'Process' is a Dirty Word

M2 and I visited the therapist last Wednesday.  We visited the psychiatrist today.  In both appointments, I got to hear the word 'process.'

I'm coming to really dislike the word... and all that it stands for.

Last week, we had a really productive appointment with the therapist, assuming that by the word 'productive' you understand that she got really sassy and announced point-blank that the only reason she hadn't bitten me during a rage is that she hadn't thought of it.

Alternatively, productive might mean that I now know how to properly put my child in a therapeutic hold instead of just trying to make do... for the record, I had been pretty darn close the way I'd been doing it already. I just needed to be told to stick a pillow against my sternum because apparently I'm not intelligent enough to figure that one out myself.  DUH, Sarah.

I also know what to do in case biting jumps to mind next time.

Oy and effing vey.

Either way, the therapist and I then discussed the whole process scope of what we've accomplished (anxiety seems to be under better control), what we want to accomplish, and what is even POSSIBLE to accomplish with a girl whose mood switches more often than Oklahoma weather... and that's saying a lot.  The long and short of the appointment was that we now have another mood gauge chart (since M2 systematically destroyed the first one during one during one of her moods) and we're trying to see what we can do to motivate the girl to try to help herself.  I'm on the fence as to how much it'll actually help, but the only thing we can do is persevere.

It's a bloody process.

Today we visited the psychiatrist, whom we hadn't seen since school began.  The visit didn't encompass so much in the way of treatment as the diagnostic side of things.  I'm trying to hold off on medication for as long as we can, until we can get as firm a diagnosis as possible.  Plus, the psychiatrist is extremely reluctant to make certain diagnoses - pediatric bipolar disorder being one of them.  I'm okay with that, too, but it means that I get to deal with more and more in the way of going through the diagnostic process.  When we first visited, the doctor was hesitant to diagnose anything other than anxiety (generalized and separation), which means we tried Lexapro, which ended in ULTIMATE FAIL.  Since then, he's watched and listened and tried to work out if there actually are any other diagnostic possibilities that fit her slew of symptoms other than bipolar disorder.  Two sessions ago, he admitted the possibility of a mood disorder, NOS.  Last time, he added depressive disorder to the list of probabilities.  Today, though, he admitted he's pretty darn close to giving up the ghost and said that he really can't figure out anything else other than bipolar disorder, NOS.

Heh.  Heheheheheheheheh.  I have triumphed over the processing process!

I didn't actually want to win that one, though.

Anyway, because M2 isn't consistently up or down for days and days on end (she'll have two or three good days, then two or three bad, then another one or two good and another one or two bad), we're still holding off on formal medication.  We're doubling her melatonin each evening, and M2 is going to keep a sleeping log, writing down the times she wakes up each night.  If she's not consistently sleeping at night, the doctor wants to add some clonidine or trazodone and see if that helps.  After that... well, after that we head to Lamictal, assuming she doesn't get extremely manic since Lamictal is primarily used for patients who tend toward the depressed side of things rather than the manic.  I wouldn't be surprised, though, if the doctor actually begins to recommend medication soon rather than agreeing we should hold off... he tends to agree with the 'kindling' theory that young people who have untreated bipolar tend to become more difficult to treat over time.  However, if she doesn't have bipolar, then maybe we could try another SSRI and see if she reacts as negatively as she did last time.

Mostly, it's all a crap shoot.

A process.

Sometimes even processing it takes too much effort. 

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Next time, a funnier post!

Oh... Wow...

I remember now what my son is like when he can concentrate. Oh, wow, it's been too long. Remember how I said I wasn't yelling and it was making me crazy to not yell? I didn't even *have* to yell to get his attention yesterday. Today... yes. But yesterday had a lot of the placebo effect going on.

Let me back up.

On Monday, M1 and I went to see his pediatrician to talk about putting him back on ADHD medication. She asked if we wanted to try the nonstimulant Intuniv, and I said, "Ahhhhh... no." I thought about it, but in the end, I'm about 99.9% sure that guanfacine ain't gonna cut the mustard, long-acting form or not. My son does better on caffeine, which means stimulants are helpful. Sleeping meds... not so much.

She gave us a prescription for Vyvanse. Since it was almost 5 p.m. when we got out of the doctor's office, I wanted to wait until Tuesday morning to pick up the medication, but M1 insisted that he wanted to start it right away. Since I hadn't been able to pick up his EpiPen yet, either, we headed over to the pharmacy and got the script filled.

Yesterday morning, M1 took 20 mg of Vyvanse. I won't say it was a miracle worker, but it certainly made the day a lot easier. Instead of having to take 45-minute breaks every 10-15 minutes, he was able to focus. School was over and done by 9:30 a.m. He had a science review project due on Thursday and finished it yesterday. He started work on a project we're doing that doesn't have to be done till next Friday. And I didn't have to yell. He wasn't bouncing off the walls, he was able to focus, and I didn't have to redirect him 1000 times during the day. Now, like I said, some of that had to do with placebo effect because he really wanted to be focused. And even in the science project, the last couple pages were definitely not of the same quality of the first few because of this attention slip. But I didn't have to yell. I didn't have to beg or cajole or spend half my day standing over him to see if we could get the bare basics finished.

Today he's bouncier. He's forgotten about the placebo effect, and while he's definitely calmer and more focused than he was last week (school still got done by 10 a.m.), he's still distractable. This makes more sense at the dose he's at. We'll spend two more days at the 20-mg dose and then double it to 40 mg. Given his size and previous history, the pediatrician suspects that 50 mg will be his therapeutic level. Vyvanse is a controlled substance and so we can't get refills and the doctor can't fax a prescription in, but we don't have to have a visit, either; I just have to call her and let her know what dose I think is going to work best, and she'll make sure the prescription is prepared for us to pick up.

