Woodstone Prairie

I finally heard back from the pdoc who did the consult a few weeks ago with M. Unfortunately, she didn’t have much in the way of suggestions. She thought of a couple of long-shot meds that might help with mood, but had no ideas for anything to try for the psychosis. She asked how M was doing, and I said he was having good days and bad days. She replied by saying, “You know, he’s always going to have some symptoms…” 

Yes, I know that M’s schizophrenia is never going to go away. He’ll always need to take medication, and will always have bad spells. But I’d been holding on to the hope that he’d be more stable, at his “baseline”, then he is now… 

There is no sense going into the details, but, for many reasons, her comment was hard for me to hear… especially coming from someone I barely knew. It seems like M’s regular pdoc should have been the one to initiate that kind of conversation. But she isn’t good at things like that… She is great at medications, side effects, etc. and she is very kind and personable, but over the years I’ve gotten the message that she’d really rather not talk about the really tough stuff. Things like what the future is likely to look like, how can we as a family live with this level of instability, how can we help him to grow and be as successful as possible, given the continuing symptoms…

I suppose the pdoc’s call just came at a bad time. It was a difficult week, knowing that Christiana was holding onto life by the slimmest of threads, dreading being told that she was gone and yet, at the same time, knowing her release from life would mean healing and peace for her.

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 Ah, well, it’s time to shift gears… there have been good things going on here too.

We visited Longhopes, the donkey rescue, the other day and had a wonderful time!

 We spend several hours out in the HOT sun, watching the director of the rescue working with the baby donkeys.

This woman is just amazing…  I learned so much from watching her, and came home energized and feeling hopeful about gentling our little wild man, Tucker.

Here are some pictures of M and R at Longhopes.

Since our visit, I’ve been working with Tucker for a little while every day… I’ve made some progress, he will allow me (when he has absolutely no other choice!) to “pet” him with a towel attached to a broomstick. (This enables me to get close enough to touch him without being close enough to be kicked.) Unfortunately, he’s also threatening to kick me fairly regularly… so I’m not sure how far I’ll be able to go with this on my own. Longhopes has a trainer that will also work with Tucker if I need him to…

Tucker and Blaze are getting to be great friends, which is wonderful to see…

Yesterday, for the first time, I saw them grooming each other. Blaze is a wonderful horse, I’m glad he’s found a friend.