Its a Sunday night and I have not put in a weekend like this since Mam passed away. Saturday, the kid headed up town with specific warnings in relation to alcohol and smoking anything. I honestly didn’t think that she would try anything again.

Myself and Mammy 2 were up town buying the rest of her christmas presents when the phone rang. It was St James hospital. The kid was in A&E after being brought in about 20 mins previous. We got as fast as we could up to the hospital stopping on the way to pick up a change of clothes for her as the head nurse said she had gotten soaked. We arrived up into the chaos that is A&E at about 5.45. Her best mate was in the waiting room and mentioned some of what had happened. A small bottle of vodka, cider and some other alcohloic beverage was drank as well as some weed being smoked. When the kid came out to us, she reeked of alcohol and her arms had been sliced up really bad. We had known she was was cutting herself which was why we were getting the help but not to the extent of the damage she inflicted upon herself at this stage.

The waiting room was hectic, we sent her mate home with a taxi fare, she had done enough for the night. Eventually one of the nurses came out to talk to us and she mentioned that the kid had been assesed and was now waiting for a doc to examine her and that this could take a while. Apparently there was some rule about no-one being allowed in with the patient due to the winter vomiting bug, but they made allowances as the kid was a minor and let me in. Mammy 2 headed home.

The kid was well out of it and as soon as I arrived into the inner waiting room , she fell straight to sleep with her head in my lap. A kind nurse arrived in with a pink hoody to keep her warm, she didn’t even comment on the color clash! It was one of the more light-hearted momemts of the night. The place was mad. I hadn’t eaten all day and had assumed that the delay wouldn’t be too long.

In the meantime, I managed to stay sober whilst conversing with the kid, the smell of alcohol off her breath was enough to knock out a small elephant.

Whilst she was sleeping I had time to reflect on the irony that is life and that this time last year we were also in a waiting room only it was for Mam. The trip to the hospital was extremly difficult, I have to say, I was forced to revisit thoughts I had thought I’d manage to get over.
Luckyily the A&E department is in a completly different section of the hospital so while the hospital smell was familar, the nurses, doctors and location were completly different to where Mam was held. It didn’t make things any easier, but I was too busy concentrating on the kid to focus on how I was feeling about being in a place 7 months previous we had say our goodbyes to the most important woman in our lives.

A nice nurse dropped some tea and sandwiches down to us around 12. At around 3 she got seen. Just less then 10 hours waiting. The doctor was concerned about the cuts and the fact that she mentioned she was having sucidical thoughts, which was also news to me I might add. He recommended a psych evaluation which would happen the follwing morning. He wanted to keep her in but she wanted her bed. So we travelled back up this morning after getting to bed at 4 and back up for 8.30.
The guy who took the initial psych eval was the head nurse who took care of Mam when she was in ICU and I began to wonder did God have some sick sense of humour. To add insult to injury he remembered us. I just about managed to hold things together without bursting into tears.
However while sitting waiting for the physicharist to arrive, there was a lady in one of the trollies along the corridor who reminded me so much of Mam. Some people were shouting at the staff, demanding to be seen by the doctor etc, but this lady was so polite and every time she asked for something simple like a bed pan she was so apologectic. I nearly lost it again but held it together, the kid had enough guilt about the night spent in here without feeling guilty about my emotions. The physicharist wrote a letter also recommending her to the self help clinic the counseller had already spoken of, so hopefully she’ll be bumped up the list.
In the meantime, I feel like I can’t leave her on her own with anything sharp. She had been using a safety pin and a compass to cut into her arms.
The shock thing we now have to deal with is fact that she wants to end her life. Its so hard to babysit someone who feels like this.
Of course, trying to sort out a punishment was fun as we didn’t want to appear to be coming down too hard on top of trying to discipline her.

Right now I am just sooo tired but glad she’s alright. She’s in the shower right now, yelling about someone turning on or off taps!
Its times like this that makes me wonder what goes through her head when she does all these self destructive things. Its obvious that she wanted to end things yesterday and that thought scares me more then anything else. Mammy 2 has been pondering things and worries that we might be at fault. Its hard to stress that what she is feeling now and how she is hurting is all within herself and there is nothing more we can do for her except support her, make sure she gets the treatment she needs and be there for her, as Hallmark as that sounds.
This time of the year is so hard, because Mam took really sick around this time and I have a feeling this might be when things are coming to a head now.

Anyhow, I am heading to bed for some sleep. I shall regale you with tales of assholes in A&E tomorrow if I can stay awake long enough to type!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 20th, 2004 at 6:21 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Every day I feel like we are doing better and then something happens and I feel like we’re back to square 1. It is so exhausting. I got wrecked just taking the milk out of the fridge today.

We met with one couseller yesterday from Barnados in relation to the self harm, two more counsellers
today. To quote the great Mister Izzard, we’re up to ‘ere with cousellers. Today we met with the school counseller and the Vice Principal of the school, who used to be the school counsuller.
I felt the conversation was productive and like everyong else, their main concern is Lisa’s mental health. We thought it all was fine, and we arrive home to some band who sounded very angry and in doing so appeared to have a problem with their lyrics.

She was lying sprawled dramatically on the couch as only a teenager can. I felt the tune of Tubular Bells enter my head briefly, but quickly dimissed it as I grabbed the bottle of holy water on the way into the living room. She was intially fine, but I know her better then to let down the defences so quickly. We explained about talking to the counseller about the Home Ec class which was causing all the hassle and how they would move partners for her so she wouldn’t be with the one who is haressing her.