As always, there's a chunk of me saying, "What took ya so long??" It's a guilt thing. When I see how calm he is... when I see how he's able to process SO much more information... when I see how he doesn't flip his lid when I say 'no' to something or catch him doing something he shouldn't be (which will also settle down as his impulse control is curbed)... it all adds up to mean that I think our household will be a much happier, calmer one this summer than it could be otherwise.

Usually it's the little things that get me through the day, but the big things feed the little things. This is a big change, but wow. Just wow. I'm looking forward to spending the rest of the school year with my son!

Support

Thank you to everyone for the words of help and support that you sent after I posted about putting M1 back on medication. They were very kind. I particularly liked the comparison to a child with insulin issues. That one struck me as having a lot of truthiness.

I can't believe I just typed that.

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We went to see the pediatrician today for M2's 6-year-old well-child visit. She had to have blood drawn for a couple of tests (cholesterol, thyroid, CBC), and she didn't even scream once! Have I mentioned I love our ped and her staff?? I love them. The phlebotomist is also the x-ray tech, so the children know and love and trust her, and the nurse has been there for several years now, too, so between me and those two ladies keeping the girl occupado, M2 didn't even know she'd been stuck till there was blood in the vials. It actually surprised her when she looked down and saw. She started to get all freaked out until the nurse asked if it was hurting and she thought about it.

"No..."

And by then, they were done.

Bwahahahaha....

The rest of the visit went equally well. M2 is humongous. She's healthy. The doctor and I agree on plans of attack for various issues, should they arise. And theoretically we don't have to go back till she's 8! I love our doc, but hey, co-pays eat ya alive.

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Initially I was annoyed that I hadn't been smart enough to plan ahead and get a babysitter for M1 while we went to the doctor visit, but in the end, I think I'm glad he came. The doctor definitely got to see him at his 'best.' OK, mostly that means he went a little bit bonkers. We happened to be placed in a room right behind the doctor's desk, and so he kept trying to jump out and scare her if I had stepped out for some reason, like to take M2 to use the restroom or accompany her to the blood draw. He kept trying to answer questions that had been directed at M2. He kept trying to mouth EVERYTHING. I swear he's currently worse than a toddler about that one. Seriously. He put a plastic car and a library book in his mouth in the span of five minutes. At one point, I asked him to step out of the room so that M2 could change back into her regular clothes, and when I opened the door to let him back in, I discovered he'd escaped... all the way to the discharge area at the far end of the building.

It's a small building, and I found him easily, chatting cheerily away to the reception staff, but still. Gak.

In the end, when we go back for that med appointment on the 18th, I don't think I'll have any problems proving my point, if I haven't done that already.

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Finally, and on a completely unrelated note, Tractor Supply Co. has baby rabbits.

*collective awwwwww*

G'night, y'all!

D.O.N.E.

I have reached a conclusion.

M1 is going back on ADHD meds as soon as we can get in to our ped's office and get the script.

On Wednesday, we had a 'regular' day of school planned. Most days this means we're done by about 10:30 a.m., 11 at the latest if we chase down random topics and take a few breaks between subjects. On Wednesday, school took till 1 p.m. and even then it was only because I poked and prodded him through the last hour. He's currently throwing an actual kicking, screaming, pounding-the-floor, crying, raging fit about SCIENCE, of all things (his very favorite subject and one he's been looking forward to all day) because I'm "being stubborn."

Yes, son, you still have to write down the results of the experiment. I'm not being unreasonable. Your tantrum, however, IS.

His swim teacher has been telling me for a month or so that he's stopped progressing due to a complete and utter lack of focus. His sleep pattern is better now that he's back on the melatonin, but for a while, he was staying up till 10:30 or later, waking in the middle of the night to mess with M2 or roam the house, then wanting to sleep all day. Proper sleep hasn't helped, though.

He's been off of medication since we brought him home from private school nearly two years ago. I've considered restarting it several times since then but have always talked myself out of it, telling myself that I could make changes in the way I deal with him to work on the issues at hand. It's come to the point now, though, where I *KNOW* I'm doing all I can do and it's far from being enough. His impulse control, focus, and problem-solving skills simply are not there. Caffeine helps, but it's only a short-term stimulant, and neither it nor I can last all day. We both wear out after a while.

I hate the idea of putting him back on medication - I really do. But I also want him to be able to function, and right now, he can't.

Being a mom means doing the stuff we don't want to do for the greater good... right?

And we're off...

Off the Lexapro, that is.

I had posted a few weeks ago that I wasn't sure the Lexapro was going to cut it.  (Read that post here.)  A couple of you advised me to stick it out and see if things stabilized.  I appreciated the thoughts and kept with it, but... well... things didn't get better.

Last Wednesday we had our med recheck.  She'd been completely hyperactive every single day since being on the medication, but since there were fewer fits, I figured I'd go with the lesser of two weevils and stick with the meds.  The doctor said that'd work and that if she was still hyper in a few more weeks and it was affecting her school performance, we could try to add a stimulant and see if her diagnostic combo was anxiety and ADHD.  I still didn't think it was, but again, that'd be better than bipolar, and I'm willing to chase all angles.

We went home from the doctor's office with that plan on paper, and M2 instantly proved that it was the WRONG PLAN.

Here's when you know your 5-year-old has gone off the deep end:  She is mildly irritated at you for telling her to quit bouncing on the furniture for the 500th time that day, and so she informs you - quite calmly - that she has a plan to kill you by burning the house down. 

Hm.

I saw no sense in overreacting, so we simply had a chat about it, and she never did show any remorse.  She didn't want the cats to die, but her brother and father were fair game.  Concerns about being taken care of?  None.  "I'll just get a new mom."  What if she's not as nice as I am?  "Oh, well, I'll kill her, too."

