Recently I was in the hospital triggered by the shooting death of my daughter's classmate from a small Catholic school. These kids are ending there first year in college or out of school. He was the typical 'good' kid caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, trying to break up a fight between two girls when a gang member shot and killed him. I'll stop the detail there, because it gets worse.

Being a DID, we have a long history with our Dr.and this particular hospital staff. Our Dr. recognizes us and our need to talk to him. We've known him for over 8 years. We also have this great new therapist who works the same as our doc. We have an agreement with her that when we are having a hard time we work until we can't be safe and then we go to the hospital and work where we know we are safe with our doc. This has been great, we have gotten through some real hard stuff and everybody stayed safe while we did it.

Recently we have had an increase in hospital time because of seasonal issues. So when I had to go back in last week, after 5 weeks out, the infamous "THEY" got on our doctor's back for too many hospitalizations. "Hospitals are a crisis stablization center, not a treatment center", THEY said. So we gathered our self together and told our Doc that we wanted to meet THEY. He got it set up. We spent the time we came in for our problems working out THEIR problems so THEY could understand why what we were doing was more cost effective in the long run.

Our stays have gotten fewer and shorter in length, 'but THEY don't do therapy in the hospital', well our doc does whether THEY like it or not. THEY just can't seem to comprehend the value in actually treating us in a safe place instead of warehousing us until we promise to be safe and we have to go back out and try and do therapy only to become suicidal again and end up back in.

We went to the meeting and became I for THEM. I swear, THEY never went to kindergarden to learn basic manners and how to treat everybody equally, (like you don't bring candy for all the class except the ones you don't like!). THEY let us talk and asked us questions, but soon THEY began to leave without excusing themselves, and when we were midsentence, answering a question THEY literally all stood up and walked out without saying anything. From where I was seated I couldn't see that there was a group about to come in. It was rude. We were treated worse than a dog, at least a dog would have been told to come, or 'good dog' or something.

We spent 7 days in the hospital only talking about the reason we were there for about 10 minutes. And THEY were concerned about us using too much hospital time!!!

We're pissed. We don't feel like we are welcome back anymore, just because we are suicidal, with a plan. It seems that we need to have a medical reason to get admitted and the only way we know how to do that is by making one. We are not suicidal right now, and therapy seems to be taking a break. We are very confused about what we should do should we get to that danger spot again. Therapy may have to take a long break. We hate it because we're close to finishing some of the worst parts. We find ourselves becoming a more unified I. Though we all are still here, we just work closer together.

I don't know what other DID's experience is with therapy and hospitalizations. We are fortunate that our Doctor specializes in DID and does therapy instead of drug control. But we put him in trouble everytime we have to come in and we don't want to do that.

If anyone has any related stories it would be great to hear, all's we know is what is here. Thanks, pk