Our weekend

We had quite a rough weekend. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned here before, but my wife’s little sister V suffers from mental retardation and cerebral palsy. My wife is pretty much her main support mechanism – she helps her with her bills, takes her grocery shopping, etc. Despite that, she is a very independent young lady. She has her own apartment, goes to work everyday and is just about the sweetest person you’ll ever meet. One of her many quirks is that she talks to herself – she’s actually just thinking out loud, with often comic results. This past week, however, her talking to herself became something else entirely.

For the past week, we’ve noticed that V has been very, very depressed. She used to love going to work, but last week she called us every morning to say that she didn’t want to go to work. Her job coach, hmm, how do I put it…? Her job coach is a fucking bitch. She yells at V when she talks to herself, snaps at her when she gets up to go to the bathroom, basically makes her workday a living hell. Now, most of us have had to deal with horrible bosses, but we’re intellectually capable of handling. V, however, assumes that she’s done something wrong and can’t understand why her job coach is so mean to her. The stress from all of this caused V to have a psychotic break on Friday. She’s begun to hear voices in her head, and it’s freaking her out. Of course, because she talks to herself, we didn’t know what was happening at first. My wife took V to the doctor Saturday morning to get help for her deep depression and that’s when we found out about the psychosis. They gave her some medication and that was it, until Saturday afternoon. The voices in V's head got really, really bad. She thought that her old roommate was with her and that they were both being hurt by another resident (this actually happened a few years ago). She didn’t know where she was or who we were and started screaming and crying. I can’t explain how scary and disturbing it was. My wife took her to the emergency room, where, after waiting for hours for someone to help, was eventually told that no one could help them, because V's mentally retarded and they had no psychiatrists trained to work with her. And with that, they washed their hands of the problem. No suggestions on what to do, they wouldn’t admit her to the psych ward, just a “sorry, can’t help you”. That’s the state of care the mentally retarded routinely get, and it’s horrible. We’re looking into our options today – possibly bringing V into the city to either GW Hospital or Georgetown. We’ve had to stay up with her all night, because the voices won’t leave her alone and she’s scared to death. So far, the voices have only been threatening her, not telling her to harm herself or others. The medication has made the voices whisper instead of yelling, but it’s rough. I’ll keep you posted on how we’re doing.