Disturbing much???

But we got past it and she seemed to forget about it.  She did inform her brother a couple days later that she wanted him to die because he was the "worst brother ever."  Thankfully M1 is about as reactive as I am to things like that, so he just figured them was fightin' words and lit into her like he does lately. 

Then yesterday her 'sister' appeared again.  The 'sister' has appeared a few times since we started taking the medication, but yesterday was the first time it occurred to me that she might be something more than simply an imaginary friend.  Last night M2 got out of bed and came into the living room - not an uncommon occurrence - and said, "Mom, why did you yell my name?"

The house had been silent.  The only noise had been my computer fan.  Even the TV was off. 

"I didn't call your name."

"Really?  I heard someone yell my name really loud."

"Really.  It wasn't me."

"Oh... well, it must have been my sister."

Oh, my.

At that point I'd hit my limit.  I e-mailed the pediatric psychiatrist and shared these tidbits with him as well as the fact that I'd talked to her kindergarten teacher who said that M2 had been almost impossible to keep in her chair and "quite distractable." 

I got an e-mail back at 7:34 a.m. with instructions to discontinue the medication and just follow her moods and see how they go.  I'd say we're back to square one, but that's not quite true.  If the sister disappears, we'll know for sure that SSRIs aren't helping!

Back to charting moods.  Wish me luck. :)

HELP!

I need help.  Lots of it.  I'm in the midst of a crisis with M2.  Not that this is anything new, of course, but here I am again.  The great Circle of Crises.  Pass the Mike's and the chocolate - time to dig back into the trenches.

My baby is growing up, which does contribute somewhat to the mental mess that I am this week.  She came home from school yesterday toting this:

I discovered this was loose about a week and a half ago.  I thought it had a month to go before it came out.  With M1, it would have taken that long because he wouldn't dare touch a loose tooth.  Even the dentist, last time we were in, commented on how loose his tooth was and proclaimed that he'd never seen a tooth that loose that didn't fall out on contact with any solid substance.  M2, on the other hand, is a different species.  I knew this, but I still couldn't have predicted the enthusiasm with which she attacked that tooth.  Within a week, I had narrowed it down to "it'll be out in a week or two," and by Tuesday afternoon, I told her violin teacher, "It'll be out by the end of the week."  So I wasn't entirely surprised when she came home Wednesday afternoon and told me she'd been bored during naptime and yanked the tooth and it bled a LOT and she got to go see Miss Gayla to get her necklace.

I suspect this boredom during naptime may be related to the purported vomit session during naptime today.  Nobody saw it, nobody smelled it, and she's as healthy as a horse, but she got out of naptime and got to go to the office again and people made a fuss over her.

I may be the only one who suspects this particular scheme, and I may be way out in left field with it, but she's not above it.

Which brings me to the real, honest-to-jeepers reason I need help.

We went and visited her psychiatrist last week.  After the whole rigamarole with The Scheduling Queen, I don't think they dared to move me again.  So we got in and the doctor gave us several options ranging from doing nothing to doping her up with lithium.  Since the doctor was still fairly well convinced it was anxiety, I decided to give that diagnosis a fair shot and try an SSRI.  I mean, honestly, if the diagnosis really WAS anxiety, that'd be lovely!  Much better than bipolar.  Easier to manage.  Something I have experience with and can work with.

He prescribed her 5 mg of Lexapro to be started last Saturday.  The main side effect we had to worry about was mania because in many children and adults with bipolar, SSRIs can actually cause manic episodes.  We headed out of town on Saturday with the girl trying out the new medication.  I don't know about Oz, but I was holding my breath and hoping against hope that she'd be a new child and settle.  She was overly excited on Saturday at the Science Museum and pool, but it was the first day on the med and she had been manic all week, so this wasn't anything out of the ordinary.  She wasn't bad on Sunday - a little silly, but nothing horrid.  My grandmother thought she was normal.  (Yet another reason I like that woman.)  Monday was a day off, and we did yard work.  Then she dismantled her room and bounced and bounced and bounced.  Tuesday she went back to school, had a violin lesson where she did tolerably well, came home and bounced and bounced and bounced.  But no tantrums.  I thought I was raising Tigger!  Yesterday, she thought about having a tantrum, but it didn't happen.  Still bouncy.

Today... *sigh* and we're back to square one.  Still bouncy, but throw sassy and kicky and shrieky and tantrum-y back into the mix. 

Now, I know the meds - IF they are going to work - wouldn't have had time to really kick in yet.  If there is an anxiety component to all of this - and I won't deny that there is probably some separation anxiety in there somewhere - the Lexapro won't really kick in for at least another week or two.  We do go back on the 22nd, assuming The Scheduling Queen doesn't get a bee in her bonnet again like I strongly suspect she might.

However, the doctor had said the side effects were likely to show up way before the effects of the medications.

The question now is, do I e-mail the doctor and tell him that the manic episodes are worsening?  Do I wait it out another week and see if it gets better?  Do I dare mention the new symptoms that are arising with this new week?  Do I dare continue trying to implement any sort of therapy?

Right now I'm trying to implement a feelings chart where she circles the faces of all the feelings she has to see how *she* interprets her feelings on a daily basis.  I've also got a sheet with a stoplight on it that would be a forerunner to therapy (stop, think about it, talk about it, calm down, then act).  But she used them for all of 45 minutes today.  She circled three different feelings in that time frame, used the stoplight as a manipulating tool to talk about random stuff (disjointed thought processes may be part of her mania), and then completely refused to use them as soon as she was truly good and mad.  I'm going to try to keep at those, I think, but I'm still not sure what else to do.

Any thoughts?

