This blog is my place to vent and share resources with other parents of children of trauma. I try to be open and honest about my feelings in order to help others know they are not alone. Therapeutic parenting of adopted teenagers with RAD and other severe mental illnesses and issues (plus "neurotypical" teens) , is not easy, and there are time when I say what I feel... at the moment. We're all human!

Monday, April 25, 2011

Another e-mail novel




I don't know what to do! Tonight Kitty had a major meltdown, but at least she kept everything to threats, with no actual physical harm (although she claims she scratched/gouged herself, but it didn't leave a mark because she "needs to sharpen her nails"). She didn't want me to have an excuse to call the police. Honestly I probably could have gotten her to take the Klon*pin to see if it would have made a difference, but I thought I'd left it in my car because we'd used it at school (and Hubby wasn't home so I couldn't leave her alone to go get it). Honestly I don't know how much more of this I can take. I know she's lying about not having suicidal thoughts. She slips and talks about them, but she's afraid we'll send her to a psych hospital if she admits to it.

Kitty has a school parent/teacher conference to "discuss options" on MONDAY, MAY 2ND at 9:15 AM. Including the week at the psych hospital, Kitty has been mostly out of school 4 weeks now. She started half days (2 out of 4 periods) almost 3 weeks ago. She has only made it through both periods once or twice. I don't think she's made it to a single math class yet (it's the last period of the day).

Tuesday she apparently had stomach flu (and threw up at the parent support group - sorry!). So I kept her out of school the next day. Bear had started throwing up too, so I took him to the doctor Wednesday night and he was diagnosed with Strep. So I assumed Kitty had it (she's highly prone to it) and kept her home from school Thursday. On Thursday, the doctor said she had a stomach virus, but not Strep. Friday was a holiday, no school and Kitty was in a great mood most of the day. Saturday, no school and Kitty was in a good mood most of the day.
We were foolishly starting to feel that we'd finally gotten Kitty stabilized again. That all the "evil" SSRI's were out of her system and now we could focus on getting rid of the anxiety that triggered her visit to the psych hospital in the first place.


On Sunday we started the Klon*pin and she went to Sunday School. She came home tired and nauseous all day. Tiredness is a side-effect of Klon*pin. Vomiting/nausea is not.



This reinforced my belief that Kitty's biggest (not only) problems are related to social interactions. Her world is so black and white that she can't handle other people's "naughty" acts, and high school teens are notorious for being "naughty." Kitty won't say anything to them though. She just internalizes it and brings it home. She's sooo empathetic that she absorbs the guilt she thinks they should have! I think what really started this downhill slide was when a boy she was attracted to was cutting and depressed. She stated it made her feel that way too. Monday, today, she took the Klon*pin in the morning and we had a quiet morning, and went shopping (for something for her). She was engaged and fine although she complained about some sore muscles. Another reason to believe a lot of her issues are school anxiety. I had told her to bring a lunch because we might not get back in time for her to eat lunch. About 11:30 she said she was hungry (she'd had some veggies for breakfast - she knows better. She's supposed to eat something with protein). I thought we'd have time for lunch with Grandma so I told her to go ahead and eat her lunch (peanut butter sandwich and some goldfish).

On the way to school we got stuck in a bad traffic jam and I realized we might not have time to stop by Grandma's for lunch after all. When I said her sandwich and crackers was going to have to be enough, she lost it (food is often a trauma trigger for her). She started crying and saying she wanted to die. That I hated her and she wasn't going to school. I called Grandma to ask her to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich ready for Kitty to take to school. Kitty continued to meltdown, because she didn't want another peanut butter sandwich. I mentioned a ham sandwich and Kitty perked up for a second, but then continued the meltdown.

