My Husband's Affair Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me (30 page)

to find a way to get to the hospital by myself. I was nervous about

how I could pull that off.

Crying, I called my mom on my cell phone.

“Mom, I’m afraid.” It was Danielle, sobbing.

“Danielle, where are you?”

“I’m in the ravine. I’m in the bushes. I’ve hurt myself.”

“Do you want me to come and get you?”

‘Yes.”

I ran down our street and then down the path leading through the ravine with its thick vegetation. There I found Danielle crying in some bushes. I supported her, putting her arm over my shoulders and walked with her back towards our home, being gentle and compassionate, yet moving as quickly as possible. We made it back to the house and the phone rang again.

“This is 9-1-1. Someone from there just phoned here.”

“Yes,” I said. “My daughterjust tried to kill herself. I don’t know what to do.”

“Is she there?”

“Yes.”

“How did she try to kill herself?”

“She swallowed an entire bottle of Tylenol.”

“We have an ambulance waiting close by, but they are waiting for the police to arrive at your home first to secure the situation.”

“Okay,” I said.

Moments later the police arrived. One of them questioned me and the other questioned Danielle. The ambulance drivers arrived and began to monitor Danielle’s vital signs. In the midst of all this commotion Dave and Brian pulled up. They were horrified, in addition to the situation at hand, by the chocolate-covered interior of

our new vehicle, which they passed on their way into the house.

Danielle: I have great respect for police and others in authority, so lying to them scared me. It was weird, everything was so blurry. I thought I might pass out. It took forever to explain to the police, paramedics, Dad and Pastor Dave that I had not taken the Tylenol, but only pretended to do so. The ambulance attendants checked my vital signs and somehow I was fine.
They believed me! Wow! I hadn’t really thought I could pull this off.

Eventually, two police officers and two ambulance attendants were persuaded that Danielle was okay. So were her father and Pastor Dave.

Dave talked with Danielle for a while and eventually convinced her to come and stay with his family for a few days. Danielle told Dave that she was really tired and needed to rest for a while. She said that after resting she would pack a few things and come to his home.

We believed her.

In the meantime, 200 Tylenol tablets were on the way to the liver of one beautiful sixteen year old.

Pastor Dave left. Danielle lay down on her bed, and two shaken parents with a marriage hanging on by a mere thread sat down in the living room and tried to make some sense of the drama that had just transpired.

Danielle: I was finally able to be alone. As soon as they weren’t paying attention, I snuck out of my bedroom window. I knew I didn’t have much time to get to the hospital. I called a cab and arrived there in a matter of minutes.

When I went to check on Danielle shortly after she went to lay down, I found an empty bed, an empty room and a wide open window with curtains blowing in the breeze. Once again I was seized with fear.

Where had she gone? Why did she do this? Was she okay?

“Brian, she’s gone!” I yelled.

He ran to the bedroom and stared with me in disbelief at the empty bed and room.

“You stay home,” he suggested, “in case she comes back. I’ll go look for her.”

It seemed the most logical plan, although I was scared that it would once again mean I was left alone to deal with this wild teenager, whom I loved but had no idea how to handle.

I sat waiting, disillusioned.
Why had the police and ambulance attendants left us so soon?
I was unconvinced that Danielle hadn’t taken those pills. I had seen them in her mouth and it looked to me like she had swallowed them.
Why had Pastor Dave believed that she would come to his house after a rest? Weren’t professionals supposed to know the answers?
I felt helpless and alone.

How much pain could one person be required to bear? Could I die of an emotional overload?

Within an hour the phone rang.

“I found her, honey,” said Brian. “She’s going to be okay, I think. She’s at the hospital. They’re pumping her stomach right now. She got herejust in time. After they stabilize her physical condition, a psychiatrist will be giving her a complete psychological examination.”

Why did my daughter want to take her own life? I’m not just losing my husband,
I thought.
I’m losing my whole family.
I’m losing everything. Tears once again filled my eyes as the emergency of the situation subsided and numbness gave way to grief.

How had I failed so severely as a mother?
I wondered. Throughout Danielle’s childhood I had done everything I knew to be a great mom. I was dedicated to my children, taught them values and gave up many things to ensure they had a great life. It seemed that my best was not good enough for this world. There seemed to be no reward for years of doing all the right things. I understood that there were no perfect families and that everyone had problems, but

I didn’t think something as severe as suicide would ever be a factor in our lives.

I cried alone on my sofa.

When Brian came home, we didn’t talk much. We were devastated, both handling our grief differently and certainly not strong enough to comfort each other.

The hospital, Brian said, had everything under control. She was going to be having a full gamut of medical tests and an extensive psychiatric evaluation. Danielle had requested confidentiality from her parents, so we were not allowed to be present for these tests. After the tests, Danielle fell asleep and slept through until the next morning.

The next day, we went to visit Danielle in the hospital, checking in first with the nurse on duty who informed us that she was about to be released. We were shocked! The doctor said she was now fine and could go home.

“You might want to rethink that,” Brian said, “because we’re not actually going to take her home.”

The nurse stared back in disbelief.

“Our daughter nearly died yesterday yet we know nothing of her medical condition,” said Brian. “She has had a complete medical evaluation and we know nothing. Perhaps she is in need of some special care, yet we know nothing and have been informed that because she has requested it and the law says so, we have no right to know anything about her medical condition. Yet now you want to send her home into our care and give us complete responsibility for her medical well being!

