Someone Please Help! Need Advice!

Hello everyone,

I have a problem and don't really know where to start to get this corrected. A little background first...

My fiance and I have been together for almost four years. She has a little sister that had a case of spinal meningitis when she was six months old. She did survive and is about to turn 20 this year. As a result of the sickness, she has spent her entire life going through seizures and other developmental ailments. Recently, she had a device placed near her brain that sends small electrical impulses to the brain every five minutes. This was done to help reduce the number of seizures that she has. Of course, she is also on several medications for the same thing and has been all of her life.

Also, due to everything, she has been receiving social security payments all her life. As far as the government is concerned, she is considered to be disabled.

Recently, my fiance and I went for a visit, and while we were there, I went into the bathroom. At the bottom of the toilet were two pills. I didn't really think much of it at the time and did my business and flushed. But that image kept popping up in my mind and finally I went online to try and identify those pills. I went to an online pill identification site and from the shape, color and markings, the site determined that the pills were Dapakote. They also had a picture of them on the site and I can say with 99.9% conviction that it was them.

Dapakote is a medication for several mental ailments including seizures.

The one thing that I fear the most at this point is the possibility that her parents are deliberately skipping dosages of my fiance's sister's medication to cause her to have more seizures. If she has more seizures, she will not risk losing her social security payments.

It makes me sick just thinking about it and I want to somehow help, but I don't have any idea where to start.

If anyone here can give me any ideas, I would greatly appreciate it.

I was at first thinking that I could call child services for the state of Georgia, but since she is almost 20 years old, I don't think that would be the way to go.

Are you sure your sister is not flushing them?

That's another thing that I had thought about, but I also know that every time I had witnessed her taking her medication, it was done in front of whoever was giving it to her. They would bring her the pills and a glass of water. The girl is almost 20, but has the mentality of a third grader. She is well aware of her condition and every time that I have spoken with her, she has made comments about looking forward to her seizures stopping for good.

That really makes me doubt that she is doing this to herself.

Hello,
almost sister in law will not loose her benifits if her seizures subside. She still will be disabled. It you think in your heart of hearts that she is being neglected you can make a call to Adult Protective Services. They will do an investigation... you can remain totally out or it.
It is better to be safe than sorry....

I agree with you on that. She would still have her benefits. But if the parents believe that she would lose them...

You would really have to know them as I do to know that I would not put something like that past them. They are not very good parents, and are totally self centered. All that matters to them is what they can get and screw everyone else. I truly am shocked that my fiance turned out as good as she did.

I think that the biggest problme we will run into is providing proof of the neglect. As far as the girl is concerned, her parents do no wrong. She may not even realize anything is going on. Also, she is on more medication that just that one and takes all of them on a daily basis. It may not be too hard to skip one and have her not even realize it.

IMHO - (and as the mother of a handicapped child, God rest her soul), I would not just start calling agencies without proper / adequate proof of what you are thinking, for it could cause more problems for this dear young lady and her family if you are WRONG.... what I would do is to be BRAVE enough to ask them straight out (face to face) about the pills you saw on the bathroom floor (and) then take it from there.

Good Luck...............

LoVe,
Rhapsody -

I agree with Rhapsody, at least for right now, do the head on confrontation. That will let them know that they may be being watched...or at least someone is watching the poor girl.

You know. I think you should be careful. Definetly.

BUT, and allow me to argue devils advocate - is it possible they were simply dropped on the floor or something and therefore not given to her?

I do agree it seems somewhat suspicious.

I agree with a confrontation with the parents is in order but before you do this you might discuss it with your fiance...after all she is part of the immediate family and a little better prepared to know if her parents are capable of such things...but above all else be very careful about how you talk to your fiance about what you suspect...you may just put a wedge between the two of you if you make it sound like an accusation...just let her know that you found the pills in the toilet and were wondering...another thing you might consider is that they were old pills at the bottom of the bottle and instead of taking the chance in hurting their daughter by giving her stagnate pills they decided to flush those and start a new bottle...whatever you do you have to be very careful with how you approach this whole thing...good luck with this dilemma...

My point of view - I would stay out of it.

1. You did not witness the person putting the pills into the toilet. It could have been the parents, it could have been the sister

2. it could have been an honest dropped the pills on the floor so the person put them into the toilet right away so that the unsanitary ones would not end up being taken. I myself have flushed dropped pills of my own.

3. The pills could have also been expired and when cleaning out the medications I throw expired meds down the toilet.

4. Without actually witnessing the act you have no idea who or why those pills were there. So charging in like a bull accusing, confronting and bringing the problem up will result in possibly starting a needless fight where there is no cause for it which could possibly trigger the sister into having stress related seizures.

5. you flushed the evidence so even if you confronted it is your word against those you are confronting possibly for no reason since you do not know the whole thing about the situation surrounding the pills.

6. the doctor may have prescribed a different medication and the person put the old prescription into the toilet.

