It’s time to write a full update about what’s been going on in my life for the past few days. If you’ve read the previous post you know that my father was incarcerated in a mental facility for attempting to commit suicide on the 118 while avoiding arrest.

Early Saturday morning my father’s doctor calls my mother to talk to her and make sure it would be okay to release him into her custody. You know, make sure she’s not a raving psychopath too. My mom was thrilled that we’d be able to bring him home, not just visit him, as was the plan for the day. During the phone conversation he agreed to sign a voluntary committal form until we could meet with the doctors and take him home. My mother and I quickly got ready, drove to Santa Monica to pick up Marcus, and then drove to Ventura to pick up my dad.

When we got there we had a private meeting between his doctor, his nurse, and us. We discussed our concerns with his behavioral changes over the last few years, his self-medicating habits, his behavior while being arrested, and anything else that might have been relevant to his current situation. In turn his doctor and nurse did the same, explaining his behavior while being in the hospital and what might be causing such a change in him.

Some of the concerns that were brought up were his sleeping habits. Many years ago he was diagnosed with sleep apnea. I’m not sure completely what that entails, but it does hinder your ability to get a full and restful night’s sleep due to lack of oxygen reaching the brain. Back when he was originally diagnosed he had surgery to clean out his nose and sinuses per general medical practices of the time. He suffered some complications, but overall it improved but did not cure his condition. In recent years they have developed better technology to help sleep apnea sufferers, including a machine that helps you breath at night. Of course my father is the type that isn’t interested in going to the doctors and had done nothing about his problem, which has steadily grown worse despite the surgery. According to his physicians, a lack of sleep and oxygen deprivation could be a huge contributing factor to his recent behavior, which includes, depression, paranoia, lack of concentration, irritability, and forgetfulness. There may be more, but they’re slipping my own mind at the moment.

Another focus of the conversation was his medication. He was supposed to be taking 60 mg of Lexapro for his depression. (Standard dosage and what I take is only 20 mg) For the past couple of weeks though he’d been self-adjusting his Lexapro to 80 mg, because the 60 just wasn’t doing it for him anymore. This is really the way it always is with him though. It happened with Prozac and everything else he’s taken. His body just seems to get too used to a drug, he maxes out the safe dosage and then moves on to a new drug. He had missed a couple of days before Wednesday and as a group we expressed our concern that he might have overdosed, which caused the sudden suicide attempt.

While in the private meeting my mother expressed her frustration that she wasn’t told what was happening to him, but was soon told that she wasn’t allowed to know because he’d refused to sign the permission form. My mother would later say that this was the deepest cut of all. Her husband of 33 years wouldn’t let her know what happened to him. Later he would admit to doing this, stating that he was afraid they wouldn’t tell her the truth. And he doesn’t call himself paranoid?

At the end of the discussion the five of us came to the conclusion that he ought to stay at least one more day for observation. They also wanted to do some blood work and a cat scan of his brain.

And then my father was brought in.

Despite the 4 day-old clothes, lack of shaving, and scruffy, unbrushed hair, he held his head up, with his chin stuck out in defiance of everybody in the room. It was clear that he was unhappy with everybody in the room. He wouldn’t directly answer the doctor’s questions and he would defer some of them to my mother. We all had a chance to go around and express our concerns again, kind of like an intervention. Then the doctor told him that he’d be staying the night again because of the CAT scan and we all thought it was in his best interest. He had a fit. He started complaining about the bed, the pillows, the pain in his arm and all sorts of stuff. It was at this point we realized how in denial he is about the whole thing. Over the phone he told my mother that he’d pissed off the wrong cop, but we all knew that was a lie because of the conversation we’d already had with the CHP. While in the meeting he announced that he didn’t know what he did to deserve getting his arm thrown up behind his back and handcuffed. Yeah, like running out onto a busy freeway isn’t something worth getting forcibly subdued over. After a bit more talking he agreed to stay the night, but refused to stay Sunday night. As it was he didn’t know if he had a job since he hadn’t even been able to call in and tell them where he was for the past three workdays and if he missed Monday as well, he would most certainly be out of a job. He was very adamant about not staying Sunday night. The doctor and nurse said they’d do their best to allow that to happen, but it wasn’t a certainty. We kissed and hugged him goodbye, all 4 of us wanting to cry, especially my father since he was the one being left.

While on the way home we discussed our options and came to the conclusion that the next day we would go back down there and take him home, whether he was ready to or not. The main reason for this was because of his job. If he didn’t show up for work Monday morning he would likely lose his job, and that could very well cause an even bigger problem than we already had. Not only would it cause depression and frustration while looking for a new job, it could potentially cause some disastrous financial strain on the family. My mother is only a teacher, albeit a very well paid teacher, but my father is the main breadwinner. At his current place missing a day of work is like throwing away about $500, minimum.

