November 9 to 10, 2011
Behaviorally Gabriela hit all the points that night, everything she and I had decided were triggers. She was delusional, hearing voices, and her moods were up and down.
We had started sleeping together in order for me to keep an eye on her. I could lay down and close my eyes just to rest, but I never fell asleep for more than one hour because I felt every move she made.
Gabriela was fully clothed under the covers. I closed my eyes and laid back. Her soft giggles prompted me to open my eyes, just slits.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
She answered me through the blanket she had pulled up to cover her mouth … “hehe, I don’t … hehe, know? Hehehe.”
She uncovered her mouth, trying unsuccessfully to control the ear to ear grin and her bubbling laughter. She smirked, sputtered, and laughed for nearly thirty minutes.
As suddenly as the laughter had begun it stopped. Her happiness became pure sadness and tears pouring down her face. Gabriela was up and out of my bed, and ran into her own room; she closed the door behind her.
I could hear her sobbing, and opened her bedroom door. She lay on her side in bed clutching her pillow, crying. “Leave me alone, I’m just sad, everyone needs to cry sometimes.”
I closed her bedroom door and sat on the floor next to it. I listened as she cried alone in her room.
It had been so many months since there was normalcy in our house. Sure, she had just gotten off her first psych hold, but beyond that, beyond the few weeks building up to that first incident there had been almost a full year of a slow progression.
There I sat, on the floor on the other side of her bedroom door, wanting so badly to open that door, rush to her, scoop her up and hug it all away. Instead I waited quietly.
Suddenly the bedroom door swung open, and there was that smile again.
Gabriela’s tears had dried; she was bouncy and giggly, skipping from room to room. She almost chirped as she spoke, her smile was so big it looked painful.
I put my foot down. “Gabriela, we need to go to bed, I want you to just get into bed and try to relax.”
After some time and coaxing, she was in bed, giggles and all.
I didn’t intervene much that night. Her mood was happy, but she had that upward stare, tilted head look. The only difference was a big smile. She was very compliant; I asked her to skooch down in bed, she did. My logic was, if I could get her to simulate sleep, then when the time was right she might be able to take advantage and fall sleep.
At last it happened, she fell asleep, and I got to work.
I knew she wasn’t quite in the place that would get her put on a hold, but I did know she was headed in that direction again and I absolutely did not want to repeat the last pre-hold events. I wanted her to get help before it was critical, and I knew she wanted that too.
We’d talked in the days after her release from Henry Mayo. She had agreed to the durable powers, which we had found did not give me any power regarding behavioral concerns; only medical issues. But there had been no time to do a conservatorship, which was the only thing that would have allowed me to speak for her regarding behavior issues.
Conservatorship for an independent–minded young adult is a very difficult idea to grasp; it had been tense enough when we talked about the durable powers. Despite the fact that Gabriela understood the need, she almost hadn’t agreed.
Nonetheless, I knew I had two or three hours at most before she would wake up, and I needed to get something in place that would help me get her into Huntington with as few ripples as possible.
I added an event to my iPhone calendar: “Dr. Southland ten AM.” This was the doctor that we’d met with regarding the anti-seizure diet. We had met him only once, prior to the Holy water incident. I planned to use this appointment as the means to get Gabriela to Huntington.Gabriela was very excited about starting the anti-seizure diet. She was hopeful about any reductions to her medications, and the possibility of ending psychological side effects.
We had waited nearly four months to see him. She knew a blood test was required, and a meeting with both the dietician and doctor. She had put off her blood test for weeks; it was a fasting test, so she would have to arrive first thing in the morning.
That was my only plan, it had to work. I rested and I waited.
Early that Thursday morning, Gabriela’s stirring woke me. Soon after, the “alert” on my phone went off.
“Gabriela! Hurry, we’ve gotta go!”
She looked at me not quite sure what I was talking about.
I showed her the “alert” message. “We have to go to Huntington, you have an appointment with Dr. Southland, you have to do your blood test … don’t drink anything, it’s fasting.”
Gabriela was up and getting ready. I told her, “15 minutes, we have to get going.” I kept “in character,” so to speak.
She had always been slow at getting ready, so I had to push her along, without pushing so hard that she would become resistant.
I collected her medications and medical records; because of the appointment this didn’t raise an eyebrow. We were off!
I watched her out of the corner of my eye as we drove the 30 minutes to Huntington. I felt sure we were ahead of it, Gabriela was going to get into the hospital, and get help without all the trauma of the last event. We weren’t even halfway when she turned to me and said, “Where’s Mulholland Drive?”
A little puzzled, I look at her and emotionlessly asked, “Why?”
With panic in her voice Gabriela eagerly responded, “We need to go to Mulholland Drive. How far away is it?”
It was close to nine in the morning, rush hour, although traffic was pretty light that morning. Matter-of-factly I replied, “No way, its rush hour traffic, and Mulholland is all the way on the other side of town. It would take almost two and a half hours to get there.”
I was calm, I knew where we were going and nothing was going to deter me that morning.
“But you have to!”
I could hear the panic building in Gabriela’s voice. She had started fidgeting in her seat, swiveling around looking from side to side, leaning forward to look up to the sky. Mumbling under her breath, she was obviously agitated.
“Nope, not gonna happen, we have an appointment.” I tried to compromise, “We can go after the appointment.”
While Gabriela was seated right next to me in the car, I had no idea what was going on in her mind. I could see she was restless, worried. She leaned forward on the dashboard, looked out the front window, then up to the sky; then pivoted to press her hand against the glass in the side window;then turned completely around to take a full 360 degree view of the world she was traveling through … all the while trying to convince me that we needed to get to Mulholland Drive.
As we got closer to Huntington I was crazed at the thought that she could’ve tried to get out of the car while we were on the freeway driving 70 mph…. This was such a real concern to me at that time, that I kept my arm rested on the console between us. If I needed to hold onto the seat belt to keep her in the car, I was ready.
Finally, Gabriela gave it her last ditch effort. “Mom, we have to go to Mulholland now!”
“Look, if you go in to have your blood test in ER and do everything they say and cooperate completely,” I said casually but firmly, “we will go to Mulholland Drive on the way home. And that’s my final offer.”
To my surprise she agreed, begrudgingly.