I was living in Pasadena, Texas when my oldest daughter, Jami, called me from Omaha, Nebraska to tell me that she thought she was going into labor. This was no joyous call. She was terrified and wanting desperately to stop the labor and I knew the horrifying truth about this pregnancy. She hadn't been able to stop doing drugs when she got pregnant like she'd told me she would and was now terrified of what might happen next. I had to put out of my mind the horror I felt at what had been done to my next grandchild in the womb and deal with getting her to do the right things now. She wanted me to come to Omaha right away but I didn't have the money and they didn't have enough money to fly me so her Air Force husband, Mikey, bought bus tickets for my boyfriend, Jeremy, and me to come ASAP. We left in a flurry with the allowed two suitcases each, not knowing that we wouldn't be able to get back and would never see any of the things we left behind.
Michelle Rose Manning was born March 4th, 2005 while we were on our way there. Mikey picked us up at the Greyhound station and took us straight to the hospital. We got there and found Jami looking exhausted but doing OK after delivering by C-section. We left Jami at the hospital and went to their home where I felt like I had just stepped into the twilight zone. Their house had always been cluttered but now it was down right filthy and we were haunted by the fact that there was no sign in the house that they were expecting a baby. No baby room, no crib or little clothes lay ready. Their other two daughters had vacant lost expressions that were only topped by Mikey's. I watched him carefully and he seemed to be in a far distant removed state of mind and it didn't take a genius to realize that he, too, had some kind of a drug problem going on. We talked about everything except bringing home a baby and went to bed.
The next day we were told that Michelle had to be moved to Methodist Children's hospital because she was having problems feeding and breathing. They told us they found a hole in her lungs that they were watching at Children's. The hospital Jami was at honored new parents with a romantic steak dinner together the night before discharge so Jeremy and I watched the girls, Lindsey,8, and Joey, 3, while they had their dinner.
The next day when Jami was released I thought for sure the first thing she would want to do was to go see little Michelle but she had other plans that floored me. We had taken their car and Ranger truck to pick up her and her belongings and as we were leaving Jami said she wanted Mikey and Jeremy to take the girls home and for me to ride home with her. Mikey gave her $70. and after we took off she said that we were headed for Council Bluffs and I had to hide my shock because I knew that was where she always went to get drugs. Sure enough, we went to a guys house where she bought $50. of crystal meth and then went home. She explained to me that Mikey knew all about her drug use and that he was fine with it and that he even bought it for her. The people she had bought the speed from had even mentioned something about how "cool" Mikey had become about everything. Then she told me that they had both been taking Oxycontin, synthetic heroin, that a doctor, Dr. Rosario, prescribed for her. She told me that I should see him, too, for my fibromyalgia and that he would write a prescription for whatever I wanted.
The next day we all went to see Michelle Rose and each got to hold her for a few moments and we left there and Jami and I went to see Dr. Rosario. I asked her if she had been taking the Oxycontin through her pregnancy and she said that Dr. Rosario hadn't said anything about her being pregnant being a problem.
I have never seen a doctor's office like Dr. Rosario's in my life. It was in a very nice building but when you got in his office it was set up with folding chairs that went in a circle all around the room. Sitting in those chairs were clearly junkies, every one of them. They would be called back for their turn and be back there for five minutes or less and come out with a prescription headed for the pharmacy. Dr. Rosario would be arrested on at least 14 counts of malpractice before the year was over and I was blamed for it by many but I'm afraid I can't take credit for it. I WAS investigating doing it but the FBI beat me to it.
We would sit in the kitchen and smoke cigarettes at their home because there was an air vent there to suck out some of the smoke and spent almost all of our time there. Jami told me there that Mikey was in the bathroom so much because he had been "cleaning up" and the withdrawals from oxi's caused diarrhea. She said she had no clue why they hadn't found drugs in Michelle already and taken her away. Every friend she had had lost their children for having a baby with Meth in their system but they had gotten away with it by some miracle.
That night Jami and Mikey took their Oxycontin and went to check into a hotel with a jacuzzi at one of the big casinos to celebrate, I'm not too sure what they were celebrating. The birth, getting away with the birth, or just getting a new prescription of Oxycontin. We stayed home and watched the girls which included delousing them because Lndsey had been sent home from school with lice for what she told me was the umpteenth time. I asked her if the house had been deloused during this time and she said no like I expected. Jeremy and I would discuss these things when we were alone together at night and try to figure out what if anything we could do.
It was all taken out of our hands the next morning when a sheriff called from Methodist Hospital and said that they were coming to the house and for Jami and Mikey to remain at home. Mikey called his commanding officer and he and a group of military people showed up with the police. Jami and Mikey had both just done some Oxycontin before the phone call so they were in a confused state of panic. Jami screamed "Oh God! I have a warrant! I'm going to Jail! Mikey, help me get together the things I will need in jail!"