Well, there followed a barage of “I HATE THAT CLASS, I AM NOT GOING BACK TO IT, THEY CAN JUST MOVE ME. They won’t stop haressing me just cause the vice princpal said they would” in a tone that implied we were visitors from Planet Idiot who were just here for the day.
She went on and on, I stopped listening after the whole “And I’m changing schools after the Junior Cert and that’s it” . We had our lunch and left.

Is it any wonder we turn hysterical when she’s mentioned. If one more person tells us we’re doing great, slaps will be issued. The only time I stop worrying about her is when she’s asleep and even then, its not really stopping as sometimes she’ll wake up cause she’s sick.

Its hard to describe what’s its like, even when she’s around, its like constantly being on high alert, more so when you’re waiting for her to come home and its gone past the time she should be or when you’re trying to get to go to bed and she starts channeling someone who sounds like they’ve smoked 12,3434 cigarettes.

I wonder is there a guide book out there? Guidelines to becoming a parent in 24 hours?

While I’m ranting, if one more person tells us how to parent/discipline her. there will be more slaps issued, obviously with the other arm. Picture it.
She’s ran away and we’re supposed to ground her for a month, take her phone, take her pocket money, do all of the above? If she was my kid is not a valid reason. I am telling you these things to vent not to ask for what you’d do with her. She’s an orphan at 15. She’s changed schools 3 times. She’s had to move home from the country to the city and from a house to an apartment in the centre of town.

She’s bound to have problems, that are not that easily solved by grounding her.
kay? Glad I got that off my chest.

So, latest news. She’s at home, dying of the flu, period pain, the black death, the blue plague, bird flu and the ebola virus, we’re hoping she’ll pull through by Monday.

In the meantime, she’ll still be well enough to ‘hang’ with JockstrapJackie, JumpinJoey, SexyTom, MadMick,CuteCarl, KulchKaren,MunchGrunch,TopHeavy and Slackjaw who apparently have her
back. And even though KulchKaren and JockstrapJackie were both with SexyTom, SexyTom really likes her and wants to ‘meet’ her somewhere with black flowers and heavy metal music, I kid you not.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 17th, 2004 at 11:35 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Oi Mammy1….cheeky pup! It just so happens some of us have to work for a living and can’t be sufing away to our heart’s content….sheesh indeed!

So we brought the wee one to the concert and there I was intending on dropping her off at the door but oh my god no, not cool enough….so I had to drive down the road and drop her and her mates there. So not ccol Mammy2, so not cool. The funniest thing was though that there were loads of other uncool mammies and daddies dropping the kids off at the same spot as us, undoubtedly after being glared at by their lovely little teenage psychos.

Well she’s convinced that she failed all of her exams yesterday. They’re only Christmas tests anyway and don’t count in the finals so it’s hard to get too worried yet. She works damn hard, I’ll give her that, so she’ll be grand.

We have a meeting with her school this afternoon - Joy! Ah no, it should be grand. Just want to keep them updated on what’s going on. If they say a thing against the wee one, I’ll be pulled out of them……

This entry was posted on Friday, December 17th, 2004 at 6:53 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

I see Mammy 2 managed to find the update button alright, that’ll be her contribution for the year!
We arrived home last night from a shindig for Outhouse to find she had put a safety pin in her ear. I give up!

What would possess someone to do such a thing and it looks like it would hurt, a lot. Call me strange but I can think of better
ways of passing time. At least she was studying her history. The christmas tests kick off today with maths, history and home ec. The first two I’d say will be fine, but Home ec is not one of her favs so I can see tantrums being thrown about the results she may get. Two of her mates are staying over tonight and the three of them are heading to Blink182. We had offered to pick them up afterwards,
but the level10 glare that was flicked our way from her and the “Well, if you don, don’t come near us” I have visions of us being parked two miles up the road and disguised as a bush or something!

Less then a week and the other sister(kid) is home from Holland. I can’t wait to see her! She’s bring her maaaan her so there’s a chance we could steal
some sperm for christmas. He’s always very reluctant to part with it though, which I find quite odd! So, we’ll just do what we usually do, wait until he’s
asleep and we’re sorted!

Not in the mood for work at all espeically with last night being such a late one. It was werid seeing my site up on the big screen, powerpoint presentation. Cool but werid and everyone was impressed. I’m not used to a positive reaction to the work I do. Normally, its like, what, but its only a website, you’re charging how much?

Why would there be a design fee? Why would there be a maintenance fee? Let me get this straight, you want to be paid for the work you do, no-one mentioned this at the start and so on and so forth.
Oh the fun of my job, still it takes away from the mundaneness that is my full-time job. I did study for four years and obtain my degree in software engineering to work on the helpdesk and maintain other people’s code.

Sheesh..

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 16th, 2004 at 6:43 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

Mammie2 here. Thought I’d better even try to keep up with the other Mammy and her mad ranting. Although no one gabs on like the little woman!

So off we headed at lunch time today to see our Family Counsellor. Oh the fun and laughs we had…
We’re just doing all of the preliminary stuff with her so the kid hasn’t been yet. Just us two.

It’s exhausting. Just talking about all of the things that we’ve been through in the last year and how things are with the kid now is really tough on the auld emotions. Brings up stuff you’d rather not have to deal with. Like I know the other mammy hates talking about her mam as she hasn’t even begun to get over her passing away. “Get over”……what a horrible phrase! As if it’s a cold or something. Should have said she hasn’t even begun to deal with it or to cope with it.

Anyway the cousellor one recommended that we get the kid to a therapy group who specialise in adolescents who harm themselves as she’s been known to do. So we’ve to get her to into this thing.
I tell you the fun never ends…..

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 16th, 2004 at 12:42 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.