Just last week I wrote a very optimistic blog entry about how things were going with Avi, and of course, as is our life, it is two steps forward and one step back (although this time it may have only been a half step back). On Thursday afternoon Marsha had an appointment for Avi to begin Autism testing at Children’s Specialized Hospital in Mountainside, NJ. It is a very subjective thing, but they have some methods of quantification. Anyway, they went and he got through about ¾ of the process when he began to lose it. He kept screaming he was hungry, which is Avi’s method of telling us, I’m bored and I want to get out of here (or he could have been hungry, either way it was the same). Marsha had promised to take him to Panera after the testing, but Avi just could not wait. He ran out of the room and they chased him through two floors of the facility, into the parking lot. At that, the SOP of the facility is to call an ambulance and transport to the hospital.
Marsha called me when the ambulance was there and Avi was lying down on the stretcher. I got him calmed down and he seemed ready to go home. He understood that there would be no Panera, but that he could eat when they got home. Marsha was about to take him home when the director of Psychology told her that if we were to take him home against medical advice, she would have to call DYFS. Now some of you may recall our previous run in with DYFS. I never blogged about it as it was just too painful at the time, but suffice it to say, you don’t want a run in with DYFS, and a 2nd call to them could make it even worse. So Marsha went with him to Trinitas Hospital in Elizabeth. I took the train to Westfield (close to where her car was) and a friend picked me up and brought me to the car. I arrived at the hospital at about 5:20 and Marsha had been there since 3:30.
They had been seen by an intake person, but the problem is that they were brought to the main ER, when there is a separate psychiatric ER in a different building. We had to wait hours (four to be exact) to get transport to the other ER, and for the majority of that time, we had no idea that is what we were waiting for! I hate hospitals!
At one point I wanted to just pick up and leave, and I told the nurse the whole story to see if there was really a chance that someone would call DYFS. She said that it was a stupid thing for the doctor to have said to us, but the transport was almost there so it would be better to just go to the other ER and get everything signed off officially.
So just after 7:30 we went to the other facility where we spoke to an intake person and everyone agreed that we did not need to be there. The psychiatrist on duty just came in a signed off and we left at about 9:30 getting home at about 10 pm. What a day!
Thank God we had a really nice Shabbat to look forward to. A friend of mine from when I was in grad school was coming for Shabbat (and that is a whole other story that I will save for some time in the future).