Six months later, Lisa was calling with anxious worries that devolved into convoluted rants. Ned and I fell into the routine from when Lisa’s eating disorders had surfaced in high school. One of us answered the phone, one stood by, gauging from the comments and facial expressions whether it would be constructive or confusing to join in. Spelling each other like this helped, saving strength for the next loop of complaints: “I have no friends.” “My stomach hurts.” “I tried (whatever we had suggested); it didn’t help.” She lost patience with a customer and was sent home from work.
Occasionally something good happened. She and Scott went out to dinner, she liked her classes, a customer at O’Neill appreciated her. We pounced: “See, it’s not so bad! Look at all these good things in your life.” Lisa couldn’t summon the energy to sound convinced.
She had a plan: Go to summer school, keep working, finish up her degree in the fall. But she wanted to know what would come after that. She’d have a degree in American Studies, not computer science.
Who knew? Who ever knows? American Studies was a great major for a teacher or a counselor, and for other careers beyond our knowledge. Lisa had been promoted to shift manager at O’Neill and she could work there full-time for a while after graduation. Or get another job while figuring out what she really wanted to do. This is what Scott had done, and six months after graduation he got a job he loved, in the very competitive field he’d studied: film. They had worried that he might have to go to Los Angeles to break into the film industry. But this TV show needed a gofer and was based in San Francisco, and there would be some opportunities to help with camera work.
Scott drove back and forth most days, a three-hour commute. They planned to stay in their current apartment until Lisa finished school in June, and then find a place closer to San Francisco. They thought they had worked it out with their landlady that they could stay after the lease was up, and rent month to month until June. But in April, the landlady said they had to be out in two weeks.
Scott took it as an inconvenience, but Lisa took it as a stab in the back by their landlady, a personal affront. She flipped out.
One weekend in May, Ned helped Scott and his dad move into the new apartment. When Lisa came home from work, she was very tired. She hadn’t been sleeping. As Ned drove away he watched Scott and Lisa walk back arm in arm, holding each other up.
Lisa struggled that spring with anxiety, hormonal swings, insomnia, undereating, overexercising, various and changing medications, and self-medication with marijuana. We don’t know exactly what happened, but she unraveled. There were still unpacked boxes when we moved her stuff out of the apartment four months later, when Lisa’s hospitalization made clear that she wasn’t coming back.
Within a month of noticing Lisa’s rising anxiety, we took action. Several actions. They were just the wrong actions. We encouraged Lisa to go back to the ED therapist she had made a little progress with during her sophomore year. At least they wouldn’t be starting from scratch. We also insisted Lisa go to the student health center on campus, to see about medication. From one provider she got estrogen to restart her period, and from another doctor, drugs for anxiety and insomnia. While you’re there, we said, ask about Prozac. This was the antidepressant that had helped Lisa untangle her destructive circular thinking.
It was a clean sweep of bad moves. She took Ambien too often, too late at night, so that even when she did sleep she was exhausted the following day. She was jittery and couldn’t concentrate, which she thought was because of the Prozac. Her period did come back with the estrogen, but so did cramps and mood swings. But the worst was the ED therapist (see Chapter 15) who gave us a long scary speech on bipolar disorder and suicide. Lisa’s many diagnoses had never included bipolar disorder. When we left, I had to think the bar to hang your therapist shingle on must be way too low in California. Lisa and I got to the car and agreed—she wasn’t going back.
We were back in All Lisa All the Time mode: canceling, rescheduling, ears constantly to the phone. Ned and his best friend, David, get together once a year. It was to be the first weekend in June, in Portland, where David had a business meeting. I had a colonoscopy appointment that Friday. At first, the plan was that since Lisa didn’t have Friday classes, she would drive me to the clinic and be home while I slept off the anesthesia. As the weekend drew near, and Lisa was still in school but very anxious, I asked a friend to drive. But what if something happened in the afternoon when I was out of it and Ned was in Portland? Ned canceled the trip. It was easier to reschedule than a colonoscopy.
