Fancy..Expensive Rehab Does Not Necessarily Mean "Good Rehab"..Part 2

We would talk almost every day and I remember being so proud of you for sticking it out. You were restricted to a wheelchair so you wouldn't burn any unnecessary calories. I would get daily updates on your progress which after about 4 weeks started to sound familiar. You used to say to me that when you started to feel better it really made you feel much worse. So in other words when you would start to gain weight that is when your body would start to physically feel better, but emotionally was another story. That is when you would feel like crawling out of your skin and Anorexia would rear it's ugly head and then things came to a sudden halt.

I received calls from the staff that things didn't look good and you were misbehaving. You didn't get along with the one person who you should have gotten along with and that was the chef. He had little patience with you and unfortunately he was the son of the owner of the program.

They gave you contracts and ultimatums. They pleaded with you, tried to scare you into complying with the program..I believe they tried everything including the all too familiar, "If you keep on the path you are going, you will die".

Dad and I finally had to fly out to CA to come and get you and to have a family meeting to see what we could do to help the situation. When we arrived they treated us like royalty and cooked us meals so we could have dinner with you, we had meetings with the entire staff, but to no avail. You were stuck again and asked to leave the program. During our stay you called me one evening crying and hurt. You told me that you were coming down the hall in your wheelchair pushing it instead of sitting in it, you claimed you were going to get into it in a minute but was pushing it to the middle of the hall when the owner caught you. He grabbed your arm and asked you to get into the chair...when you tried to explain he said under his breath, "You Disgust Me"!   I remember how upset you were, I called the clinical director on that weekend but couldn't get a hold of him. We let it go, but it would come back up for discussion several months later when we did obtain a lawyer to try and collect the remainder of our money which they refused to return to us. In the end we did settle out of court for some of the money they tried to keep.

They couldn't just throw you out without a referral for a different program to go to. On the other hand if you left on your own without having a place to go they threatened you with a 51/50. In California it is where you are held for 72 hours against your will and are forced to have a psychiatric evaluation, if they think you are a threat to yourself or others.  So those were your choices.....not great since we came out on a Wednesday and by Friday they had found you a place in which they recommended to you as a residential facility which provided a higher level of care. It belonged to a friend of the owner and he assured us that insurance would cover it. It was located in Missouri, but we would have to wait until Monday to leave SD and would arrive later in the afternoon. We hung out all weekend together in their beautiful gardens, then we collected you early Monday morning to begin the journey to Missouri.
Things did not go smoothly and one of our flights was detained so we missed entering you on that Monday so we had to wait until Tuesday. By this time you had dropped even more weight due to the stress and travel plans.  First thing Tuesday morning a car was sent for us from Castlewood, which was one of the most beautiful residential facilities I had ever seen. It was set on several acres of gorgeous woods and the building was placed on a cliff with a view which was breathtaking.

We met several staff and we were very hopeful that this would be a good place for you to try and recover. I got an unusual feeling every time we met a new staff member, they were acting rather strangely, kind of talking behind closed doors whispering around us etc. By the afternoon my worse nightmare had come true.  They kindly informed us that they had no clue that you were as compromised and underweight as you were and this was not the place for you by a long shot! So here we were after traveling across the country with our critically ill daughter to find out that we had been steered in the wrong direction by our trusty fancy shmancy treatment center. So now what do we do?? We hadn't a clue....Castlewood was wonderful and did the best they could to find us a place to go in a short amount of time...they even delivered us back to the hotel at their expense. I know they felt terribly sorry for the 3 of us.

I tried to speak to the place in SD but got nowhere, they didn't want to take responsibility for their referral mistake. They even instructed your therapist not to speak to us. Ooooooh I have never felt such stress and anger all at one time in my life. I felt terrible for you too! 
We ended up going back to Chicago and admitted you to the hospital there for a short visit. We were back to square one...I know that you felt like a failure, but I always looked at it as a wonderful attempt and happy that you tried your hardest to take the steps to beat the uncrushable...the relentless....the insidious disease known as Anorexia.

Here is a poem which was given to you by one of the staff at SD, he was a maintenance man who really cared about the patients and I know you liked him very much.

 

 

Miss you more than ever......m