They rushed to their room and started frantically searching for clothes and things for her. Jeremy had been cleaning their house every chance he got and he tried to do some more while we waited but it was just so hopeless to try to get it clean.
The police and the military came and they all sat in the living room with little Joey sitting with Jami and Mikey. Jeremy and I stood in the adjacent dining room watching and listening. Michelle had been tested and was found to have so much Meth in her system that she wouldn't even start going through withdrawals for two to three weeks. They explained that she would be held in protective custody for the time being and Jami and Mikey dully nodded, I guess deep down expecting this all along, and then the officer went on to say that they were taking Joey immediately and would be picking Lindsey up from school right after leaving the house. Mikey's mouth flew open and Jami cried out, "NO!" because they, and I admit we, hadn't even thought about them taking the other girls although in retrospect it is obvious they would.
In a normal world I would have had a chance to take custody of the children, but during the years that I had been trying to get Jami to get off of the drugs, I had threatened turning her into the Air Force and CPS so they had in retaliation done a thorough smear job on me telling everyone that I was mentally unstable, insane, and couldn't be trusted with anything I said or did. So I could do nothing but stand there and watch.
They had never bonded with the baby to come but had ignored her pregnancy to the extent that Jami hadn't seen a doctor during the nine months she was pregnant. I suppose that and their drugged condition was why they could dispassionately hear that they would lose Michelle but losing them all was a blow they hadn't thought of and now couldn't accept. There was wailing and screaming and crying in the house after the police left saying for them not to leave home and that they would be hearing from them soon.
Mikey threw himself on the mercy of the Air Force telling his commanding officer everything and was instructed to divorce Jami and place all of the blame on her and everything would be OK. I was stunned beyond belief that he wasn't even going to be discharged for drug abuse! And if sure worked out for him. He was never questioned about or tested for drug use by the State and the only thing he was charged with was child endangerment for the condition of their home which mysteriously got dropped along the way. He put Jami and us out of the house for good that night. We couldn't get back to Texas and of course Mikey's promise to at least take us to get our things if we came and had to stay was null and void. Jami left for Council Bluffs with the truck and would go through hopeless homelessness for the next several month. Jeremy and I moved in with my youngest daughter, Jess, in her boyfriend's home but Jami didn't want to go there and her drug use wouldn't have been accepted there any how and she knew it.
I and a lot of other judgmental people really criticized Jami for her actions after getting kicked out of the house. Everyone wanted to know, Why doesn't she give up the drugs NOW and fight for her children?? Does she love drugs more than she loves her children? It would be some time before I saw things from where she stood at the time. She watched from afar while Mikey got the children back including baby Michelle surrounded by his moneyed family all cosseting and consoling him for the terrible things that woman had done to his baby and children with her drug addiction wanting to scram at the injustice but holding her tongue so the children would at least be with one parent. I had told his parents in a fit of outrage at this that he had been addicted to Oxycontin for three years himself and that he was fully aware of Jami's drug use during her pregnancy even "scoring" some Dilada for her once. This was taken in with shock and then forgotten in the "we hate Jami" chorus. I, as I said, had been rendered powerless to help her or to fight the Mannings. Even though they lived in another state they were offered custody if Mikey couldn't take care of the children. I wasn't even allowed to call and find out how they were while the state had custody that first week. Jami was in pain that no one can fathom or judge. She knew of only one thing that killed the pain. Drugs. Even they didn't completely kill the pain. Nothing could. But they gave her a little relief. Enough that she didn't kill herself in total despair. They were pretty much the only friend she had. She lost what little she had left for them, too, which included the beat up truck she was granted in the divorce to follow. at truck was the only thing she was granted after five years of marriage. Jami went on a downward spiral that it is unbelievable that she survived it at all. She would call me crying from someone's dank basement who had taken her in off the street where there was no electricity and she sat there all night just crying. The only people Jami or Mikey had associated with over the last three years had been from the drug community from Council Bluffs and they were the only ones who took her in but nothing was ever stable. Fights and arguments break out and places get raided and a junkie like her is just constantly on the move looking for the next fix and the next place to sleep. She finally teamed up with a small time drug dealer named Kirk who fell in love with her and took care or her the best he could. He didn't have a home either but he had more options of where to stay at night since he supplied so many with their Meth. It wasn't a perfect solution for her but it was better that her out there alone. It didn't last long. Jami was arrested August first for changing a prescription written by Dr. Rosario only days before he himself was arrested. With Jami in jail, Mikey finalized the divorce getting sole custody of the children and giving Jami limited supervised visitation. She was to pay him child support, too, but couldn't at this time, obviously.
