There are people I’d like to throw things at. I could make a list a couple pages long, of people I’d like to wake up with a rock through their window tonight. If I had a baby-sitter, and a getaway driver…
He went through something like seven case managers, and at least as many doctors, with the mental health agency he was assigned to. One of those case managers seemed to actually care. So of course, they laid her off. Only the last doctor ever bothered to talk to him for more than fifteen minutes. He was the one who changed his diagnosis, and finally got him the help that could have saved him, had it come a few months sooner.
The others just raised his dosages when he was depressed, and lowered them when he complained of shaking hands. Changed his anti-depressant when the side effects wouldn’t let him make love. Told him to come see them again in three months.
If you read about any mental illness, you’ll quickly see that counseling is recommended with drug therapy for pretty much everything. Drug therapy alone is almost never successful, as you are either on the meds forever, or right back where you started when you quit taking them. Yet I never could get him counseling. They said it had to be court ordered. So he couldn’t get help until he did something horrible. And he wasn’t like that.
I fought FOR YEARS to get him the attention he needed and deserved. I fought with COPE, I fought with Social Security, Medicare, DES, you name it, if it’s a government agency, I fought them. And I begged, and I filled out form after form, and I called, and called again when my messages got no response, and called again…
Social Security will let me know how much of his last check I have to pay back. He died on the fourteenth, you see, and he was paid for an entire month. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Oh, and my daughter isn’t eligible for survivor’s benefits, the lady on the phone told me. Her daddy didn’t work enough. He was disabled all his life, you see.