed and frightened for his sister.) and the only person Jessica wanted to come in and see her was me.  This was not a total surprise, as Jessy’s pattern had been that when she is struggling, she would get angry with her dad and stop talking to him (some of this was in part due to his inconsistency in his ability to be active and attune to her needs and the other was just simply that I was her safe person).  So, I went in.  I had no idea what to expect, as I had never been on the Psychiatric Hospital Facility (PHF) unit before.  It was eerily quiet.  They took me to a room where kids where held and there was my Jessy.  Her energy was very calm and quiet and she was just sitting on one of the beds.  I crawled up next to her and just made sure we were touching…kind of leaning on each other.  I asked her how she was doing.  She said, “This is the calmest I have felt in a really long time”.  She was insightful and communicative.  I had no idea that she was that uncomfortable for the whole summer.  We sat in silence for quite some time, we had no need to speak, she just needed my presence and I needed hers.

But this was not over, the doctor had decided that Jess needed to be transferred to an adolescent psychiatric unit to have further evaluation and stabilization.  I was not allowed to drive her, they took her off in a van with people she did not know.  As a parent, the lack of control I had over things in this situation was overwhelming.  My instinct was to be there withy daughter through every step, advocate and protect.  This experience required Jessica to to go it alone with people she did not know (growing new pathways with each experience!).  She went to a hospital that was just a couple hours away.  Thankfully I had a job that allowed me to take the time off and I took my mom and got a hotel near the hospital.  She was there for one week and I was able to visit for one hour per day.  I stayed for a few days and then had to return to work.  My estranged sister randomly called after hearing about Jessica from my mom and she offered to visit the two days I was not able to be there (remember I had another child who also needed me).  Jessica was released on the weekend with new medication, no new psychiatrist and no therapist.   But she was calmer and insightful and we had accomplished the goal of getting a new baseline of who Jessy was when not on medication and confirmed that she really truly continued to need medication support.

She had been out of school for two weeks.  It is during these types of situations that all of our (parent) stress about needing to get to school, do your homework, study, etc., becomes insignificant.  The focus quickly becomes about the health and wellbeing of your child and school just doesn’t matter.  Now, it is my firm belief that an extended psychiatric hospitalization requires time for healing and recovery after a kid is released back home.  For Jessica, this was a pretty traumatic event and I advocated for Home Hospital for the remainder of the trimester.  I would advocate that all parent’s do this.  It allows for recovery and easing back into normal life routine with empathy and compassion.  This process really solidified the new experiences and allowed time for Jessica (and everyone else in the family ) to process what had happened and those new neurons opening all of those new pathways which prepared Jessica for the next stage in her development and treatment.