“We can’t take her home,” Brian continued. “We feel inadequate. We want to take care of her, but we are completely in the dark as to what her needs might be.”

The nurse continued to stare, obviously pierced by the sharp truth in Brian’s words.

“Furthermore, she has had a complete psychological examination of which I have been informed I have no right to know anything about. We don’t know if she has special needs emotionally or how to go about meeting them, while trying to maintain sanity in our home. No, we are not taking her home. We are completely uninformed and therefore incapable of assuming full responsibility for her well being.”

“I see your point,” said the nurse.

Now it was my turn to make a point.

“And don’t you dare go in there and tell our daughter that we wouldn’t take her home, because she’ll think we don’t love her and that isn’t true,” I said. “We just need information in order to care for her properly.”

“Okay, we’ll keep her here and I will talk to the doctor, and I won’t tell her you wouldn’t take her,” promised the nurse.

Brian and I sat on the hard waiting room chairs and talked, questioning the sanity of our country’s laws.
How does a sixteen year old who has just attempted suicide have the mental capacity to decide for herself what is best for her future and whether or not her parents should know?

We then went in and visited with our daughter. She was putting on a strong front and saying that she didn’t need to be there. (She didn’t know the doctor had planned to release her so soon.)

Danielle: I felt hurt, misunderstood and unloved. I felt like a bad person, who would never live up to my parents’ ideals. I wanted to do the right things, I wanted to be good and I wanted my parents to be proud of me. Seeing them there in the hospital made me think of all that I wasn’t. I knew they were disappointed with my behavior, so I yelled at them.

“I’ll never be a good teenager!”

Brian and I looked at each other. We had no idea what to do. Brian left. I tried to calm Danielle down.

“We’re sorry you feel that way Danielle,” I said. “We love you just the way you are.”

Within a few minutes we were interrupted by some of her friends coming to visit. It was awkward. Danielle was angry with me, and it showed, which embarrassed me in front of her friends. She didn’t seem to want me there, and everything I said seemed to make matters worse, so I left her room and Brian and I went home.

Within two hours we received a phone call from the office of Dr. Johnson, the psychiatrist who had examined Danielle. The doctor had agreed to meet with us. In doing so, he was breaking the law. There wasn’t much doubt about it. Brian and I would be there.

When we arrived, a tall well-built man with blonde hair greeted us warmly with appropriate handshakes. He appeared to be strong, physically, mentally and in his character. His eyes told me he was someone who could be trusted. Before we had a chance to say a word, as soon as he had closed the door to his office behind him, he started to speak.

“Mr. and Mrs. Bercht, first of all, I want to apologize to you on behalf of the Medical Association because you have been totally wronged as parents. Your daughter does not have a remote hope of survival without your love, support and help. Her condition is serious. I don’t know how many teenagers this town, this province and this country have to lose to suicide before we get our inappropriate laws changed.”

There had been an epidemic of teen suicides in our community that year. Some of the teenagers had attended the same high school as our kids. Some of the tragedies had been covered in the media. It was a common topic of debate and discussion around town. People in our community were grieving. Why was this happening in our nice city? People wanted to know, and they wanted solutions.

After Dr. Johnson made this statement he told Brian and I that Danielle had been prescribed antidepressant medications five months prior. We were also told that this was not her first, but her

second suicide attempt.

We were shocked and felt violated as parents.

Can you imagine that a teenager can be so emotionally upset that he/she attempts suicide and then once the immediate danger has subsided is sent home into the care of parents who don’t even know! How fair is that to either parent or child!
Brian and I wondered.

We loved our daughter, but how could we help her when we didn’t even know? If only the medical community and Canadian laws had given us a chance. We would have handled Danielle’s behavior very differently had we known she was dealing with adverse reactions to various antidepressant medications her doctor was prescribing.

Some ask,
When do you give the right to a child for privacy regarding their medical situation?
It really isn’t any question at all. The answer is simple. Freedom and responsibility belong together, not separated. You give children the right to complete privacy at exactly the same time as you give them complete personal responsibility for their own medical condition. At whatever age you set it, you put it together, but to give complete privacy and freedom to the child, while the parents remain legally responsible for the outcome is insanity.

We asked Dr. Johnson questions about how to care for Danielle and were told that Danielle was not able to handle any conflict right now.

“Whatever you do, do not fight with her, unless you are willing to lose her,” he said.

We asked him if we could receive some help, explaining that we felt uncertain about how to handle the day-to-day situations that would come up during this difficult time. We were told that there was no budget within our medical plan for help for the parents.

The doctor said things were probably going to get worse before they got better. But he encouraged us by saying he saw that we were kind, loving and reasonable parents and that there was a lot of hope for the future healing of our family. We will always be grateful to Dr. Johnson for this meeting. I don’t know if our family would have

made it had he not shared this critical information with us that day.

We are happy to say thatJason made a speedy one hundred percent recovery from his accident, and was released within a couple of weeks.

We spent another thirteen months on this mood altering medication roller coaster, before Danielle recognized that the medications were causing her more trouble than help. She made her own decision to go off the medications expressly against the doctor’s orders. As soon as she was off them, we had our sweet daughter back, but not before. Afterwards she told me, “Mom, I never had any problems until after my doctor put me on the medications.”