And the latest...
I think Older Daughter's latest emergency department incident shook her up a fair bit, and she came to the conclusion that she needed to see about getting another private psych clinic admission to get herself back on track. She's had a few things going downhill lately. She seems to have largely conquered her fear of water, but has developed other problems. Social anxiety has been getting worse. She can't handle doing shopping on her own at the moment. She's been crying uncontrollably after her psych appointments, to the point where she couldn't handle travelling home on her own from one of them, so we went and picked her up.
The psych who was in charge of her admission last time wasn't going to be available due to contracting issues this time, so her GP put in a referral with the plan being that the clinic would assign someone to her.
And yesterday she got the good but disconcerting news that they can admit her on Monday, and the icing on the cake is that her previous psych is available again, so she won't have to start from scratch with someone she doesn't know. Yay!
She was shaky about it when she rang me yesterday. Sounding excited, scared, teary all at once. So she'll be spending the weekend packing and trying to get her head around the fact that it's actually happening. We'll do the 2+ hour drive down with her, leaving about 8 in the morning to get there in time for admission. It's a pity they can't have a slightly later admission time for country patients. As long as she's coping OK emotionally, we should be heading home again about lunchtime. It would be good to get back before our younger daughter arrives home on the school bus. Understandably, she worries about her Big Sis, and we need to be there to support her too.
This means Older Daughter will be at the clinic for her birthday this coming Sunday. She'd thought about that possibility in advance, and would like us to have lunch with her at a Chinese restaurant that's within walking distance of the clinic. We don't know how many weeks she'll be in. She's hoping that she can get back on top of coping with everyday things before she goes home. Last visit helped... hope this one does too.
