that says “your son has had a seizure, and is on the the way to the emergency room via ambulance.”
It was nearly two hours before I noticed the message on my cell phone, which tells me a number of things.
- They didn’t attempt all of the communications methods that we listed in the paperwork for his admission.
They didn’t call both home and cell phone for dad.UPDATE they did leave a message on our home phone.- They didn’t call both work and cell phone for mom.
- They didn’t call the third party emergency contact.
- They didn’t email me until after I had sent a message arranging for our Sunday visit. And by this time, it was more of an “Don’t know if you got my message or not, but David had a seizure today around 1:45…”
- In the end, preliminary indications are that he had an allergic reaction to the medication Welbutrin, which we didn’t know he was on. Interesting side note about medications a bit later.
- David was unconscious for a brief period of minutes. He was accompanied by a staff member to go to the ER in the ambulance. A staff member was with him at all times.
While I am upset that my child had a seizure, I am also upset at the failure of the institution to follow a protocol to ensure that parents, in this case, my wife and I, knew that an emergency situation arose that required an ambulance and a trip to the ER. Anyone who knows me knows that I would drop what I am doing right now, and rush the 50 or 100 miles to be with my child. Just because he is in an institution, doesn’t mean that we don’t care about him, love him, and want to be involved in his life.
In the event that I, or one of our contacts, had been notified of the seizure via telephone or even text message, I could have been in the city where he lives by the time I did receive notification. Over an hour and 30 minutes had passed between the event and when I had received the email. It is roughly 100 miles to the city where he lives.
In the end, David is stable, and while a bit disoriented initially, seems to be fine now, although they said he is rather subdued.
Mom is making arrangements to go see him, plus we are going to do our regular visit on Sunday. The thing is, with a child that has severe mental illness, you have to maintain a schedule. Us just showing up at the facility isn’t going to be good for him, we know that from experience. On the other hand, us showing up when he was in the emergency room would have been entirely acceptable to him, plus it would have made mom and myself feel better about the whole situation.
In regards to the medication. We had no idea he was on Welbutrin. None. Zero. We were in the dark.
Today, Oct. 25, 2013, we received a notice from the psychiatrist dated Oct. 7, 2013 that asked for permission to put him on it.
How seriously is my trust in these people being eroded?