8/3 - Still in hotel, arranging care

Chelsey is about the same or a bit worse than during her last few days in the hospital. She still has delusions and disordered thoughts. Many of them seem harmless, but some do not. For example, she explained today that light and electricity cause uncontrolled bowel movements (from conditioning by bad guys). She was a bit agitated when she saw direct sunlight or somebody turned on a light (harmless), and she started taking out electrical outlet covers so she could examine the outlets for tampering (scary).

The DDA Service Coordinator agreed to pay for Chelsey and Beth to stay in a hotel through next week while DDA explores arrangements for a group home or other step-down care. It's easier to monitor Chelsey in the hotel to keep her safe, and it limits exposure to potential triggers for her delusions at home. Neither Chelsey nor Beth are getting enough sleep so far.

The bureaucracy is numbing. The group home provider can't place Chelsey until DDA approves residential treatment, and the DDA can't approve a residential plan without first approving a less costly plan. After the stupid and inadequate first plan is approved, they can create and approve a new plan for a group home, noting the higher needs that made the first plan stupid and inadequate. The first plan is now done and pending approval. They're exploring placements, on the assumption that both plans will be approved. Even figuring out those steps and the reason for holdups took lots of calls, reroutes, and buck passing. Crazy.

However, there are helpful, kind and sincere people working within the broken system on our behalf. Several have gone far out of their way, and they've shown compassion and humor about the red tape. Two people who had planned to take long vacations cut them short after a few days for our sake and for other backed up cases. The system is flawed, but stereotypes about lazy or mindless bureaucrats cannot be applied like peanut butter.

Beth called a legal department responsible for making sure clients get the services for which they qualify. She was just asking for advice in the face of what felt like a silly runaround that would delay Chelsey's placement. We don't know if that had any impact, but things started moving more quickly soon after she made that call, and we got the hotel payment authorized. I want to believe the process moved forward because of kind and competent people just working out the issues naturally, but I don't know. We have to push hard and be our own forceful advocate (thank you, Beth!), or Chelsey would stay in limbo awaiting the next crisis.