Cute as a button, especially with the gap in her teeth, but yeesh.  I'd love some advice on this one!

Rhyming, imagination, and being the squeaky wheel

M2 is sitting next to me right now, rhyming her little heart out and writing the words on her Doodle Board. She comes home with a "reading assignment" each week, and there are activities to do with it. She generally fights me about doing it (and yes, it can get ugly... VERY ugly), but even if she fights the reading part, she loves to rhyme. I should say that she doesn't have to do much reading; I do most of it. And they're nursery rhymes, not random passages or silly made-up stories, so for most kids, they'd be a lot of fun.

Anyway... she loves to rhyme, and when she's in the mood, I encourage it and invent extra activities just for her. I just got asked to read 'dog' and 'hog,' and now she's telling me she intends to write some "tricky" rhymes. Please pray that I can interpret the spelling, because if I can't, Santa Claus is in trouble.

You'd think that those would be unrelated subjects, spelling and handwriting and Santa Claus, but they're not. There's a very relevant correlation, I promise. M2 wrote her Christmas list to Santa already two weeks ago, and I'll be darned if it didn't come up in conversation on the way home from picking her up today. It started with the Tooth Fairy because M1 stated blandly, "I've seen the Tooth Fairy."

I don't mind telling you I had a small heart attack in the driver's seat because he wouldn't hesitate one nanosecond to blurt out, "It's Mom," and not think a thing of it even though M2 has yet to lose a single tooth and I don't want the fun to be ruined for her because she very much admires the letters that the Tooth Fairy sends to M1. So when M2 asked, "What does she look like?" I seriously held my breath.

Luckily, he was just trying to lord his own imagination over his sister, so the description that followed involved copious quantities of pink and glitter. M2's response was, "So next time you lose a tooth, can you catch her and keep her and I can see her?"

Pause.

"No, you can't catch her. She has a pink magic wand with glitter on the end and can escape."

"Well, I'm sure we could trap her with food. What does she eat?"

Another pause.

"Nobody knows because nobody's ever seen her eat."

"But then how does she stay alive? I bet she eats crackers. Maybe if we crumbled one up really tiny, she'd eat it and you could trap her for me."

Authority Boy was having his font of knowledge questioned, and that disturbed him.

"NO, M2. She'd just magic away with her wand, remember?!?"

"Well, I'll write her a letter and she'll just read it and come live with me. She can read my writing just like Santa Claus can. 'Cause Santa Claus CAN read my writing on my Christmas list, right, Mom?"

"Of course, dear... he uses the same magic for reading letters that he does for getting into the house without breaking things."

"SEE, M1?? The Tooth Fairy WILL live with me. So there."

Grunt. Arms cross. Indignant seat flop.

Thank heavens M1 let it drop at that point because I was on the verge of having an audible giggle meltdown. Both of them were so full of righteous indignity it was quite amusing. I love this innocence. Makes me wish I could just go back and be little with them again.

Unfortunately, I can't. I have to do things like deal with doctors and people in scheduling departments who are totally out to ruin my day.

We were supposed to go to the psychiatrist for M2 on Monday. This past Monday, the 23rd. But a couple weeks ago I got a phone call from The Scheduling Queen who is either permanently disgruntled or chronically unhappy, and we rescheduled for the 30th. Next Monday. I can deal with that. I understand things come up, and really, an extra week doesn't make all that much difference in the grand scheme of things.

However, today while M1 and I were browsing through Hobby Lobby, my cell phone buzzed in my purse. I answered.

It was The Scheduling Queen, and she wasn't making a reminder courtesy call. The doctor had taken on a new position at another clinic and would only be in their clinic two days a week starting 'soon,' and could we reschedule?

I politely reminded her that we'd already been rescheduled once, but she's not The Scheduling Queen for nothing. "Oh, I know, and I'm sorry, but his schedule's just been so up in the air lately that we're having to move a lot of people. It looks like the next appointment we have is on a Tuuuesssdaayyyy..."

There was a pause as she looked up the specific date and time.

"September 21."

MY turn to pause. SEPTEMBER 21?!?!?!?!? I finally realized I'd been quiet for quite a while and was supposed to say something. That is how conversations typically work, after all, but holy cow. Holy. Freaking. Cow. I was nearly in tears standing in the clearance aisle of Hobby Lobby, and M1 was giving me a very odd look. I accepted the appointment with less than my usual grace, The Scheduling Queen promised to call me if anything opened up earlier, and I hung up. Then I started shaking, and while that may have had something to do with the two cups of caramel macchiato-laced coffee I'd consumed that morning, I suspect it had a lot more to do with the fact that I was MAD. Angry. Seriously peeved. I do not like being yanked around, and that is precisely how I was feeling. I also knew darn good and well that M2 and I are going to have lots... and lots... of fights between now and then, and the current medication isn't doing much to curb those and I needed that to change and... deeeeeep breath.

Hug the boy. Smile. Feel better.

Of course, now the boy's really curious.

"Mom, why did you just hug me?"

"Because you make me happy, and I love you, and you're special."

He really does, and I do, and he is, and he'll never know how therapeutic that hug was. Off we went, finishing up shopping and going to his swimming lesson, hitting up Sam's for cat litter and pork chops, and finally heading home.

Then I e-mailed the doctor. I was polite and courteous and simply stated the facts of the situation and asked if he had medication recommendations for me to share with our pediatrician or whether he could get us in before the September 21st time slot. I expected it would be tomorrow before I heard anything, but I had a reply within five minutes! In our short back-and-forth correspondence over the next 15 minutes, he explained the situation, told me I wasn't an inconvenience (because even though I was angry and probably justified, I still hate any sort of confrontation, and yes, this counted), and told me he'd have someone call me.

