Sleeping

I don't know why sleep has been so elusive lately... I fall asleep, and wake up every couple of hours. I have no idea what's waking me up. I just know I'm tired all the time and it takes 12 hours to get a decent amount of sleep. It's getting really frustrating. I can't get anything done.

I guess it is ok because because each time I wake up, I get to see my kid. She's sleeping funny too. I guess she didn't get any sleep at her dad's. No surprise there. There's a lot going on there, and nobody there really sleeps much. They each get a few hours a night, and often at different times. I still don't understand why they don't believe in schedules. Children need some form of structure, especially when they have to get up for school in the morning.

Sorry about the boring post... It's hard to think of something interesting at 5 am.

We have this guy at work... The first night he arrived, he was literally climbing up the walls trying to get out. First, we found him outside doing sit ups on a tiny pipe up by the ceiling. Thigh impressive, we were afraid he'd hurt himself, so we went to stop him, but then he dropped straight into his ass. He was fine.

Next, he bent our outside gate so far that he got out... Almost all staff came out and ran after him. Someone convinced him to come back inside. He came, begrudgingly... He paced around the the common areas for a couple of hours ranting about being in jail (we're not a jail). Then, he was found climbing a high wall (like 8") up to a window, which he then tried to open. Again, we had to talk him down. That made for a very interesting shift.

He's a very sweet kid, who is unfortunately very ill. He opened up to us over the next couple of days, with small amounts of antipsychotics and told us that the voices in his head were so intense... Coupled with the outside noise, he just couldn't take it. His mother was upset about something and was in his face bothering him to do something and he threatened her with a knife. He confessed this while coming very close to tears.

Later, we were talking about my daughter hearing voices and he spent around twenty minutes explaining to me that just like him, the federal government was using the voices to torture her and ruin her life. He asked me to promise that no matter what she did to please not kick her up, because being with us has been a traumatic and depressing experience. Sometimes, he thinks the government is controlling his thoughts and other times, he is depressed and remorseful... I feel so bad for this poor kid. I don't know what I would've done in his mother's shoes, especially since schizophrenia often comes on very suddenly, but he is very clearly suffering. Right now, they have him on 2 mg of risperdal, which wasn't even enough to prevent me from seeing things, and I'm not schizophrenic... The first line of defense with schizophrenia is normally something a little more hardcore, like Zyprexa. I hate seeing him suffer the way he is. I hope they change his meds soon. I've never even heard if using risperdal for schizophrenia...

Anyway, I need to go find my child.