7/15/19
Yesterday I had such high hopes of thinking it was finally going to be the end of a long road my dad has had with alcoholism as he was transferred to the er from tellurian detox center. Unfortunately, that is not even close to what I felt after leaving. I left feeling extremely disappointed and hopeless. I have never left a hospital, especially Meriter feeling like it was just a complete waste of time. A girl came who was with the new start program, which he has been to numerous times, and many different groups since before I was born and I am 30. I thought we would be discussing realistic lasting solutions, when all we ended up discussing was group therapy. I had stated my concerns with group therapy, being as my dad is 55 and has been an alcoholic for 35+ years and as we all know with substance abusers, history does repeat itself time and time again.I discussed residential treatment, she briefly talked about that and just basically swept it under the rug as if it weren’t really an option. My dad is someone who is waking up at 6 in the morning and has to drink alcohol to stay alive and not go into withdrawal and seizure. I can’t believe that group therapy was even an option? I am extremely confused as to why they would think that is a solution for him. Common sense should tell them to maybe get their head out of the clouds and realize this is a bigger issue that group therapy clearly is not going to tackle. My dad stated he wanted one on one therapy. The social worker said the wait list is about four months for a psychiatrist. So we circled back once again to group therapy. In which it was a Sunday so he was unable to contact those places until Monday. He was shaking, sweating, nose was running, face was swollen, hands were yellow, and using the bathroom about every half hour. Either the new start girl or the social worker stated he “looked pretty good” as far as withdrawing is going. I couldn’t believe that. I felt no one was truly educated on what a person who’s condition is severe as my dads needs. He was sent home with about four packets of information, not given any medication to subside the withdrawal or subside the alcohol use. A doctor never came into his room at all. We were there for 3 and a half hours to talk to two people. I really have lost faith in Meriter and the health care system as a whole. All in all this experience was a complete joke. They did not take the severity of his condition serious at all I felt. And he was just released home. In my opinion, they might as well just have gave him the bottle back right there in the hospital.