jamiesam26
New Here
My name is Jamie and I am very happy that I came across this site. I don't know what to do anymore to help my father. He has been dealing with traumatic things, one thing after another, for the past 20 years now. I am 26 years old and I have bent over backwards to help him and to make sure that he doesn't make his situation any worse for himself. I have quit my job and have started to work from home just so that he doesn't feel alone. He needs me home 24/7 so he doesn't feel alone. It is such an exhausting process for me.
His trauma comes from my mother who tried to get him painted as the bad guy when I was growing up, and it resulted in a lot of false accusations and a couple times he had to spend time in jail because of it. Then he became very fearful of the police and very distrustful of them. This made him become very agitated and misconstrued for mental illness. Just a month ago my sister filed a request with the court to have him involuntarily committed when he was not a harm to himself or to others, and this made my father be held for 7 days against his will at a hospital where he was treated horribly.
At this local hospital they quickly found out that my father had two different health insurance policies, so they were in no hurry to let him go. It was awful seeing my father in there. Everytime he had a panic attack he was just injected with Haldol. He was injected with Haldol at least 15 times in a 7 day period. I was turned away from visiting him once because "my father appeared to upset me too much." I found out that they had strapped him down with physical restraints and that he was forcefully catheterized. I only found out about the latter because a week after he was discharged from the mental health facility there was blood in his urine and I insisted that he go to the local ER to be checked out.
My father was so scared in that ER waiting to be examined by a doctor for the blood in his urine (his urine was dark red, that is how much blood was in it) and he absolutely did not want to lay down on the bed, afraid he would be strapped down. At this point I didn't know that while he was strapped down back at the mental facility that 3 female nurses approached him to shove the catheter, which was unlubricated, into his urethra. He never wanted to allow himself to be in a position where he could be "ambushed" like that again.
That is just making an extremely long story short. Now it has been a month since the most recent of events and my father is as bad as ever. I cannot leave him alone right now, he wouldn't be able to make it on his own. My heart hurts for my father, but it has been several weeks now. I have read up on PTSD and I know I cannot expect my father to just heal and get over it. That is unfair of me to ask that of him and also unrealistic.
But I am 26 years old, without any support from my siblings, who all think that it was wrong for me to hire an attorney to fight the decision to have him held there, I am not sure for how much longer I can endure. Had I not asked my boss to help me (I am a paralegal) my father would have been committed for up to 6 months, and I know that they would have recommended electroshock therapy for him, which would have just fried his brain until he was a compliant zombie.
I need a place where I can safely talk to someone, or people who are going through this awful, awful condition. How do you keep loving and helping your loved ones? My dad sometimes thinks I am conspiring against him, or that I think that he is crazy. I don't do or think these things, but sometimes I do feel the need to just get away from him.
His trauma comes from my mother who tried to get him painted as the bad guy when I was growing up, and it resulted in a lot of false accusations and a couple times he had to spend time in jail because of it. Then he became very fearful of the police and very distrustful of them. This made him become very agitated and misconstrued for mental illness. Just a month ago my sister filed a request with the court to have him involuntarily committed when he was not a harm to himself or to others, and this made my father be held for 7 days against his will at a hospital where he was treated horribly.
At this local hospital they quickly found out that my father had two different health insurance policies, so they were in no hurry to let him go. It was awful seeing my father in there. Everytime he had a panic attack he was just injected with Haldol. He was injected with Haldol at least 15 times in a 7 day period. I was turned away from visiting him once because "my father appeared to upset me too much." I found out that they had strapped him down with physical restraints and that he was forcefully catheterized. I only found out about the latter because a week after he was discharged from the mental health facility there was blood in his urine and I insisted that he go to the local ER to be checked out.
My father was so scared in that ER waiting to be examined by a doctor for the blood in his urine (his urine was dark red, that is how much blood was in it) and he absolutely did not want to lay down on the bed, afraid he would be strapped down. At this point I didn't know that while he was strapped down back at the mental facility that 3 female nurses approached him to shove the catheter, which was unlubricated, into his urethra. He never wanted to allow himself to be in a position where he could be "ambushed" like that again.
That is just making an extremely long story short. Now it has been a month since the most recent of events and my father is as bad as ever. I cannot leave him alone right now, he wouldn't be able to make it on his own. My heart hurts for my father, but it has been several weeks now. I have read up on PTSD and I know I cannot expect my father to just heal and get over it. That is unfair of me to ask that of him and also unrealistic.
But I am 26 years old, without any support from my siblings, who all think that it was wrong for me to hire an attorney to fight the decision to have him held there, I am not sure for how much longer I can endure. Had I not asked my boss to help me (I am a paralegal) my father would have been committed for up to 6 months, and I know that they would have recommended electroshock therapy for him, which would have just fried his brain until he was a compliant zombie.
I need a place where I can safely talk to someone, or people who are going through this awful, awful condition. How do you keep loving and helping your loved ones? My dad sometimes thinks I am conspiring against him, or that I think that he is crazy. I don't do or think these things, but sometimes I do feel the need to just get away from him.