7. your acting suspicious of your future inlaws will also cause problems not only with the sister and inlaws but also your fiance. The result of the fight over the pills can and may very well result in the engagement being called off and you and fiance going your separate ways.

There are so many what if and unanswered questions in this situation.

If I was ingaged to someone I would love that person enough to not want to cause problems for him and his family by starting a fight about something that did not involve me in the least.

I understand that you care for the sister but starting a fight about something you were not involved in is NOT the way to show it especially when you do not know anything but the fact that you saw some pills in a toilet and instead of asking about them when you found them you flushed them, tried to match what you remember to pictures on websites - there are many pills out there that resemble each other right down to certain markings. And now that the situation is done and over with you want to do something about it. The time to bring this up was when you found them not hours, days and weeks later. depending on how long it has bee. Obviously the sister has not had a seizure or ended up in the hospital or other bad scenerios from the situation other wise you would have put that into your first post in this thread.

So its time to drop it and stay out of things that you are not personally involved in for the sake of your engagement and relationship with the sister and inlaws.

First of all, I would like to thank each and every one of you that has replied to my message. You all have been alot of help in showing me the right direction to go.

I feel that I should add a little more information here though.

I did speak with my fiance about the situation before I placed my first post here. Also, she does know that her parents are fully capeable of performing this dispicable act. In fact, she was a little upset that it took me this long to tell her about it. Our visit down there was anly about a week and a half ago. I was trying to be careful about how to bring it up and was trying to work out the best way to do it. In this case, the best thing would have been staight, to the point and blunt about it.

I'll tell you about the kind of people her parents are, and what makes her and I both believe that they would have no trouble stooping to this level.

She knows actually better than I do that every time they open their mouths, there is a lie flying out. When they take my fiance's sister to her doctor's appoiontments, she is not allowed to go into the office alone. They don't want her to talk to the doctors alone because they constantly coach her on what to say.

They do this because it is their belief that if her medical condition improves, the social security payments will be lost. I posted on the first message about the device that she recently had placed in her neck, well, that was done after several investigations by the social security administration. They were basically made to do this because up until this point in the girl's life, they have never really done anything to try and improve the quality of her life. They take her to the doctor and say that she had been having 10-12 seizures a day. I have been with my fiance for almost four years, and we spent alot of time with her family. I have only seen one seizure in all the time that I have known her.

I mean if she stands up too quickly and gets a little light headed, they convince her that it was a seizure. Also, there was a program that they could have gotten her into specifically designed to teach her to be more self sufficient. It would have taught her how to handle money and actually survive on her own. They would not allow her to attend even though it would have cost them nothing.

And it's not just a case of parents being over protective. That's not their style. A bit too controlling would be more like it. When my fiance was a teen, she had an after school job and was forced to hand over her entire paycheck every week. She had no trouble helping with the bills and such, but she was not allowed to keep any of the money that she worked to earn. Once when she complained about that, her dad said that he would start charging her 20 dollars a day to take her to school and another 20 to take her to work every day.

And there is a whole lot more that I can say, but believe me, I don't have that much time. I could literally write a book comparable in size to War & Peace about this family. My fiance is a little apprehensive about calling an organization like child services out because that has been done before. My fiance and another sister had an investigation started when they were in high school. The social worker came out to the house for a visit. Her dad at that time had a four wheeler in the living room and cranked the damn thing up inside the house while the visitor was there. Nothing was ever resolved. As a result, she does not have alot of confidence in protective organizations in South Georgia.

I believe she is planning on trying to get her sister alone when we go down there to visit and try talking to her very carefully. We'll likely try to get information from her without being too obvious. then we'll just go from there.

Again... thank you all so much for your advice and support!!

I think you did the right thing in talking to your fiance first. That's the first person you should speak with, because if I was engaged and my fiance spoke to my family instead of me first, I'd feel hurt. I'm the person he should first entrust with this information.

If your fiance had said to stay out of it, you would have to decide which you considered the right thing to do. If this sister is being harmed by having her meds withheld, she needs someone to speak up for her, because it doesn't sound like she has anyone to do so. It's like a child being abused has no one if the persons who know of the harm being done say nothing.

But you don't know who, if anyone, is doing anything wrong. As myself said, there could be a logical explanation. I think it's best if your fiance, with or without you, asked the parents face-to-face, and expressed both of your concerns on the matter. It is possible the sister is faking the taking of her meds; if the parents don't know how to check properly, she could hide the meds in various ways. She could even regurgitate them.

The best thing to do is ask, and perhaps watch for other signs in the future, rather than call a service to step in. You should look for more evidence first.

I don't know about doctors for physical illness and seizures and such, but for persons on psych meds, at least in NJ, the doctors or maybe even the law, expects patients to get blood tested periodically, to make sure you're taking the right amount of meds and to see how they're being tolerated. If she's not getting enough medication, a doctor might take notice if this kind of testing is being done.