carl, Author at Fighting for Answers

Two Weeks Post Discharge

Good day my friends. We are two weeks post discharge and I thought that I would post an update about how things are going. In a word. Stable. He is stable. No better, no worse. The difference is that we are actively monitoring his medications, whereas before, he was managing his own medications for most of a year, and doing so successfully. He claims to not remember most of the night when the crisis occurred. I don’t know if this is true or not and really, it doesn’t matter. Current state. We still have issues with lies. We still have issues with hoarding food in the bedroom. We still have issues with him thinking that his bedroom is a garbage dump. (although he is a teenager and I am told this is normal) We have locks on everything. Food pantry. Fridge. Laundry room. Main bathroom. Bedrooms. Deep freeze. It is

The adoption misconception

I am adopted. I have PTSD and depression. These have nothing to do with the fact that I am adopted. My son has a mental illness. Even if he had never been adopted, he would still have a mental illness. Take Autism. Adoption doesn’t cause Autism. I don’t believe that is even a remote possibility. While the exact cause of Autism is unclear, I am certain that it isn’t adoption. Not every child that is adopted has Autism and not everyone that has Autism is adopted. Take Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder are a broad category of diagnosis, much like the world of Autism. There are varying levels of the disorder. Unless I was the birth mom and drank during my pregnancy, our adopting him two years after he was born didn’t cause the FASD. There are people born with FASD whose moms had no idea they

An open letter to the naysayers

For those who have chosen to smash our hearts because of the last post. I tell you this. It’s not that we don’t love him, because we do. A family doesn’t put as much fight into getting appropriate mental health care for their loved ones without caring. without love. We have taken him into our hearts for life or longer, but I can’t help him if he kills me. Mom can’t help him if he kills her. Does that make sense? So I guess what it comes down to, is, unless you want to walk in our shoes for a month or two, and experience the life we have experienced with his mental health, I’d like to ask you to sit down and hush. Since I wrote that post, I have received literally 100’s of positive feedback. The recommendations, well, most of them we have already tried, but people have