Wow, I didn't realise it had been so long since I wrote a post. I've almost forgotten how to blog! Sorry for the lack of posts but we've been pretty preoccupied with Sally. Since last posting she's now come out a few times and staff have had to restrain her, inject her and put her in seclusion until me and David are able to get Keri back out again, which is normally only possible right now if Sally's a bit drugged up. Luckily they have an intramuscular injection written on her chart in case of these emergencies.
Her eating? She was doing very well. She even managed to get her weight up to 50kg which, according to staff and the dietician is a perfect weight for her. Though because her BMI wasn't under 17.5 and is now in the healthy range she's now extremely annoyed that they haven't taken the eating disorder label away and have said she's bulimic instead! She thought it would disappear and the staff wouldn't think about it anymore. Unfortunately quite recently Keri's eating has got progressively worse and the only time she eats is after a severe flashback or panic attack and she needs sugar (I don't know about you guys but that's what Keri's body craves after that kind of thing happens).
Keri's section has now been renewed. Considering it's now the third Section 3 she's detained on this one doesn't have to be renewed for another twelve months whereas the first two were only six months each. No one has any idea where Keri is going or what treatment she's having. She's had a medium secure assessment and a forensic assessment, both of which have ended up in written reviews which will be discussed at Keri's CPA on Tuesday. She's terrified as all of this has been done behind her back. She wasn't even told about the assessments until an hour before any of them arrived (which were only four days apart!). Her psychiatrist will have the letters they've all written and a decision should be made during the part of the CPA Keri isn't allowed into. The forensic assessment didn't go very well and Keri got more and more passive aggressive the more she got annoyed. In the end she called the guy retarded and incompetent and then walked out...
Her bathroom is being kept locked due to her strong suicidal intent (she tried to kill herself with a ligature but thankfully staff stopped her). Since then her bathroom is locked unless she's supervised, which means any toilet or shower requests are done with a member of staff (female normally) standing just by the door. During the day she also keeps her bedroom door open as she's on ten minute obs and if something happens during those ten minutes the staff will hear. This is also the case at night and on the rare occasion that Keri does actually fall asleep the staff close the door until she wakes up. She was on one to one during night hours for a while but is slowly being weaned off depending on the situation. The situation at the moment isn't great as for the last four days she's had less than three hours sleep each night and is in severe sleep deprivation mode which the staff have noticed. It's got to the point that even though Keri is on the maximum dose of her antipsychotics she's started hallucinating again. It freaked her out so much this evening that she's been sat with staff talking about it and actually stayed out of her room for a whole three hours! Unbelievable isn't it?
The good thing is Keri is getting out each day to have a Costa, normally with one of her most trusted members of staff, she is still getting to see her brother who visits every week, she has 24 hour support from the staff and they've taken precautions to stop her doing serious harm to herself (which isn't a good thing in Keri's eyes but it is in mine!). I'm hoping to start blogging more now as I'm getting stressed trying to help David with Sally and this is my only way to vent. I know it's my safest way too as it not only gives people an insight into the life of someone with D.I.D. and other mental illnesses but it's safe for me to do on my own as Keri doesn't read any of the blog posts. I hope you guys are okay. We are definitely struggling but taking one day at a time as we're worried about our foster family too. Our foster mum had pneumonia and is slowly recovering, her foster dad has injured his back, one of her older foster brothers had an operation on his knee, and her other older foster brother had his business ruined when some selfish idiots went and robbed his place and stole all his motorbikes, quad bikes, tools, aka anything that was valuable and they could get their dirty little hands on.
To those that are also struggling, Keri is repetitively listening to a song by Nickelback. It's called Lullaby. It reminds her of people that care about her and sometimes she's listening as if those people are singing it to her, like her foster family or her brother.
Keri is now seriously freaked by 'walking ghosts'. She's going to be on one to one with a member of staff soon after they get her a hot chocolate so I'm quickly adding this on. She thinks she's seeing dead people. Very upsettingly she's seeing a six year old girl who is claiming to be her dead daughter and asking Keri "Why did you let him kill me?" Keri, me, David and some others know about the story behind this but I'm not going to tell it. Both for legal reasons and from the point I really don't want to go there. What I can say is even though it's making Keri cry it's one of the first times I've seen Sally on the verge of tears as well. With a psychotherapy appointment booked tomorrow, everything could end up like an explosion, that's if Keri doesn't refuse to see her psychotherapist or if she does see her, actually listen to a word she's saying instead of sitting there in a dissociative trance... Let's just say Keri hasn't found her therapy sessions very useful recently and is starting to just disengage with everyone and deny that she even exists. 😞
