The unreasonable, emotional parent

In June 2006, twenty-two months after starting, Chris’s time in the day program was up. He had squeezed an extra four months out of it due to his poor clinical presentation, but now it was definitely at an end. Dr. 'L' arranged for Chris to check in with the doctors for his medication monitoring while we looked for someone else.

At our second to last appointment with Dr. 'L', I left the meeting spitting nails I was so angry. It seemed to me during the meeting that Dr. 'L' was again trying to drive a wedge between Ian, Chris, and me, in order to gain the upper hand concerning our (Ian and me) wanting to eliminate the medication. Dr. 'L' knew that Ian was the more “reasonable” parent, meaning Ian was more inclined than I to urge caution about where we were headed. Chris, as usual, took a limited part in the conversation, so I felt I was left twisting out there on my own once again. “Fine,” I screamed at Chris, while simultaneously jumping up and down on our walk home, “do nothing, stay ill, I’ve had it! I will not sit down with Dr. 'L' one more time! You can count on that!”

After a few days, it dawned on me that if I didn’t attend the final meeting, Dr. 'L' perhaps had a good shot at convincing Ian of the foolhardiness of our position. Dr. 'L' could then raise the medication. There was no bloody way this was going to happen, so I attended the final meeting and took the high road. I even said somewhat tenderly, “I will almost miss you, Dr. 'L',” which was perfectly true as far as it went. He understood. It wasn’t his fault, I suppose, that he was stuck in a paradigm belief that psychosis could be effectively managed by medications.