After we got home we had the task of clearing the house of all destructive items because he’d still be on a minimum suicide watch and the new legal problems won’t allow him to own firearms for a minimum of five years. We started in on our search as soon as we got home and by the time we were done we had 30 things laying on the floor, including: 10 knives, a bayonet, a sword breaker, a morning star, a crossbow bolt, (we decided the crossbow was safe to leave home if it didn’t have the bolt) 5 swords, 3 hidden blades in walking sticks or canes, a glaive, 3 weird martial arts weapons that involved hidden blades, a 9mm berretta, a pump action shotgun, and an antique rifle. And as scary as this may sound, 2 guns are still unaccounted for; his Tommy gun, which actually has the drum to make him look like an old gangster, and another shotgun. Not all of this belonged to him though. He’s not that crazy. Two of the swords were my brothers, and then some of the stuff has just been in the family so long that we aren’t sure who owns it anymore. None of them were mine though. It was decided that my bodice dagger could stay. It was very small and it’s kind of hidden. We also figured that we had to draw the line somewhere. It’s not like we could actually pack up all the kitchen knives too. So all of this stuff was safely wrapped up, the guns were checked for bullets, and then taken to my brother’s place for safekeeping. He’s not supposed to have them in his apartment so we’ll eventually take them to Utah to reside with another brother. My mother is hoping that in five years my dad will have forgotten about all of them, but I’m not too hopeful. He was raised as a Utah farm boy that loved all things hunting. I think when he gets his hands on the stuff in five years it’s going to be like Christmas.

Okay, so Sunday morning comes along and we get up and drive to Ventura in time for visiting hours. On the way we stop at Arby’s to get him some lunch since we were told we could and we figured that the hospital food was less than pleasant. We’d also brought him a change of clothes and a book. He had requested his favorite pillow, but we figured that he’d be going home with us so we declined to bring it. We ate and talked and had a pretty good time for a couple of hours. He was still in denial, but his mood was much better that day. Then my father went to change his clothes and my mother, brother and I went to find out how to get him discharged.

We were ushered to a waiting room off to the side of the lobby and told to wait for Sue, the nurse that we’d been dealing with the day before. Finally another nurse arrived and told us that Sue was busy and we’d just have to come back tomorrow. Of course that didn’t fly over really well, we wanted to take him home now, which we promptly told her. Finally another doctor came out and told us that they would be doing a CAT scan and some blood work on Monday and that the doctors didn’t feel he was safe to leave the hospital yet. We asked them why the scan and blood work hadn’t been done yet and they just brushed us off and said it was so hard to get things done on Sunday, but really what it meant is that they’d lied to us on Saturday and had no intention of letting us take him home on Sunday. We explained the urgency of the situation and she said it was just too bad if he lost his job and we could call tomorrow to find out if he could come home. So really, what was the point of him signing the voluntary committal form if they could forcibly keep him there anyways? We then asked if we could go back in and say goodbye to him, but they announced that visiting hours were over and it just wasn’t possible and proceeded to usher us out of the building. When outside we looked at the clock and it wasn’t time for visiting hours to end, but they wouldn’t let us back in. We had been completely railroaded by the employees. With no other options we drove home, all three of us very worried about what he’d do when he found out he wouldn’t be going home with us, and if he lost his job.

On the way home we stopped off at the church to see Bishop Matheson. My mother had called him on Saturday to find out if he’d be able to give her and my father a blessing and he’d told her that he could do it on Sunday. We went in there and had a wonderful discussion with him about what had happened and he gave both my mother and I a blessing to help us stay strong and get through this. I hadn’t had a blessing in quite awhile and it felt like just what was needed.

Monday morning my mother had to run my brother back to UCLA to get some paperwork that had to be turned in for his friend’s dissertation that he was helping to file. Apparently his friend is off in Mexico doing some research and doesn’t have the time to do it himself. Doesn’t matter, but what does matter is that on the way there my dad called my mother and said that he was free to go home later that day. So after my brother had finished with his business they ran off to Ventura for the third day in a row to pick up my father. I wasn’t with them this time, but according to my mother there were times on the drive home that she thought she ought to turn the car around and take him back to the hospital. He had even gone so far as to blame his two extra days in they’re on her. From the way we see it, they were going to keep him two extra days whether we’d gone along with it or not.

Fortunately Monday was also very good news on the transportation front. The auto shop called and announced that my mother’s car was finally completed and that we could go down and pick it up before 5pm. Unfortunately they didn’t get home until after 6pm, but as soon as my dad’s paycheck is deposited they’re going to pay for it and drive it home. Yay! No more rental cars.

As of right now, my parents are in Thousand Oaks, picking up my dad’s paycheck, making sure he has a job, and running any other errands that they can today. We’re just trying to get this over and done with as quickly as possible. As soon as my dad can drive himself to work again and my car gets fixed I can move on with my own affairs, like getting myself a job. We can only hope that we’ll be able to move beyond this and that my dad will accept and admit what he did to get himself committed.