Jami served a year in jail without a single visit with her children although Mikey did accept her phone calls so she could talk to them. I also took her calls for that year and we grew closer than ever finally getting to know each other and developing a bond neither of us had ever thought possible again since before her drug use started at age 16.
Jami gained about sixty pounds during her year in jail and was horrified with herself when she was released last August. She had sworn to me that she wouldn't shoot up drugs again but wouldn't say that she wouldn't do drugs at all. She would try to say it and try to believe it but is just too honest to claim it with the urge still there. Jami shot her drugs up in he jugular vein of her neck giving herself the strongest "rush" you can get from doing them and every fiber in her craved this even after a year in jail.
I honestly think she started smoking Meth when she got out to lose the weight thinking that she could control it. She tried to find work that first month but was turned down almost everywhere, I believe because she still had the look of a drug addict, and she couldn't pass a background check needed for any kind of good job. Joining society would be a very hard thing to do. Meanwhile, Kirk and all her old friends were here to welcome her back to their world and, after being rejected too many times by the world the rest of us live in, she went back to where she was welcome.
During this time Mikey would bring the girls to see their mother once or twice a week meeting at my home. Baby Michelle seemed to know Jami was her mother right away and, even though she never really let me hold her for long, she would go to Jami willingly. It didn't take Mikey long to realize that Jami was doing drugs again. She couldn't handle them very well at first and would often be slurring and nodding out. I believe she was also doing them in big quantities, both meth and Oxycontin, but Oxycontin had become very hard to find now that Dr. Rosario was gone and doctors everywhere in the area were afraid of facing the same fate and cutting back on who they would give narcotics to. There was one doctor left in Council Bluffs who still prescribed them fairly ofter, Dr. Blair, who was nothing like Dr. Rosario in that he was also an excellent physician, but he lost his license six months after Jami got out. So heroin made a big comeback in the drug market in Council Bluffs and still is the most prevalent drug available after Meth.
August 20th Jami was diagnosed with CA MRSA, a staph infection in the skin that is extremely hard to treat and very contagious. Mikey was getting out of the Air Force and deciding what to do after discharge but when he heard of the MRSA he decided real fast that he was moving home to Minnesota with his parents. We said good bye to him and the girls in February 2007 and haven't seen them since.
AFTERMATH:
Jami is still with Kirk and they have been weaning themselves off of the heroin with a little help from me. They got their habit down to $12.50 a day each of heroin and, to celebrate and motivate them farther, I rented them a cheap apartment. They loved having their own home for the first time and talked excitedly about working to keep it. Kirk had been "scrapping" for money going through dumpsters at construction sites or wherever he saw precious metals had been thrown away and was able to make a surprising amount of money doing so. It was looking good for them until Kirk saw a non-magnetic steel sign at a car wash that he couldn't resist trying to steal and sell for scrap and he was caught and is now in Jail with a $10,000 bond. I am afraid for Jami now. She has been staying in Council Bluffs not wanting to be at their apartment alone and I know she is being offered drugs by many in sympathy for her man being in jail and by hopeful men thinking they might get something out of gratitude from her. The fear is like a rock in my gut as I hear from and see her less and less and her apartment sits there like a dream unfinished. I wish she would keep trying to get a job to save the apartment but she is telling herself that Kirk will be out in time to save the apartment and her. I'm not so sure of that. His lawyer isn't optimistic at all and is his only defense right now unless I can hire another attorney. Kirk had a bond hearing yesterday and his lawyer was out of the room the first time they called him up so they told him to go to the back of the line. When they were about to call him again his lawyer left the courtroom and I went after him but couldn't get to him so I returned to the court room and it was all over. The judge had asked another public defender in the room to plead Kirk's case, and the guy didn't know anything about the case and stuttered around a minute frantically trying to read Chuck Fagen's writing, so the judge just denied the bond. From this we see his attorney isn't going to exactly act in Kirk's best interest. When Fagen entered the room again he didn't even glance at the judge or us and just walked through and disappeared through a back door.
Kirk's only hope of getting out any time soon is if he is offered and agrees to "Drug Court" where he would have to be on supervised probation and be randomly drug tested throughout. In other words, he has to give up the drugs completely to get out. He says he can and is willing to even though the punishment for failing is to serve the maximum time allowed for his crime in prison without parole which would likely be at least five years. Mr. Fagen told me that 90% of those who fail do so because they have an addicted significant other. Jami says she is cleaning up, too, told me that yesterday was her last day to do drugs but she has been staying with an older man who sells morphine for the last two nights. She is cleaning his house and helping him do things he can't but it is hard to believe she is around morphine and not doing it. She herself told me that it would be harder for her to quit than for Kirk.
I'm praying.
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