RELAPSE

A mother wrote to me. This is part of it: It’s May 21st at 10:24 pm and just about an hour ago I got a call that my daughter walked out of rehab. Just today I was telling my coworkers that I had such a good feeling about this rehab – a full one-year, Christian-based program. No outside contact, only immediate family. Twice I talked to her on the phone and she loved it there. She didn’t even make it a full week.

My reflection on the passage above: Hope smashed. With addiction, we parents feel betrayed and our dreams feel suffocated. When our children accept and enter rehab, we celebrate and we hope again, feeling certain (and trying not to feel certain) that this is it: This is the time that will stick.

Dr. MacAfee teaches that relapse is not failure. Relapse, he says, can be a great stepping-stone, directing the individual toward her own understanding of loss of control of her use. Relapse can, if handled well, be one step closer to sobriety.

Today’s Promise: I will continue to believe. With every relapse, I hope that my child will learn more about her illness. I will acknowledge the powerful hold that the drug has on her. I will stay close.

 

 

 

Positive Role Models

A mother wrote to me. This is part of it: My son is an alcoholic and just returned from Iraq. Today he is good and I pray that tomorrow will be the same. He is working his program in AA, and I am staying close to him and to my support group in Al-Anon. There are winners in recovery and it’s important for us to keep solid role models of hope out there, in front of us, to keep us all going.

My reflection on the passage above: It is important for us to see positive examples of recovery. I am on a rowing team of breast cancer survivors and we join together as a visible example that there is life after cancer.

My son says that there are “old timers” in AA who are sober and have lived in sobriety for years. They “keep coming back” to give hope, wisdom and support to others. I go to Al-Anon and look to our “old timers” who know my wounds and help me see the positive.

Today’s Promise to consider: I will look to the people who have survived the chaos of trauma and celebrate their successes. I will learn from them and try to be a positive role model to others in my life.

 

 

 

We saved her life, but now it’s her turn

(This Thursday Meditation takes on a different look as I’ve reprinted an article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Thanks to my brother J.F. for sending it.)

Life in the ER: Alive but ungrateful

Monday, February 28, 2011

By Dr. Thomas A. Doyle

She was 19 and she was dead. Skin like a gutted trout’s belly, lips the shade of rotting grapes, not moving or breathing. Her pupils were tiny lead pencil tips, murky and dull. She had been unceremoniously dumped on our doorstep, literally tossed out of a car which peeled away the moment the door was closed. A fresh needle track peeked out of a thatch of old ones in the crook of her left elbow.

Yes, she was dead. But as Billy Crystal said in “The Princess Bride,” she was only mostly dead. She was just taking death out for a test drive, putting a down payment on the farm, sightseeing on the Stygian ferry, tapping the bucket with her toe. Luckily for her, mostly dead is a little alive.

Our team descended upon her and in moments she had a working IV line and oxygen was being forced into her lungs via a bag/mask device. I ordered Narcan, an antidote to overdoses of opiates such as heroin or Oxycontin.

The change was nearly instantaneous; she squirmed on the stretcher and gulped a huge gasp of air. Her eyes snapped open, pupils returning to normal size. She began thrashing about on the bed, tearing off monitor leads, yanking out her IV.

“Relax, sweetie,” soothed our charge nurse, who could pose as the Norman Rockwell archetype of a kindly grandmother, “You’re going to be OK.”

“Don’t you ‘sweetie’ me, bitch!” our modern Lazarus squawked, slapping away the nurse’s hand. She tugged at her gown. “What the hell is this? Where’s my shirt?” Her fingers found the shreds of the grimy sweatshirt we had cut off during the resuscitation. She eyed us accusingly and whipped a piece at the wall. “You cut my [expletive] shirt! You [more expletives] cut my shirt! Y’all are going to pay for this.” Wagging her finger in my face, she listed her demands. “I want a shirt. I want a taxi. I want my wallet, my cell phone … and give me something to drink, my mouth tastes like crap!”

I picked up the shred of sweatshirt and dumped it in the trash. I pulled up a stool next to the stretcher and stared silently at her. After a few seconds of trying to ignore me, she snapped her head around, shoved her nose a couple of inches from mine and bellowed, “What’s your problem!?”