We made it to Grandma's with a little more time than I'd expected. I gave Kitty a Klon*pin (making this her second of the day) and she ate a small lunch. She plodded into school. An hour later I got a call from the nurse's office. Kitty had vomited and wanted to go home. I let her rest in the nurse's office for 1/2 an hour, but she could not rally. I took her home.
I hadn't left the school, because I had spent the hour in my car talking to a charter school on the phone - they said it might work... next year, if she got in (waiting list), and could handle the fact that they mostly did everything in self-paced workbooks, and they were losing most of their special ed funding so there would be less special ed assistance next year than the little they offered this year (maybe 3 hours a week if she was lucky).... Another big problem with Kitty being plastered to my hip is I can't talk about her, her issues, or alternatives - especially ones she would hate, like psych hospitals and possible RTC.


She spent the rest of the day alternating between complaining of nausea and begging for food. She really does have emotional eating issues, and little ability to hear what her body is saying.

This means it has been a month since she has gone to math class (last period of the day). Science benchmark is Tuesday. I'm sending her but I doubt she'll make it through the whole thing, or that it will be very accurate if she does. Math TAKS is on Thursday. She's only a freshman so it's not the end of the world if she doesn't pass it. She apparently has had a packet to work on for at least a week, but never told me about it and never took it out of her backpack that I know of.

FYI, tonight's meltdown was because she clogged the toilet and rather than tell me about it, she locked the door to the bathroom from the inside which wasn't discovered until bedtime. When I got a little frustrated with her and asked her to next time please just tell me instead of locking the door, apparently I spoke to her in a "mean way" and then I "ignored her" (while I removed the doorknob and cleaned up the poo soaked bathroom.)
Not sure it's clear here. Kitty is not supposed to use our bathroom to poo (there are 3 other bathrooms in the house that don't have carpeted floors). She knew this was a "no no." She also knew the most I would do was correct her and have her help me with clean up (maybe not even that since it usually requires a snake to clean up, Daddy would normally do this, but I managed to get it unclogged myself). She was not inside the locked bathroom. She was wandering around the house acting as though she knew nothing about it.I finally got her to go to bed (1 1/2 hours after her bedtime) and stayed with her until she almost fell asleep (Hubby got home and I needed to talk to him).Mary
cell (###) ###-####




Founder: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PCT_ParentsofChildrenofTrauma/

There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.
~Walt Streightiff

PS. Didn't bother to send this to the school or pdoc, but apparently Bob spent 2 hours crying in the laundry room. When Bear discovered her, he told me and it took me quite awhile to get her to tell me that the reason she didn't want to talk to me was because she was upset that I hadn't noticed she was gone for 2 hours even though she'd "walked past me" while I was in the kitchen making dinner! I finally convinced her that she spends hours in her room and so of course I don't notice when she's not there.



She calmed down enough to tell me that she didn't have a reason for crying in the first place. She's just felt like this all day. *sigh* Getting harder and harder to deny the fact that she probably has adolescent onset bipolar. We don't have health insurance. Hubby makes too much money to get on Medicaid. This sucks!



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Hubby felt incredibly guilty that he was teaching scuba tonight so wasn't home for any of this. After Kitty fell asleep, we talked about the fact that we're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Contract work pays well and is the only reason we're mostly keeping up with our bills. If he gets a "real" job then we'll have health insurance, but he'll have to take a major pay cut. He was going to wait until I got a job and then I could pick up the slack, but I can't get a job until Kitty gets stable or we get Kitty into a program like the local partial day hospitalization program, which doesn't take Medicaid, so we'd have to pay for it with private insurance, which we don't have because I can't get a job because Kitty's not stable...



Did I mention last night I went to bed after 3am, so I'm doing all this on less than 4 hours of sleep? It's midnight now. I still have to take a bath because I smell like poo (although I did get smart and wear gloves this time).

2 comments:

Mothering4Money said...

Oh good gosh what a catch 22. Not having insurance just sucks. And getting insurance can be such a hassle if it's not attached to work. Preexisting conditions and a year wait and all that jazz, not to mention the price. We're paying a little over 1300.00 per month for ours right now and it kills me to pay that much but there is no way we can go without it. You are in my thoughts and I hope you are at least able to get some sleep tonight. Stay strong. xoxo

Last Mom said...

(((hug)))