Anger

I know there are stages to grieving. Until now I have wavered between shock and numbness. Today I had my first bout with anger. I received a call from a Nashville hospital about a past due bill of Colby's. I had taken Colby their emergency room about six weeks ago after, he called me asking to go. He couldn't go on. He needed help, he said. He didn't want to live anymore if life was going to be like this. I took him first to another hospital. There would be a three hour wait, we were told. There were more urgent situations that required the doctors' attention. Colby became very agitated. He rocked back and forth, began to cry, paced the room and became very angry. We left and went to another hospital. This emergency room was less hectic. Colby was seen right away. They took his vital signs, an ER doctor talked to him and when Colby said he couldn't go on like this, that he didn't want to live with this mental illness, the schizophrenia, the panic attacks, and depression the anxiety and yes, the addiction, anymore the physician sent us over to their psychiatric hospital. There we waited for over an hour, Colby lying on a metal couch in a cold sterile room, crying. There were no other patients waiting in this part of the hospital. Finally a psychiatric nurse interviewed Colby. He told her the same thing he told the doctor. She left and we waited another hour. When she came back in she had a list of resources for us to call the next day. Resources we had exhausted long, long ago.

I remember walking out of the hospital, getting into the truck and holding Colby as he cried. He had so wanted help he put aside all his anxieties and fears and they turned him away. Six weeks later my son is dead and I get a call from the hospital about the thousand dollar bill the hospital sent Colby. I realize this was not the fault of the person calling, but she bore the brunt of my anger. I am sorry for that. Sorry for her. I should call her back and apologize but I can't. Yet. I am still too angry. I told her the story, shaking, crying, yelling, raging, and then I hung up on her after telling her they weren't getting a dime out of me. Then I put my head in my hands and cried for more than half an hour. If they had helped my son instead of turning him away there is a good chance he would be alive today. Right now he would be here with me. I would still have the possibility of future grandchildren and great-grandchildren, of holidays spent with family members. Now, none of that is possible.

I have a lot to say about our health care system. But I am too angry to articulate it well, so I will leave it for another day. In the meantime, I will try to process this new emotion, this new anger that is so unlike me, and find a path through it to the next level.