The Scheduling Queen called less than 20 minutes later. An appointment magically opened up next Tuesday, August 31.

Whether it was the Tooth Fairy's wand that made the appointment appear or my own powers of persuasion or simply good luck, I'll never know. I don't think I care, either. I'm just glad we're getting in.

Back to rhyming. Rhyme/time/crime/slime. There. I feel better. :)

Girl update!

So sweet, isn't she?

Looks can be deceiving.

It had been a while since I'd said anything about how she's doing, so I thought I'd update, especially now that she's started...


KINDERGARTEN.

When did my baby get so big?? I do not remember authorizing this.

Anyway, that picture was from her first day of school, when she was so excited and ready to see her friends and find out who else new was going to be in her class. She sits right next to one best friend and was initially seated across from another (who now sits across the room... I suspect this had something to do with putting three girls next to each other, all of whom have Chatty Cathy tendencies). She likes her teacher, and she enjoys the activities and learning that she gets to do in class. She came home this afternoon and was SO proud to tell me what she had learned today.

In other words, she likes school. A lot.

Does this mean that getting her to school every day and home again every afternoon is easy?

No.

Haaayyyeelll no.

She did well for the first four days. Then on Wednesday, August 11, 2010, she got up, put her uniform on, and wandered into the kitchen so I could help her tuck her shirt in.

Then she promptly informed me she was NOT going to school.

*blink*

This was at 7:15 a.m. We leave the house around 7:40 to get to school and have time for her to get in and settled before the day officially begins at 8. You do the math. After a lot of finagling and coercion, I got some breakfast into her and even managed to get her to (sort of) brush her teeth. When she realized, though, that I truly intended to haul her crabby rear end to school, she declared WAR. She kicked. She screamed. She called me names. She hit. Mostly she tried to run back to her room to escape. I hauled her - all 56 protesting pounds of her - across the house to the back door. She got a few good kicks in while I put her shoes on her feet and double-knotted them to prevent her from removing them, and then I threatened with every weapon in my arsenal to get her into the car. She still tried to make a break for it across the back yard. She kicked the back of the passenger seat until she realized I wasn't going to stop and then just screamed for all she was worth. Poor M1 just covered his ears and tried to pretend he was elsewhere. We got to the school and I carried her in, fearing that she'd try to streak across the parking lot where other parents were dropping their kids off. I got into the classroom, and she refused to get down. I tried to calm her and had almost succeeded until she realized that - once again - I truly meant to leave her there, and then it all started up again. The teacher came and held her (remarking, "My, she does have quite a grip, doesn't she?" when we were trying to detach my daughter's fist from where it was embedded in my shirt), and I left. Apparently it took her a good 45 minutes to settle, though she didn't act out towards anyone there. She was allowed to calm down by herself. I am grateful for all of that. I kept waiting on the phone call.

Yeesh.

Since then, the fits have been back, off and on, sometimes in the morning and sometimes after school and often with little to no known provocation. Last night during one of these, she went to her room and audibly plotted my ultimate demise. She's quite creative.

I'm irritated at her psychiatrist because we were supposed to go back and see him on the 23rd, but he's going to be out of town that day so we had to push the appointment back a week. If her behavior continues, I'm going to e-mail him and see about getting in sooner. This is getting ridiculous, and I'm starting to feel like I'm walking on eggshells again. I don't know if we need to up the meds or change them, but something needs to be altered.

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Of course, even if she does have a two-hour-long fit, this means there are still another 12 or so waking hours in the day where she's happy and cheerful, and last weekend she reminded me, "Mom, when can I get my ears pierced again?"

I couldn't come up with any good reason not to do it, so off we went.




She'd had her ears pierced before, when she was about 3 and insisted that she wanted it done then. We had gone to Claire's, and they became horribly infected. We wound up having to remove the earrings altogether and let the holes heal.

This time, I vowed to do things right. We went to a tattoo parlor, where they were more than happy to welcome a 5-year-old customer who was adamant that she was ready to have her ears pierced - again. She chose hoops instead of studs, which made me glad because posts with backs can make it harder to clean, and she sat perfectly still through the whole procedure, which didn't take long at all. She's had them for less than a week, and already they're healing much better than they did last time.

Now she's giggling and zipping back and forth across the living room, playing with the animals and watching the dogs rumble with each other. She loves that Speed Bump has learned to play.

Boy update sometime this weekend! I can't forget about him! :)

A whirlwind day

M1 fell off his bike Sunday night. He crawled (no, actually crawled) into the house saying that his foot hurt and refused to walk on it for ages. He's prone to melodrama when it comes to wounds, so I told him if he couldn't walk on his foot, he wouldn't be allowed to go to the YMCA camp this week that he's been looking foward to all summer (that order has caused much parental guilt now). He hobbled around the rest of the evening and went to bed. He got up yesterday morning and told me that the pain was less (5/10 instead of 8/10), so I let him go to camp. He came home with a swollen foot, more pain, and a bruise coming up on the bottom of the foot. The pain was on the outer edge in a very specific spot. He was going to be devastated if I didn't send him to camp, but the mom in me had to take him to the doctor. I'd have taken him to urgent care except it's a bigger copay and he was already nervous about the x-rays.

This morning, then, I called the pediatrician's office and got told to bring him right in. The nurse practitioner who works with the pediatrician had an opening. I tossed the kids and breakfast into the car and hauled them in. X-rays were taken, and because the x-ray tech likes us, she always shows us the films once they're developed. It had been a long, long time since I'd seen an x-ray of M1's foot. When he was born, he had 12 toes - six per foot. (He also had 12 fingers but they weren't fully developed and were tied off just like the cord.) He had to have the two extra toes surgically removed because they would have hindered him developmentally and made shoes impossible to fit.

I digress.

