Sadness

My daughter has a mental illness.  She has bipolar disorder with schizoid affect.  She suffers audio and visual hallucinations.  She doesn't take her medications as directed and instead she self medicates with drugs that worsen her illness.  She has experienced a great personal tragedy this past year, the disintegration of her fifteen year marriage due to her husband's "inappropriate behavior" with their two teenage daughters.  When her daughters told her what was happening she did everything she was supposed to do; she called the police and protected her children.  My daughter and her daughters spent months talking to people from the police, the district attorney's office, the local women's center, and victims assistance.  My son-in-law was eventually convicted, branded a sex offender, sentenced, released with time served, and put on parole.  Then he called my daughter who was in a state of mental deterioration.  She had not been taking her medications as directed; she told me that with her husband gone she didn't need them anymore.  The balancing act she had been practicing for most of the last year was precarious at best and when he called the balance beam tilted and she fell off.  She talked to him as he pleaded with her to believe that he was innocent.  She wanted her family back.  She was hearing voices.  He knows how to manipulate her, especially in her mental state.  She took off with him (he cut off his monitoring bracelet) leaving the two older girls with me and taking the younger girl who is eleven.  She was gone two weeks before they returned to the area and things began tumbling down on her head.  He was arrested and put back into jail where he spent three weeks. The voices in her head were louder and reality slipped away.  She ended up leaving her youngest daughter in a McDonald's and crashing her car.  She spent eight days in a psychiatric hospital then was released without a safe place to go and without proper medications.  My eleven year old granddaughter is now in a children's shelter in California while her two sisters are with their uncle in West Virginia.  My daughter is still hearing voices.  She is convinced that computers are reading her mind and that terrorists are stalking her.  She believes the only safe place for her is with her husband and according to her they are planning to be together after tomorrow.  I am currently in West Virginia and won't be able to get back to California for at least a week.  I text my daughter and call every day and wait to hear from her.  I feel helpless to help her.  I don't know what to do.  I love her and am scared for her and heartbroken thinking about the way she and her children have suffered, are suffering.  I want to cradle her in my arms and tell her that it will all be alright soon, to tell her to give me her pain the way I did when she was small.  But I can't and she can't give me her pain because her pain is wrapped up around her mind holding her hostage.  I pray everyday for answers, for advice, for anything that will help my baby.

Woes

It was a crazy trip from Carson City, Nevada to Charleston, West Virginia but we are here.  Tuesday, July 10, 2012 we headed out from Reno, Nevada on Amtrak's California Zephyr which would take us to Chicago where we transfer to the Cardinal heading to Charleston, WV.   The five of us boarded the train loaded down with luggage and bags of food to get us through the two day and three night train ride.  We had settled into our seats and finished a dinner of turkey sandwiches when the text came from my eleven year old granddaughter, the younger sister of the two granddaughters traveling with me.  She said her mother had dropped her off at a McDonald's in Sacramento.  She was told to call the police and wait right there.  I immediately sent texts to my son and my two other daughters this latest event.  My son and youngest daughter got on the phone and began calling Sacramento police and sheriffs.  My oldest daughter, getting ready to board a plane to Arizona from San Francisco, was on the phone with my son and me.  Then my phone rang.  It was my granddaughter who said she was fine and then handed the phone to a sheriff who told me that after my daughter left her daughter at McDonald's she had apparently crashed the car she was driving.  Physically she was bruised and had some cuts but otherwise okay; mentally she was not.  At that time it was not known whether the crash was accidental or intentional. My daughter was taken to the hospital and my granddaughter would be picked up by CPS and kept safe until arrangements were made.  This all happened a week ago now. 
Since then it has been several phone calls back and forth between all of us and CPS and the sheriff.  My daughter was moved to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation and immediate care.  My granddaughter is currently in a children's shelter until temporary custody arrangements can be made.  There was a preliminary court hearing yesterday and there will be another on Friday.  My daughter will be in the psychiatric hospital for at least two more weeks then I have no idea at this time what will happen.  We are hoping that she will get ongoing care, perhaps an inpatient program for a short while and then a half-way house until she is stable on her medications again.  We will have to figure out a living arrangement for her as she no longer has her apartment and no one in the area to stay with.  We are hoping that her youngest daughter will be joining her sister here in West Virginia but need to go through CPS and the legal system.  We have been able to speak to her in the shelter each day and have sent her a few changes of clothes and a stuffed animal so that she will have something of her own while she waits.  

I can't write anymore about this right now.  My mind and my heart are filled with sadness and worry.