Fiona's Program

Fiona came home for an overnight last weekend.  I set it up a week in advance and yet she arrived sans meds.  Yup. zero, zilch zippo for Saturday.  My daughter takes some very strong anti psychotics. These are not the type of thing you just skip or take late.

I spoke with the staff who dropped her off and they assured me that I would have the meds by 8 a.m. (her dosage time) "if that was what I wanted."  No, duh, I wanted her to have a psychotic episode and require an emergency hospital visit.  Unfortunately they did not live up to their promise of 8 a.m.  Nor did they get the meds to me in the one hour window which is clinically acceptable for her.  Nope. It was 9:45 a.m.when a fellow finally showed up at my door with the meds in hand and a sob story about being pulled in from a different part of the program to deliver the meds.

I wrote to the head of the group home, and the director of the program. I copied the service coordinator at DDS as well.  We were lucky and Fiona was okay, but it could easily have not been okay.  It is not fair to Fiona or our family to put us in this type of situation.  And part of me worries that if you are brazen enough to totally miss meds for a planned family visit, what goes on at the home when there is less oversight?

The head of the group home wrote back to me that he was sorry this had happened.  He went on to say her meds had been delivered incorrectly from the pharmacy and that her fish oil supplement had been missing.  Seriously???  So we don't batch the psych meds because an OTC supplement was not there?  There are three health food stores in my city.  I could get fish oil in a New York minute if need be.

Apparently I ignited a firestorm.  The head of DDS contacted me and I had to file a report with a special agency that handles cases of abuse or neglect. I have forgotten their acronym.  Also, it turned out that DDS knew of 2 incidents of med issues with Fiona at the home, so I was probably correct that this really is a serious problem.