Looking closely at two of the views, a chip fracture seemed pretty clearly visible to me, the tech, and the nurse in the room. The NP saw it as did another physician in the building. So while technically we have to wait for the official radiology report because foot fractures are notoriously hard to diagnose, we're treating it as a chip fracture.

That's the bad news. The good news is that because it's only a chip fracture and hasn't impacted any growth plates, he can walk on it as long as he's comfortable - no running - and so was able to go to camp! He took good care of his foot today, refusing to climb a rock wall or do running games. There's something to be said for the Independence of Aspergerdom. We elevated and iced it tonight, though he'll be at an away camp for the rest of the week. I worry, but I know he'll tell a counselor and have me called if it gets worse. We go back in three weeks to get it x-rayed again.

Anyway, so we left there, went back home, got his lunch and bag packed and hauled him to camp. M2 and I swung by her school and grabbed some clothes out of the uniform closet (yay free!!!) before going back home to finish off some chores and get lunch before...

We headed to her psychiatric appointment.

I like the guy. He's conservative when it comes to both diagnosing and medications. He didn't try to pressure M2 into talking but instead let her play with blocks almost the entire time and didn't react at all when she refused to look at him when he asked her to clean them up. That was good. Very good.

He said that the Intuniv that she's on right now is probably the safest med he can try since it's been studied in the short-acting form in kids as young as 3 and found to be safe (which I knew, but he didn't know I knew). It seems to make her sleepy and has cut WAY back on the tantrums at home already; the jury is still out on social situations. Anyway, he also refused to diagnose her with bipolar but said, "It's in my head..." for later. Her official diagnosis right now that he wrote down is: Generalized anxiety disorder, separation anxiety, rule out mood disorder/bipolar.

What does all that mean? Well, it means he doesn't think it's a sensory issue. She has a few but nothing major. Nothing worse than the rest of us! It means that he's not even considering bipolar medication right now, which is fine by me because of all the nasty side effects that come along with them, particularly in the weight arena. If we do decide that Intuniv isn't cutting the mustard, then he's going to try anxiety treatments first. We go back in a month, since school will be well and truly started by then and we should know how she reacts to all that. In the meantime, I'm going to see about getting M2 in with the psychologist that M1 has used in the past and who M2 knows and likes. Maybe we'll be able to get some help in dealing with the tantrums and figuring out triggers since I haven't been able to do that so far. And if we go through the anxiety treatments or her manic/depressive cycles escalate, then we can consider a mood disorder further. I have charts to fill out for mood changes over the next month to see how she's doing. I'm anal retentive enough to do it.

After all that, you'd think my day was over, right? I wish!!! I brought M2 home, and she had a blast the rest of the afternoon. She got permission to play with her gerbil in the bathtub because it can't escape. The cats kept following her into the bathroom, so I told her to shut the door. Which she did. And about that time I had a nap waylay me in the middle of a book and leave me stranded on the couch for 30 minutes. When I woke up, I realized that she hadn't come out of the bathroom at ALL during that time and that if I was going to pretend I was a good mom, I needed to find out what was going on in there.

It's never a good thing to contemplate.

She had the gerbil in the tub, as directed, and had lined the tub with Kleenex so as to collect the poop more easily when it was time to put him up. She had gotten into her drawer of "make-up" and hair clips and had pinned her hair in about six different places and decided to wear BLUE lipstick. I still maintain it was supposed to be eyeshadow, but it's fake make-up anyway, so I don't think it matters. Her lips were pretty much glowing blue. I put the gerbil back in his cage and she cleaned up the Kleenex mess, and then she wanted a dress to go with her hair and make-up, so I let her change into a dress.

Apparently just letting her have that half-hour in the bathroom caused this to be "the best day ever." When we got M1 from camp and brought him home to shower, elevate, ice, and eat pizza and salad in front of the TV with M2, she told him so. He said he'd had a great day at camp. More camp stories tomorrow while I'm pining for him since he'll be away for two nights with me basically unable to reach him. I know he won't miss me, but I'll miss him!

Guess I'll just have to keep busy. I'm sure M2 can find something for me to do.

BIG sigh of relief

I apologize that my posts haven't been up to snuff lately. I know at least a couple of you read my rant that I posted the other night before poster's remorse set in. Thankfully, that situation ended well for everyone and the appropriate words were said by all. I like when the drama dies a quick, painless death. I know that I've been rather obsessive lately about M2 and her situation, and I apologize that it's taken over the blog. I realized just how much it had taken over yesterday when I was canning more food (blackberry jam, peach preserves, peaches, and tomatoes) and didn't take one single photo. I hope to get a *real* garden post up by the end of the week. It won't be pretty, but it'll be something!

Back on M2, though, there is finally light at the end of the tunnel. She has started her medication and didn't have a single fit yesterday. Not one. I didn't even realize how much I had been (psychologically speaking) holding my breath and tiptoeing around hoping to avoid meltdowns that came anyway. I don't know if the lack of tantrum was due to medication or not, but not having to deal with a screaming child was lovely. Today she's at Grandma's, and she can generally hold it together around other people. She'll probably lose it when she gets back tomorrow, just detoxing, but not having her and M1 bickering all the time is mentally satisfying, too. Even he is breathing a sigh of relief. School starting back in up in a few weeks should be good for everyone.

I also got in touch with a pediatric psychiatrist who takes our insurance and set up an intake appointment for next Tuesday. So quickly! I am grateful. I know there will be pile upon pile of paperwork to fill out before then, but who cares?? My girl is going to get some help, and that's what matters.

I am doing much, much better. I am starting to really laugh again and think in terms of humor - I didn't know how much of that I'd been suppressing, too, but in addition to coming off of Stress Cliff above Meltdown Lake, I'm also coming out of a giant London-sized brain fog.

