Breathing Out Slowly and Carefully

"It's been a whole week." said Julie on Friday.  She didn't need to tell me: I knew exactly how long it had been since the last trip to A&E, if for no other reason than that the stitches were due out.  But once they were removed, there were no more stitches left.  There have been no self-harm incidents this week.

Lots of sleep, and no pressure: Julie's prescription. It was supposed to be just a couple of lie-ins a week, but somewhere along the line it gradually morphed into... no school at all!  Somewhere in the conversations between medical people and school people, and Julie herself (but never including me), someone decided she should just not bother trying to attend, and it became a fait accompli.  Which would be great if I wasn't working full-time, but somehow we have all just had to fit in around this new situation, in which one child goes to school and the other one doesn't.  At least until next term starts, in about a month's time.  Who knows what will happen then, but it may determine whether I can continue to work at all.

But I neither know nor care about the future at the moment: the sense of relief at Julie's improvement is immense.  By this weekend I had become so confident about the situation that I left Joe to hold the fort, and went out to an art exhibition with a friend.  Something that was impossible to imagine even last weekend, when we had to pass Julie backwards and forwards between us as cautiously as emperor penguins shuffling our precious baby from foot to foot across the treacherous ice.  What luxury, what unimaginable luxury, to sit and talk for hours in a cafe afterwards without having the phone out on the table in case of an emergency call.  To be able to sit and order another coffee, and reminisce, and relax, without steeling yourself for the inevitable bloody crisis.  And then I returned - not to the stormy chaos I feared, but to a warm, well-ordered house, an affectionate welcome from Julie, and dinner about to be served.

Julie's new psychiatrist, Dr Clyde, did a very strange thing during the week.  He sent me a copy of his minutes from a recent meeting we had all attended (which is not strange) - but he asked my permission to send a copy to school.  In all these months we have never been asked if we objected to intimate details about Julie's case being sent out, often to people we did not know, who had never met Julie, and who, for all I know, paper their waiting rooms with these reports.  I had given up caring who received information about us.  But then he did another, even stranger thing: he asked me if  I had any comments or corrections to make about what he had written.   Doesn't he know the rules?  Doesn't he know that parents have to just put up with what is written down?  Doesn't he know that we're not allowed to answer back?  That we have no redress against conversations that go misreported, speculation about our family environment, personal comments about our character?  Surely this man doesn't know his job, or won't stay very long in it.  But no, I see he has been in his position for years, and is very well-respected.  Curiouser and curiouser.