Believe it or not, true as all truth can be.  My son asks  me for the soundtrack of Rent.  I ponder this request because I know it could be a trigger.  Anyway, so I hesitate for a few weeks, but he keeps asking, so I order the CD on Amazon.

And Amazon is awesome,  the CD arrives on a Sunday.  But from past experience, I know that means, not a lot, except, YEA it is there.

So I wait, like a normal person until Tuesday, and I call, and I ask for the Mail room.

They tell me yes, it arrived on the dock on Sunday, got to the mail room on Monday, but the unit doesn’t pick up till 1:00 pm; meaning they missed it Monday…but “good news: they will definitely pick it today by 1:00 pm”.

Phone call from my son, late afternoon after 3:00 pm, I say: “your CD is in, and on the unit; ask the nurse for it, you could probably relax and enjoy, before or after dinner”.

They actually show it to him, but do not open it.

Forty five minutes later, my phone is ringing, “Ms. Moran your son is in restraints, couldn’t be helped, he was so upset.”

O, god this hurts, I hate this, I ask;  “What happened to the CD? I told him myself that it was there and he could listen to it like soon, like this evening?”

O, response from nurse, ‘all mail goes through our social worker who is not in today. Your son will have to wait until his social worker returns, probably tomorrow.’

I am like, Can’t someone else open the CD and put it on for him? I just told him it is there?

Response from Nurse: You already knew all mail goes through the social worker.

You have to wait until tomorrow.

By this time, I am off the wall crazy.  No, I didn’t know that!  No one ever told me that! If I had known that, why would I tell my TBI son that he can listen to the CD in minutes?

Eventually, of course, the next day, he got to listen to his CD, RENT, the musical, of all things, I so worried, but he loves; it all good thoughts.

This is my daily life as the parent of a person living in a psychological institution in the state of New Jersey.  My daily life is agony, what is my son going through?  And does anyone care?