Lisa was frantic about getting a final paper done. She had a solid idea, lots of notes and sources, but nothing in any kind of order. The paper counted for eighty percent of her grade. She liked this class and the teacher. One Saturday, Scott was working, so we drove to Santa Cruz to help her. We brought newspapers and books, stopped at a Chinese restaurant for takeout, and settled onto the porch while Lisa worked just inside. We couldn’t get her to eat much, but like coaches, we helped her assemble supplies and map a plan. Go, Lisa! She started typing. And stopped. We checked, voiced encouragement, and listened for more typing. There was a little, then nothing, really nothing. She couldn’t do it. She wasn’t sleeping or eating, and she couldn’t concentrate. She needed a doctor.
“Please, hon, you seem so sad,” Ned said. “It seems like your brain isn’t functioning. Maybe we should go to the hospital.”
Lisa agreed. All of us felt a little hopeful at the nearby hospital, as medical professionals took over. Lisa even ate a sandwich there. After a couple of hours, she was deemed stable and discharged with a new prescription. Maybe a time-release sleeping pill would work better. To make sure, we brought her back to our house for a week.
She seemed a little better and had been back at the apartment for a few days when I called and she didn’t answer the phone. My mind went immediately to the bottle of sleeping pills. I started driving to Santa Cruz, calling every few minutes, talking myself down, batting away horror. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. It takes almost an hour to drive to Santa Cruz. At last I got to the apartment complex, saw Lisa’s car, ran up the concrete stairs, and rang the bell. No answer. No sound inside. Banged on the door. Called from my cell phone. Banged again. It was probably only a few minutes, and I was about to call 911 when she shuffled to the door. She’d been sleeping, deeply, that was all. Never mind, we were going to the doctor.
At the student health center, Lisa walked out a little clearer. Later she met several times with a very kind, experienced psychotherapist, and, again, seemed to make progress.
Ned and I had to make a decision. Again, it seemed we could choose our pleasure or Lisa’s welfare, but this time my mom was involved. A year after my father died, my mother wanted to go on a cruise with my family and my sister’s family. We couldn’t find a time that worked for everyone, and Jake and Lisa had to be in school, so in mid-June Ned and I were going with her on a National Geographic cruise from Istanbul around the Black Sea. Then we would spend four days with friends in Paris. We would be gone almost three weeks.
As opposed to the James Beard awards in New York, this trip had no professional value. It was something my mom wanted, though, after many very tough years taking care of my dad. We’d been looking forward to it, too; it was our first trip in a very long time. Lisa isn’t going to ruin this for everybody, Ned and I agreed. The world can’t always stop for her. We were back to the question: What is manipulation and what is real need? And what good was it doing Lisa for us to be running to Santa Cruz?
Lisa agreed to let me meet with her and the student health center therapist. I was very impressed with her knowledge, attitude, and her rapport with Lisa. When she suggested residential treatment, though, it was a shock. She gave us a brochure for a facility that the school had had good results with, and the name of a local psychiatrist who specialized in eating disorders, for when Lisa returned to Santa Cruz. The glossy brochure showed healthy, earnest young women, writing in journals and conversing amid handsome Southwestern furnishings.
This place was in Arizona. At first, we thought no way. But Lisa would be safe there. This program had helped other students. Wasn’t it worth a try? The average stay was six weeks. We could go to Europe and be back in time for the facility’s Family Week.
Back in high school and early in college, Lisa had wanted to go to a hospital or residential treatment program. “I think that’s the only thing that will help me,” she had said, frustrated with the slow pace of weekly therapy and nutrition appointments. I suspect her vision of residential treatment had been one part summer camp, two parts health spa. Now that it was on offer, though, and we were in favor, she didn’t want to go. But the facility’s intake supervisor delivered a convincing spiel, including, “Making the decision to come here is a great sign that you want to get better.” If only.
