Coming home

Akila is coming home tomorrow and I am truly excited and ready. She has been doing so well since she started Abilify. We have a chart and graph that the crisis home manager puts together. It logs her behaviors since she moved in there.

Before the Abilify, she was having about 15 issues of non-compliance a week, 18-30 physical acts of aggression towards others, 30-42 episodes of verbal aggression and 10-14 temper tantrums a week. Since she started Abilify, she has had 0-5 non-compliance issues a week, 1 physical act of aggression towards others, 1-4 episodes of verbal aggression and 3 temper tantrums. That is a huge difference- you should see the graph, there is a serious dip!

She is approved to be there until Dec. 9th, but I emailed yesterday and said lets do it on Friday. They agreed. Today was our regularly scheduled two week team meeting. Each time we have one of these meetings, Akila is convinced she will be coming home that day. She has been let down each time. Last night, she was convinced she was coming home today. I kept putting her off, and she was getting upset. So I told her she would get to come home on Friday.

You would think this would excite her to no end. Not the FASD brain. She went nuts. Said I was terrorizing her, disappointing her, etc. This was at about 3:30, and she could not be convinced that one more day was doable. Finally, I said let's talk at bedtime and see how her night went. It did not go really great from what she reported to me. She didn't bring it up again when we talked later.

This morning, I picked her up for a dr. appt. In the car, she started going on about coming home today. I said tomorrow, and she got upset. I finally got her to settle down when I told her I needed time to get a meal prepared that she could choose, and that we wanted to get a surprise ready. Zeke wants to make a cake for her. This settled her down.

I am going to the crisis home while she is at school tomorrow and packing her stuff and taking it home. I will then pick her up after school. Tomorrow morning, will be her last time at the crisis home. I am truly excited to have her home, although I know it will be very hard, I also know it is time. I am praying that she can continue with her more calm behaviors, and that she will not escalate to the point of violence at the same level as before. I am so excited to feel complete again.