It's a good, good feeling. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

Ok, so I can't eat chicken. It's a headache/body itch/intolerance thing. And this post has nothing to do with chicken, really. It's all about the culmination of M2's psych appointment with the pediatrician today so I could get reassurance and hear from the lips of someone who sees A LOT of kids that I'm not making crap up and trying to make my girl into a crazy loon when she isn't.

Turns out...

*I'M* not crazy.

She is.

While diagnosis is a dirty word when it comes to bipolar, that's more than likely what the diagnosis will be, especially as she gets older. The doctor said that with our family history/genetics and the total combination of M2's symptoms, that is what the whole picture looks like. We're going to try the ADHD drug Intuniv with her, because the pediatrician said that she's had good luck with it in aggressive ADHD children who don't necessarily have huge attention issues and it may help regulate her moods, which would be a good thing because I don't want her going to kindergarten and beating up her teacher (who happens to be a nun... beating up nuns is generally frowned upon, methinks). Plus, who wants to put their 5-year-old girl on an SSRI or an atypical antipsychotic and deal with the side effects that go with that? Oh, and we're going to be calling the developmental pediatric place in town and making an official appointment with the psychiatrist there to get more of a real handle on medications if the Intuniv doesn't work; if it does, we'll just go in for therapy with the psychologist we've already used for M1.

So that's the plan and the whole shebang in a nutshell.

I'm going to go drink some wine, do some work, and crash. It's been a heckuva ride. Thanks for sticking it out with me.

Why I do what I do

Someone posted on a forum that I participate in that they were looking for reasons to continue homeschooling and asked others to please list the reasons that they homeschooled.

Of course, there were many people who have homeschooled from day 1 who have a long list of reasons that schools themselves are evil. I don't think they are, but my son doesn't 'fit' at a school very well, and I love having the opportunity to be able to homeschool. If it doesn't work out, he can always go back, and we'll work around his issues as they arise.

There were also people who had a good list of reasons such as flexible scheduling, saving money, etc. Very, very valid reasons to homeschool were included in these lists, and I'd copy and paste them here if it wouldn't turn this post into a novelette as opposed to a short story.

Very few people mentioned the reasons that I am homeschooling M1. They are out there, I'm sure, but either they have homeschooled from the beginning and never ran into the same issues I have or they just aren't as vocal because they are aware that folks like us are in the minority. Then again, kids like M1 are in the minority, too.

I have mentioned some of these reasons before, so just smack me if I start repeating myself too often. However, without further adieu, I present to you my reasons for homeschooling:

1. I refuse to have my son labeled.
He is a very smart kid and learns quickly, but he has some issues. I could have kept him at the private school he was at, but even there, the teachers and administration were at their wits' end as to how to handle him. He gets disruptive when he's bored. By homeschooling, I'm able to move to the next subject as soon as he finishes one. He loves this. He doesn't do timed tests well at all because he spends so much time worrying about how much time is left that he forgets about the test. Every time I would go in to have a conference with the teacher, she'd tell me that he scored X on a reading test but she actually knew he was at Y level. She also would occasionally send me notes or e-mails asking what to do about a new tic or problem he had developed, like I should be able to tell her how to 'fix' it. Teachers do talk about students like these, and in time, he would have been labeled the special kid. If I had sent him to a public school, or even if I'd continued at the private one, I'd probably have had to set up an IEP, especially regarding handwriting which, by the end of his kindergarten year, was still completely illegible. By bringing him home, I can work with him. I don't need to time anything as long as I can see that he is progressing. I don't have to worry about his tics because they're not bothering anyone. If he knocks over an entire case of blocks, nobody is going to call him clumsy. This brings me to point #2.

2. I refuse to let him be bullied.
He's big for his age, so he often wants to play with the older kids, but they usually reject him after a day or two as 'too weird' and move on. When he plays with kids his age, he can have a hard time toning down the roughness factor and sometimes winds up hurting someone, which he hates doing but can't always control. The girls in his class picked on him because he wasn't able to control himself during class, usually making noises or banging things, which is something that will get better with age but not at the same rate as his peers. He internalizes a lot of things as part of his issues, not realizing that an adult might be able to help, and so I'd often never hear about these incidents until months after they happened. Now that he's home, he loves not having to worry about what anyone is going to do to him or say to him.

3. I refuse to make him spend an entire day in a chair.
He is wiggly. He NEEDS to be able to get up and move. Some educators would argue with me and say that he NEEDS to be able to learn to sit still and work for long periods of time, but that's not true. Sure, if he intends to go to college, he'll have to be able to sit through a lecture and take notes and work, but that's still about 12 years away, and then, for all I know, he'll be training for a job in a field where he can be out working 95% of the time! Not to mention the fact that he can plan classes with large breaks in between. He doesn't need to achieve perfect behavior at the first-grade level, or the second, or the third. He can't do it without going crazy, and I love that I don't have to make him. He rejected a project I had planned for him yesterday because it involved sitting still. Instead, he took the pharaoh's crown that we'd made last week, decorated it, cut out a false beard, taped it to his chin, and pretended to be pharaoh. Not a teacher in the public or private school world could let their entire class just make a project as they pleased, being up and running around while they do it.

4. I don't like medicating him.

Last year, I medicated him. I felt I had to because not only was he considered disruptive in a school setting, he would explode when he got home. I figured out at some point during the year that his explosions were all due to the release of anxiety. I took him off the medication at the end of June, just to see how things would go, and as long as I keep his stress and anxiety level low, he acts like any other very active 6-year-old boy. It's only when he gets worked up that things start to go awry. Timeouts are still a perfect solution for him, especially if I can send him outside where he has lots of space to run off the energy. He was given 'hidey holes' in his kindergarten classroom, but they were small, and he still had to be quiet so that he wasn't disturbing the students who were still working. That doesn't fly for him.

