Sweet Sixteen

Kitty saw this cake at the grocery store and decided she wanted one like it, except she wanted Elmo, for her 16th birthday party. Looking back I realize I probably should have looked at a picture of Elmo, but she was happy. Struggling to Stand already took me to task for all the red food coloring (it was even red velvet cake).

Kitty is constantly calling me to come pick her up from school. This recent episode has regressed her back to an anxious attachment and if she's not attached to my hip, she's afraid she's going to hurt herself or she just doesn't feel good. If I'm not right there and totally sympathetic and giving her her way in everything, then she feels unloved, and she starts ramping up. To top it off we're dealing with some birth mom issues too and the stupid bank can't seem to get an escrow issue really fixed so keep calling us to say the house is in foreclosure (it's their mistake, we've been walking through it with them for many months, they say they fixed it, then call again demanding payment - they returned the last two payments!) - which scares the heck out of Bear and Kitty.

Kitty's been on the Trazad*ne for a little over a month (for sleep issues, but it's also an anti-depressant which can trigger mania), but the psych hospital tripled it because she was so terrified about being there, that she couldn't sleep. They told us to drop it to doubled (100mg) when she came home. They also put her on Proz*c, despite my protestations, because they said she'd only been "going downhill" for the last few months and since she was suicidal and therefore "needed" to be on an anti-depressant, it would be "fine" because she'd been stable on the mood stabilizers (Trilept*l and Abil*fy) for years, and they would keep her from going manic.

I've been pushing for an anti-anxiety med for months because I felt Kitty needed to be rediagnosed with an Anxiety Disorder in addition to the bipolar, etc. I was pushing for Clonip*n, but they said that was only PRN (which I know is not true). They chose Proz*c because it addressed both anxiety and depression. The side-effect of daytime sleepiness didn't bother them. They just said switch her to taking the Proz*c at night. I finally put my foot down because she's NEVER had self-harming behaviors before and after less than a week on Proz*c she'd begun clawing herself and begging me to never leave her alone (so I could keep her from harming herself). Tuesday they switched her to Cel*xa and the self-harming urge has faded to the point she can mostly control it herself, but she still is suffering from anxiety (headaches, nausea, clinginess...). She's constantly calling me to come get her from school after only one class.

She hasn't been on it long enough to say it's making things worse though. Today I took her in to her pediatrician and discovered she's suffering from allergy congestion so bad she's almost completely clogged (so no feelings of nasal stuffiness because it's practically solid and she's used to it).

Monday I had taken her in and they finally cleared out the ear wax in her ears that had completely blocked one of her ears to the point she failed the hearing test on it last week (every doctor has mentioned she had a lot of wax, but no one did anything and apparently what I did was ineffective). Ironically being able to hear better has made her even more sensitive to noise, so she's even less tolerant of school than before - which I didn't think was possible.

Now I'm looking at the chronic stomach aches with a new eye. I'd always assumed they were from her chronic constipation, anxiety, or psychosomatic, but it could be nasal drainage, GIRD, or something else.

How do you know?!

Currently we got the school to agree to 1/2 days (alternating mornings and afternoons so she doesn't miss all the same classes), and got the pdoc to sign a note saying ALL absences are excused from April 1 (the day she got out of the psych hospital)! The school has been amazing, especially since she NEVER shows any signs of issues at school (except for almost daily visits to the nurse with headaches and stomach aches). It's been 2 years since she was last in a psych hospital and I almost wish we'd not been doing everything we could to keep her from escalating, since we're finally getting some cooperation and changes made.

The other children are still having trouble too.

Bob has managed to strain all the muscles on her ribcage from coughing so is constantly in major pain and 800mg of Motrin doesn't even touch the pain. Plus she's too young for muscle relaxants and allergic to codeine - so options like hydrocodone are out. To top it off, sometimes she just starts bawling for no real reason, and I'm really starting to worry about adolescent onset BP for her.

Bear is struggling with all the trauma triggered by watching his sister deal with the police and going to the psych hospital (reminds him of his not too distant past).

Ponito is just hitting adolescence and so is experimenting with talking back, lying, not doing chores (no one else is doing them right now either) and generally being belligerent as only a tween with mentally ill older sibs of trauma for examples can be. "I hate you." "I'm going to kill myself." "You don't love me..."

Most days I'm handling it, but days like today... well, lets just say my BP and PTSD were triggered and let it go at that. Luckily Hubby was able to come home and help. So it's 12:30am and I'm on my computer trying to decompress and hoping I don't have more stress dreams about being dressed like a hooker in highschool with scary old men hitting on me when I dropped my lunch tray, not being able to find my documents, and adopting a teenage girl (not one I already have. ANOTHER ONE) who thinks I did something to her mother, all while trying to clean up after a wild birthday party in which my youngest and his friends were all dressed up like authentic Samurai warriors... oh, and for some reason I have to take them all to the grocery store with me for a major shopping trip...