Remember in September – Daily Post #20 for National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month

My Loud Whispers of Hope

What is Live Through This?

Live Through This is a collection of portraits and stories of suicide attempt survivors, as told by those survivors.

“Suicide” is a dirty word in this country. It’s a sin. It’s taboo. It’s selfish. It’s not an easy topic to discuss and because we, as a culture, don’t know how to approach it, it’s easily swept under a rug. The problem is that suicide is a pervasive public health issue (the 10th leading cause of death in the US). I get it: we’re afraid of death. But avoiding it and pretending it doesn’t exist is nothing more than willfully perpetuating ignorance.

The intention of Live Through This is to show that everyone is susceptible to depression and suicidal thoughts by sharing portraits and stories of real attempt survivors—people who look just like you. These feelings could affect your mom, your partner, or…

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Remember in September – Daily Post #19 for National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month

My Loud Whispers of Hope

“Imagine a community that is unafraid of mental illness. Imagine a place where conversations about mental illness are met with compassion, without whispering and without judgement. That is our vision” ~Mental Health Coalition of the Greater La Crosse Area

That is my vision as well. That is all of our visions…

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Sadly, here is a story of another life lost to suicide and a family left to struggle with their grief and unanswered questions that they will never have the answer for.

Positively though, this is another family honoring their son in a way that will help many other people by educating about mental illness and suicide. Thank you very much Reckase family and thank you to the La Crosse Tribune for posting a great article to help our cause to help stop the stigma of mental illness and prevent suicides.

I love this family as they were great parents…

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It’s lunch time but …

As I looked 👀 in my bag, I realize that I skipped breakfast today.  

Breakfast for lunch and lunch for dinner?   Or eat it ALL now.  Or eat lunch and have breakfast as a post lunch snack.  😂

Decisions… decisions. 😉

Part 8 ~ What’s Next

After the banning, we found a doctor who was just a hair better than Doctor X.  The inital appointment went well.  An actual assessment was done and a diagnosis was made.  Of course this is based on self report mainly.  Not 100% reliable but felt like an answer just the same.

We will call her Dr. Y.  She had major issues of her own.  Reviews on Yelp “I would not trust this doctor with my child’s mental health” and “Major ethical business issues in appointment keeping”.  Meaning she would see the patient for 5 minutes to fill the RX after having kept him/her waiting up to 3 hours past the appointment time.  When one really needed to talk, she was catching up and pushed the patients along like cattle.  Yet I am sure (at least in our case) that she billed for the 50 minute hour just the same.  That my friends is NOT ethical.  The talk part Dr. Y advised should come from someone else in any case.

In that regard folks, we hit the JACKPOT! Someone up stairs was looking out for us.

I can’t remember exactly if I was working from home or if I had taken the day off. It was lunchtime and I was on the phone with EAP insisting that I wanted a full list of referrals even surrounding cities like New Braunfels or Boerne.  We’d drive anywhere.  Like Ground Hog Day, I started by calling the first name given to me and thought no way will anyone answer.  It was lunch time after all but I was trying anyway.

It’s how we found our Angel.  Believe it or not, she answered the phone herself.  In my memories, on the first ring :).  No admin, no delay.  Her practice is faith based and that was icing on the cake.  I told her through tears everything that happened and she agreed to see Lulu the next evening. After that first session, B took Lulu to her appointments until she started driving herself there.  Always after school to avoid creating more anxiety.  And eventually Lulu was released with an open door to return anytime things got tough.  An open door she took advantage of most recently when she had surgery.

For a while, I was angry.  Now I no longer blame an entire profession for a few bad apples.  We all do the best we can under the circumstances.  To quote a former boss, “no one wakes up and says to himself, gee I think I will see if I can royally fuck up today”.  We are humans, perfectly flawed.  In hearing others stories though, we seem to have more in common than not.  Simply put, good help is hard to find.

Mental health and well-being are complicated issues without a reliable diagnostic tool. Add to the mix more opinions than you can shake a stick at.  Be it insurance or a multitude of other factors, many are out on their own.