5. I do not believe schools can teach exactly to how my child learns.

My son is very hands-on/visual, as I think most boys tend to be. Teachers, especially as the kids get older, have a hard time tailoring learning to kinesthetic learners. Homeschooling lets me teach the way he learns and, if he isn't getting a concept, I can stop, back up, or change the teaching strategy as needed.
It's very nice to have this opportunity.

Life - Stress =

It's summer vacation, and so M1 and M2 are both home full-time. We've been going crazy with all the activities that we've been doing - swimming, day trips, playdates, errands, etc. We've only had maybe 3 full days where we didn't go somewhere all of summer vacation so far. It's been less than a month, but still. Three is a very small number!

Last week, just because I'm sadistic and like to torture myself occasionally, I decided that M1 could come off of his ADHD meds for a few days. Initially it was because he's just getting scary-thin and I wanted to see if he'd start eating like the boy I *USED* to feed... you know, the one who ate more than me at every meal.

He has, by the way. Yesterday at Red Robin he ate an entire kids' pizza, his oranges, sucked down his freckled lemonade, AND ate a full helping of fries. It's doing my heart good to see his little face start to fill back out.

He also has been... well... NORMAL. It's been completely bizarre, but he's almost acting like a NORMAL 6-1/2-year-old. There has been only one day where he just about lost it and was acting like a complete and total dodo, and that was the day we had friends over here and so I spent the morning cleaning the house. Did you know cleaning the house can apparently stress out a 6-1/2-year-old boy? I do now.

Maybe I should never clean again.

Kidding, of course, but that has been the only horribly rough day we've had since he's been off his medication. We even went to a Blue Bell ice cream factory tour yesterday AND went to lunch at Red Robin afterwards, and when I told one of my friends he was unmedicated, she was totally blown away. He wasn't boucing off the seat at all.

Keep in mind that this is my kid who has been diagnosed with ADHD, PDD-NOS, and anxiety.

I think he just might actually not be ADHD. I think he's just a little Aspie, which means his problems are entirely social. This mix-up is pretty common, where a kid will be diagnosed with ADHD as a youngster and 'grow into' an Asperger's diagnoses as they age.

So I shall continued to keep the meds handy, but as long as I can keep the stress level low...

Here's to a medication-free boy!

What this blog is *really* for

OK, really I would love to say that this blog is for the admirable goal of watching my son grow and change through my wonderful homeschool efforts. However, I do think it's worth more than that. Sometimes I just might use it to dump everything on here and make you people suffer through my day - I'm such a great person like that. Vent, feel better. My modus operandi. Leave now if you're not in the mood for someone else's crappy day. I won't know, and I won't be offended!

M1 didn't have his meds today. We didn't forget - it was just that he only has enough pills to get us to Tuesday, and our appointment isn't until Wednesday after school, and there is no way I am sending him to school unmedicated. He'd probably be sent home by 9 a.m. I probably could have gotten the doctor to just call him in another month's worth (we can only get a prescription for one month at a time), but I really want to talk to her.

And, feeling somewhat insane, I figured it'd be a good idea to see how he was progressing without meds.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!

If I ever start thinking like that again, do smack me upside the head and remind me of this entry, please!

I also needed to run errands today - the ones I couldn't run on Thursday - which included going to Gardner's (I'd never been there), the Apple Tree (wanted to see what exactly they had), Sam's Club, and Reasor's.

The kids and I left the house about 9:30 after it took absolutely forever for M1 to get ready to go (DH was still sleeping). We hit Gardner's first. I can't say the kids were horrid there, just excited. I let the kids pick out two books each because children's books were BOGO, and then we found a couple of other books that I just 'had' to have. If we had totaled up everything, we should have paid about $40 to get out of there. But because the kids' books were BOGO, there was a discount on one of the books I picked out, and we hit a purchase amount that automatically gave us a discount, too, the grand total with tax was $23! I'm not a couponer, but I loved that. And the lady there told us that if you save your receipts and get $100 worth of pre-tax purchases, they'll give you $15 worth of merchandise free! I'm sure we'll be back. I'm such a nerd.

Then we hit Apple Tree, and that's when it started to get difficult. I wanted to see what they had and also get M1 a workbook to take to school, but when M1 got something, M2 started whining that she needed something, too. Whine whine whine. Whine. Whine some more. Did I mention she was whiny??? So we left.

Sam's parking lot was packed, so we skipped that and went straight to Reasor's as I was not in a mood to stand in lines. Now, I hate grocery shopping with both kids on a good day, but I'd have to say this was not a good day. M1 went completely bonkers. It started in the produce section when he and M2 started smacking each other. I separated them and kept moving. Then he went 100% OCD. He wouldn't step on the lines. He wouldn't step on the reflections of the lights on the tiles. He wouldn't quit doing either of those (I honestly don't think he could stop himself). It wasn't bad for a while, but then he quit paying attention to people around him and began running into people and wandering off because he was so far gone that he wasn't noticing that I'd turned a corner and kept going. When we finally made it to the checkout, I had to take M2 out of the cart. And the kids instantly got into a smacking fit! My jaw just about dropped. I felt like the biggest redneck!

I couldn't wait to get home.

The rest of the day was better since we were at home, at least until bedtime, when I discovered that M1 hadn't done his laundry on Friday and had stashed it in his closet and under his bed instead. He'll regret that by Tuesday when he's out of pants because I'm holding the laundry hostage for a week.

I'm so glad that the meds come back tomorrow! I can't wait to go to the psychologist on Monday and the pediatrician on Wednesday. At least I know for sure that the meds are doing wonderful, wonderful things for him!