“You’re welcome,” I said softly.

She replied with an additional string of expletives, including some rather creative ones questioning my parentage and sexual orientation. I continued to stare back. Finally I interrupted and said, “You know you just about died.”

All that earned me was a sullen glare.

“Next time might be too late.”

Stony silence.

“If you’re interested, we could try to set you up in rehab …”

“Screw rehab!” she exploded. “Just let me out of here!”

“Fine,” I replied, tossing my hands up and heading for the door.

As I approached the threshold, I heard her muttering. “Rehab! Yeah, like you care about me.”

I halted, mulling it over for a moment. I pivoted on my heel, crossed back to the bed and answered, “You know what? You’re right. I don’t care about you. Who are you to me? Some nobody I’ve never seen before and, at the rate you’re going, I’ll never see alive again.

“I do care that another human being, one just a few years older than my daughter, is completely ruining her life as well as the lives of anyone who ever loved her. But I’m not one of those people. I don’t love you. After seeing how you treat people who help you, I don’t even like you.”

Her mouth popped open to respond, but she seemed momentarily taken aback.

I lowered my voice and continued, “I can only hope you have somebody who still loves you. A mom, a dad, maybe a baby brother or sister. I mean, for God’s sake, you’re 19! It tears my heart out to think that only a few years ago you were probably playing hide and seek and bringing home fingerprint art and dressing up as a puppy in the school play. But in the end it doesn’t matter if I care. It only matters if you care. If you don’t, then why should anybody else?”

“Just get out of my face! You don’t know shit about me!” she spat.

As I tromped out of the room, I bumped into the charge nurse.

“That Narcan sure works fast, doesn’t it?” she commented.

“Yep,” I agreed. “She went from dead to asshole in 60 seconds.”

That garnered a melancholy chuckle and a sagacious glance over her glasses. We walked a few steps then I pulled her aside.

“Hey, listen, make sure social services sees her before she leaves. It probably won’t do any good, but at least give the kid another chance.”

Stepping back, I clapped once and rubbed my hands together. “OK, then. What’s next?”

“A family of three kids who ate cat food in room 7 and an old lady who’s convinced she has worms in her ear in room 12.”

“Of course,” I sighed. “Just another day at the office …”

Three hours later, at the end of my shift, the social worker stopped me and said, “I sent that girl to Gateway.’

“Really?” I replied. “She agreed to go to rehab?”

“Yeah, she’s on her way. By the way, I’m not sure what this means, but she wanted me to tell you it wasn’t a puppy. It was a giraffe.”

Dr. Thomas A. Doyle is a specialist in emergency medicine who practices in Sewickley (tomdoy@aol.com).

 

 

HITTING BOTTOM

An Italian mother wrote to me. This is part of it: I cannot understand the words ‘hitting bottom.’ My son just came out of an alcoholic coma after we threw him out of our home. Fortunately, his life was saved, but he was not scared. We hoped that this would serve to scare him, but instead – nothing – it is only we who were scared. Like you wrote, “Addicts are not afraid to die. They are afraid to live a life without drugs.”

(She wrote: non riesco a capire cosa vuol dire toccare il fondo. Il mio figlio è finito in coma etilico dopo che noi genitori lo abbiamo buttato fuori casa, fortunatamente si è salvato ma comunque non si è spaventato. Noi speravamo che sarebbe potuto servire lo spavento ma invece niente….ci siamo spaventati solo noi…come dici tu…non hanno paura della morte ma di una vita senza droga.)

My reflection on the passage above: Alcoholics Anonymous says hitting bottom is ‘incomprehensible demoralization,” the dark before the dawn. As a mother, I could not change the arch of my son’s addiction or judge the moment of his abject demoralization, but I could get out of the way and allow him to be accountable for the consequences of his choices while I stayed close.

Today’s Promise to consider: I accept the fact that I cannot change anyone. I cannot control how far down my loved one falls. I will allow him to make his own discoveries, to feel fully the consequences of his addiction and pray he chooses a life of abstinence while I stay close.