12: First Weekend after Intense Therapy

  

    The first weekend after therapy starts out okay. My husband is away and my daughter and I have made a plan of the tasks we will get done. It's Saturday and I am teach in the morning. The first task is for her to come to the studio with her little brother and me. It is a hard one for her because there are lots of kids there on Saturdays. She manages well. We spend the rest of the afternoon at home catching up on some school work and our other task of looking at photos of vomit online.
    Sunday, our task is to go to the mall. The outdoor mall, since the indoor one is out of the question for now. In addition to buying prizes for a reward system, our tasks are to get there, go into the bathroom and just use the sink to rinse hands, and also open the doors of the stores we will visit. As soon as we enter the parking lot, she has a stomach ache and wants to go home. I tell her we will go home as soon as we get our tasks done.

    We head to the bathroom for our first task. She wants no part of it and I have to give her a gentle push in. She sticks one hand under the faucet quickly and I have to coach her to use both hands. She does and then frantically gets out of the bathroom using her shirt to open the door before my son and I are finished. She waits outside for us. We get everything done and we head home.
    Once home, I have her wait about 15 minutes before she is allowed to shower. She washes her hands a lot while waiting. They are so red and I am sad to even look at them. We spend the rest of the day at home and set up a box with her new prizes of nail polish and earrings and all sorts of other fun things we found. We have plans to watch some Harry Potter after my son goes to bed.
    I put him to bed while she showers. Her second shower of the day. This shower before bed is her one ritual that she has kept for the past 2 years and I don't mess with it. I have tried before. Anyway, she is out of the shower and I braid her hair. We set up the movie and suddenly she needs to wash her hands again. I tell her she can rinse them with water, but no soap. She is starting to panic and I take the soap away. Now I have a battle on my hands. She sits on the couch yelling that she NEEDS to wash her hands. 
    She then goes to the bathroom. I hear the water turn on and the cabinet open. She comes out and says she didn't wash. I go into the bathroom and I see a wet cabinet handle that I open to find a wet container of soap that was under the sink. I ask her if she used it and she says no. I point out the obvious and she still denies. She sits on the couch and looks at me with her evil eyes and her arms crossed. She is yelling that she hates me and she hates Dr. G and she is never going back. I ask her to quiet down because her brother is sleeping. She gets louder and is saying really mean things to me. I am trying to ignore as I am supposed to do and she keeps it up. My blood pressure is rising and my hands are shaking. I ask her again to be quiet and she doesn't. I ask her to go to her room and she won’t. I don't know what to do! I stand up and walk towards her. She gets up and I slap her on the bum pretty hard. She still doesn't go to her room, so I turn off the lights and the TV, say goodnight and I go to my room and lock my door. I lost my temper again. Ugh. She comes to my door a few minutes later and apologizes and admits to lying. We hug and go back to the couch to watch a bit of the movie and then go to bed.

11: First Week of Intensive Therapy Finished

  

    It is now Friday, November 15th. It is a pretty horrible day. She is mad and argumentative about everything and I cannot get her to do anything. She is supposed to be washing hands less, going out into public, opening doors, going into public bathrooms, spinning in a chair, and a whole host of other tasks. I cannot even get her out of the house. And, she keeps having episodes where she says she is afraid to be alone because she thinks about killing herself.
    Dr. G calls us in the morning from the airport to check on things. She says she will call us again when she returns to Miami so we can talk more. I am so happy that she calls us frequently. She is my sanity right now. My husband is getting ready to leave for the island the next day and I am a mess. He has offered numerous times to cancel his trip, but I won’t let him. He is going with a good friend of ours, and they would both lose their money. I am thinking I can handle things. I always have in the past, although, I am a bit worried this time. I am also hoping that the medicine she is on will start kicking in soon...
    Dr. G calls us when her plane lands and decides that we come in for a bit so we can have a clear plan for the weekend. We show up at the clinic and she whips out a notebook full of ideas for us that she had been writing in during her flight. I am feeling that our money is really being put to good use. I didn't think anyone would put this much effort into helping us. Not only does she have a clear plan about completing some specific tasks, but more importantly, we talk about my daughter and her thoughts and words about suicide. 
   They had this conversation together before and she admitted that she was saying these things, not because she was planning on doing anything, but mainly because she felt completely out of control. She learned other ways to say she needed a break or she was feeling out of control. And, we learned before that if she talked about killing herself again, we would have to take her to the ER. 
   We knew she was not going to, and we did not take her when she would slip and say something. So Dr. G came up with a contract that we all had to sign. Basically saying that my husband and I must take her to the ER the moment she says it again. She explained to her that this is a very serious thing to say. If she means it, she needs to say it, but if she does not, she needs to find other words. She told her the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf and was very clear to the two of us how serious this is. We signed it, brought it home for my husband to sign, and put it on the bulletin board in clear view.

    Knowing the horrible week we have had, and the fact that my husband is leaving in the morning, our friends offer to come over to watch the kids so we can have a quiet dinner out together. They are husband and wife, our very dear friends, and like second parents to our kids. 
    I would love to say our dinner was romantic and relaxing, but we are both stressed out beyond belief. He is worried about leaving me for the week and I am simply distraught about our daughter. Not to mention we find out, during our dinner, that a friend has just died a horrible death on the island he is about to travel to. 
    As stressed as we are, it was really nice to be together away from the house. We have just celebrated 16 years of marriage and I love this man more than I have words for. But, it feels like our daughter is tearing us apart at times. It is often hard to be on the same page about how to deal with her and how to deal with our emotions.