said it made him feel stupid.”
From there, it was trial and error as they tried one new medication after another. “Nothing seemed to be real effective for any length of time,” she said. “He always had side effects.”
The mood stabilizer Lithium, for example, which is used to treat manic symptoms caused by bipolar disorder, gave him irritable bowel syndrome. After trying it three different times, he finally had to stop taking it because it became toxic to his liver.
One night in April 1990, Cathy, Dan and John Jr. were walking home from dinner at the corner restaurant. John was acting hyper and skipping around them, as usual, when he decided it was time to propose to Cathy on Dan’s behalf.
“I think you like my mom and I really need a dad, so maybe you could marry my mom,” John suggested.
Two weeks later, Dan proposed for himself, and officially became John’s first positive father figure and role model. As a professional electrician, Dan took the twelve-year-old to work with him and began teaching him the trade as an apprentice, starting with gofer jobs such as crawling under the house to run wire, or picking up nails to clear a job site. Dan also became assistant coach for John’s sports teams and Dan grew into the real father that John felt he’d never had.
That June, John won a certificate of achievement for outstanding success at school as “Best Conversationalist,” which was a proud moment for the family.
After a brief stay in Redlands, Cathy, Dan and John Jr. moved to Running Springs in 1990. At a December 17 meeting between Cathy and school district officials, it was decided that John should continue to attend the Advocate School.
Parent reports wonderful change in John’s behavior with recent change in medication, a meeting report stated. To be successfully educated, John requires high structure with a strong counseling component.
John was bused to the private school until the local Rim of the World High School started its own program for severely emotionally disturbed children in 1991. John was one of the first five male students in the new program, which was held in a trailer on campus.
Now that Cathy and John Sr. lived miles apart in different counties, John Jr. didn’t see or have much contact with his father. Based on his parents’ divorce file, it’s unclear whose fault that really was.
Cathy had filed for divorce in December 1989, and in May 1990, John Sr. was ordered to pay seventy dollars a month in child support. He never paid a dime, however, claiming that he’d never seen the judgment ordering him to do so, and that Cathy said he didn’t have to—as long as he listed their son as a beneficiary on his life insurance policy.
John Sr. remarried Deanna on September 15, 1990, in Reno, Nevada, as his health problems and the couple’s financial difficulties continued to escalate. John Sr. was working part-time doing deliveries for Pizza Hut that year, earning only $483 a month. He was stopped at a train crossing when a car rear-ended his Datsun 280Z, which added neck pain to his slate of physical problems. These new injuries, coupled with his preexisting back problems, he said, prevented him from returning to work for Pizza Hut until 1994.
Describing himself in court papers in 1996 as “practically destitute,” he said he’d started his own home business assembling tachometers for a small company in Granada Hills, but he had made no more than $6,000 a year at it.
Nonetheless, Cathy wrote in response, he’d rarely tried to contact his son by mail, let alone see him, which, as John Jr. grew older, caused the teenager to question Cathy whether his father was financially supporting him. Cathy stated that her son had been remarking on the fact that his father hadn’t visited him, written him letters or called, let alone paid any child support. In her view, she wrote, John Jr. was trying to “measure his importance” to his father. Trying to persuade the judge to force John Sr. to pay $4,660 in back payments, she wrote, Our son, who is 17 years old, is learning about consequences and responsibilities. Therefore, it is now clear to me that if I do not pursue this, the messages that I give to my son are: 1) he is not that important 2) that responsibility is not that great of a commitment if you decide it’s too much or if the consequence is not that bad.
In response, John Sr. filed papers countering that Cathy had consistently prevented him from visiting his son. He claimed that he’d called countless times, asking to see John, and was told to leave a message. But even after leaving numerous messages, he never got a response.
John Sr. stated that Cathy stopped by his house with their son in August 1995, and when he asked the teenager why he’d never returned John Sr.’s “countless” calls, John Jr. said he’d never received any messages. John is 17 years old now and I believe that it is essential that John and I finally be given the opportunity to spend time together so that we can really get to know each other. John Sr. promised not to keep his son away from Cathy, as she had done to him, because he believed that the teenager would benefit most by spending time with both parents. Since John is so close to attaining legal age, I feel that it is imperative that the court now give us the opportunity to be together as I believe that this will help John’s self-esteem to know that both his parents love him and want to be with him.
John Jr. continued to live with his mother and Dan, hurt that his father didn’t try harder to see him. He began to refer to Dan as “an awesome dad,” and nicknamed John Sr. “the sperm donor.”
Chapter 10
In John Jr.’s early teens, his psychiatrist, Dr. Divyakant “Divy” Kikani, determined that his symptoms were more serious than just ADHD, citing traits of conduct disorder and the paranoia that John had shown since he was ten. Kikani, who saw John as a patient from ages fourteen to sixteen, began treating him for bipolar disorder.
By the time John was sixteen, some of his earlier depression had lifted, but he was still experiencing mood swings, as well as a certain level of mania and euphoria. Although he was easily distracted and could act impulsively, he seemed pretty consistently happy overall. Depending on what was going on in his life and how well his meds were working, he saw Kikani every two weeks or every six months.
In addition to the bipolar symptoms that John exhibited, other typical signs of the disorder include a high sex drive, which can go into overdrive during a manic state, delusions of grandeur and of superhuman powers or skills, false beliefs that can’t be dissuaded away and a tendency toward poor judgment.
At school, John also had regular sessions with a therapist. When John wasn’t progressing in individual counseling, the therapist asked Cathy if she and Dan would be willing to do family therapy. Dan wasn’t, so the therapist conducted joint sessions with Cathy and John, saying they’d made more progress there than in all the previous therapy put together. In these sessions, Cathy told her son that she felt uncomfortable when he cursed and acted out of control, and John told his mother that he felt hurt she was never satisfied with him and was always trying to improve him. He said he didn’t know what else to do but yell when he got angry, to which she countered that she hoped they could discuss what was wrong before it got to that point. John said that he’d tried, but she seemed to have no tolerance for his expressions of anger. Cathy replied that she would work on that if he would work on his anger.
After that, John started going for walks when he felt the feelings boiling up. These walks were even incorporated into his special ed program as a way to dissipate his frustration before he exploded in the classroom.
“His angry tone at home started decreasing, and he started making friends,”