The packing list made clear this was no spa. Bring: alarm clock with no radio; one small cosmetics bag with no mirrors, toiletries in original containers with no glass (alcohol not one of the first three ingredients); conservative clothing including a one-piece swimsuit.
Do not bring: music, books, cell phone, sports equipment, iPod.
But Lisa did bring her iPod, we learned later. And a severely negative attitude.
thirteen
Fetishes and Talismans Desperate Parents
When your child gets sick, it is such a reversal of the natural order that at first it seems cruel and wrong when the rest of the world goes on as before. How dare they? Desperate parents go into a defensive crouch, intent on beating back the threat to someone they would die for, mobilizing the rest of the family into the emergency. Between the illness, its treatment, and recovery, nothing else matters. We had to figure out how to accommodate the unwelcome new reality. Each step was like recovering from a stroke, laboriously figuring out a way to do something we used to do without thinking. Other steps, we found during Lisa’s struggles, involved inventing little games, like fetishes, and collecting little objects, like talismans. It’s surprising what can help when your mind goes into triage mode.
First, the practical. You have to get out of bed and go to work like everybody else, even if, like me, you work at home. Sounds obvious, but it’s not so easy if you’ve spent the night imagining all the possible bad outcomes of your child’s illness, and replaying missed opportunities that might have changed all this, except that you didn’t know at the time, and you know it’s not all your fault, you do your best as a parent, but it feels awful anyway, and there must’ve been something . . . and so on. Then, perhaps, a little sleep. This is when I wake up, sweating, momentarily wishing I just had a terrible nightmare.
Then you put in calls to doctors, hassle with insurance, visit the hospital if that’s where your child is, eat and, too quickly, try to sleep again. You may need to practice some mental gymnastics. Push away thoughts of how long this horror could last or where it could lead, the worst that could happen or even the best. (Worse is okay, just not worst.) You must focus. Cut through your regular to-do lists, and all the well-meant advice and referrals. As with suggestions when you’re job-hunting in a bad economy, tips about the treatment that worked for somebody’s cousin can pan out, or they may be your friend’s shot-in-the-dark attempt to stay connected. Which is a good thing, but there’s only so much input a person can absorb.
It’s game time, you’re out on the field, and you may not win. You really may not win. But as kids learn in little pants and long socks on the soccer field: “So the referee made a bad call, your throat is sore, and it’s starting to rain? Honey, this is what you signed up for. Play on.”
We signed up to raise children. Oh, right, that means not just when they’re darling infants or even surly teenagers, soiling the nest because they’re about to leave. If they need us later in life we have to be there. We can argue about how young adults these days are so much less mature than we were, that we were self-sufficient at their age and they should be, too. But the world has changed. Adult children often spend some time living with their parents, and pediatricians sometimes see patients over the age of twenty-one.
There were times when Ned and I crumpled and wailed at home.
We snapped at each other, most often about household maintenance, which got very slipshod.
Conversations went like this—attack and extended defense:
“You forgot to pay the utility bill.”
“Me? Why is it always my job? I couldn’t find it! Where did you even put it? Who can find anything in this house!”
And the constant haranguing of whichever one of us talked to the doctor and neglected to ask the critical follow-up questions, such as: “How long until this medication works, if it’s going to? What the heck is PRN? Should we look into brain imaging?”
Occasionally we ran down the endless possibilities starting with “if only” and “if not for” just to the edge of outright blaming each other for this calamity. If only we had seen this coming. If not for Ned’s freaking out that Lisa would be like his sister. If not for my family’s heredity of depression. If only we were smarter, more talented, totally different people . . .
Lisa was hospitalized, was barely able to walk or feed herself. She and Scott had planned to get an apartment closer to his job in San Francisco once she finished school, but now that was hazy and the Santa Cruz apartment was an extra expense. A friend at Scott’s job had a room in a house he could rent month to month for now. When we explained the plan to Lisa, in all its rationality and temporariness, she cut through the details and asked, very quietly, like she’d lost the right to know, “But where will
I
live?”