p11. When they’re fat, they’re well.

I think at the most life threatening time of Da’s short life she took 27 pills a day. She lived and she got fat.

That year she decided to stay in the hospital Christmas Day, because she thought they would really hand out the good gifts, I spent the holiday with those tears - the kind that sit behind your eyeballs ready to squirt on demand. It was also a time of the required open house parties and luncheons.

We were at one party and one of the sweetest older women I know, that happens to be married to an extremely successful man, took me aside and shared with me the stories of her daughter who is now in her thirties. I think Da was in the 9th grade during this hospital visit.

This confidant’s wisdom was great to hear, plus she gave me some of the best insight to the signs of mania and wellness that I have ever heard, “honey when they’re fat they’re well”.

During this very long 8-week hospital stay, she was started on an antipsychotic called Zyprexa. This drug has saved the life of many, but the side affects are chilling for social reasons with most people. I would say in the course of 6 weeks she gained 46 pounds and with the addition of the other medication she was a zombie.

I try and think of the medications she has tried and I can just list them in a row:
Excellent Drug Reference Site - At Health

Ritalin
Dexadrine
Adderall
Adderall XR
Concerta
Stratra
Lithium
Depokate
Trileptal
Zyprexa
Seroquel
Ambien
Trazadone
Prozac
Zoloft
Lexapro
Tegretol
Topamax
Glucopage


People wonder how a parent could give their child such medications, especially when they are younger, it’s funny they never ask this of a parent of a child with diabetes.

When we first put Da on Ritalin, it was shocking that her handwriting changed, that validated our decision. Normally a drug that is used to treat ADD/ADHD would not be given to a Bipolar child, since it could induce mania, but this one we had to do to get her through school with any chance.

I think to this day we are not even sure how these work or if they continue to work in some people. I know with our daughter we needed medication tune-ups often. I am sure it was dependent upon the doctor what combination she would take, but I also learned the parents have a bit TOO much input.

We finally hooked up with one doctor who wisely told me that he felt it was our relationship that I (as mother) would ask, and he (as doctor) would say no. It is incredibly hard to watch your child blow up like the girl who turned into a blueberry from the gum she chewed in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. The side effects of these medications can’t hurt the ones that live with the patient too. A sense of helplessness and frustration can drive the most logical of parents to call and say… “We’ve got to try something else”, you are lucky if you come across a Dr. Keith Foster who will tell you NO, not for a year.

Dr. Foster did get her straightened out that one year before he left our town, but I am sure she would have eventually required a medication change too. I must also mention the importance of the therapeutic treatment of bipolar disorder. Usually a social worker or psychologist does this, I will address this later.

The right meds are very important to the success of her daily life. The wrong meds are death to her daily life.

As bipolar kids become bipolar teenagers then bipolar young adults, their independence really starts to show. If the meds are working they’re feeling pretty good, and what the heck, they decide the meds aren’t necessary and they can be much thinner if they stop them. Now our young adult had to have a stash of Seroquel on hand, because remember she can’t sleep and this is the only thing that helps her.

Once they stop the prescription they can become pharmacist in their spare time, meaning they learn the art of self-medication. Life is very scary when your bipolar young adult becomes a pharmacist. Just think of how you felt when your kid decided to be a hair stylist? Now, through some death thoughts in with that and you’ll see what I mean.

Da replaced all her meds with, like her tattoo says…”ecstasy”. She was so addicted, her law troubles started and in less than one year she acquired 13 cavities and the need of two root canals form literally grinding the enamel off her teeth. She also was a dress size “O”.

Remember? When they’re fat, they’re well.

p10. Getting it right, getting it wrong.

When your first child is the one having problems, the world is certainly a different place. The old adage about the youngest and middle kids having more lenient parents is an understatement except when their older sibling has a serious health issue. When the issue is a disorder of the mental type, I think it blows the old adage to hell. You learn way too much about what they can do wrong, way to fast. You become a detective, doctor, cop and recently we are working on our law degrees.

With your first child, parents tend to place their hopes on getting it right for their kids. I sit back now and laugh at the younger parents discussing the merits of one preschool vs. another. I just give them my wisdom to use the one I did, because they take the kids out of the car and put them in. This was great, you didn’t have to park and put their coats on etc. Of course they may not have had a gifted program, but then we really didn’t expect left-brain kids. But we still wanted things to go right.

As things went wrong we started a mission to find the answers to questions that were so bizarre they were met with disbelief. The first psychologist we saw was when Da was three, it, as always, ended up in us needing marriage counseling. The issue is somehow never the kid. (Blame it on the baby swing.)

Discipline for a kid like Da was a huge challenge. I discovered that spanking was not an option since her behavior was so off the wall, it could really set us off to a point of no return, not a good controlled way for a parent to act. It’s really hard to live with a 3 year old who is 20.

Well the first psychologist didn’t get it right. The second was actually the first’s boss. Go to the top, right? Wrong. He tried to give us different ways of correcting her behavior which boiled down to bore her to death – well this would never happen. One day I put her in her room for timeout and came up to check that she was okay, only to find every toy in her room hanging from her dress ties. It was a wonderful puppet show. “How creative”, “what a bright child”, “she is so cute”, “wow she can sing and remember all the words” - well everyone thought we were wrong. Everything had to be right with this wiz kid, we were just the new parents who don’t have any idea of what we were doing. Wrong!

Her third psychologist started in the second grade. After 1 1/2 years she at least was right to send us to another doctor, because she felt Da was just out of her realm so we went with our fourth doctor, a psychiatrist. After a year, she was hospitalized for the first time. They wanted to get the diagnosis right; they had a huge team of evaluators. Our insurance would pay for the doctor from the hospital but wouldn’t cover the hospital so we had to pay out of pocket, for the huge team of evaluators to get it… you guessed it – wrong.

The problem being now, a wrong meant a bad prescription for the wrong medication. They felt she was depressed and started her on Prozac, a bipolar person on an antidepressant without close supervision for the onslaught of mania, is one of the worst things you can do. It can induce incredibly large swings of mania.

I summed up Prozac with Da in fifth grade in a few words… I used to say what a pain in the ass she was, but with Prozac, “she was a happy pain in the ass”.

We were right to go for medical help, they were wrong often. My husband was wrong to think his kid didn’t need medication, but he was/is right in the added attention he gave/gives her.

Right and wrong, is never black and white – it is always grey with a child who is experiencing a mental illness. It seems there are very few things that work the same for others. Your life and that of your family becomes a hit or miss.

Thank God we weren’t archers!

p9. Send up a flag and grab the poop kit.

I remember one of the first rashes Da broke out with. She looked like a mass of blotchy hives, which we later learned, was a reaction to penicillin.

This led me to think about a bunch of little things I might have forgotten about her when she was very young.

The other day I was speaking with another one of my daughters, for some reason we were discussing the psych/educational testing they did with Da when she was in the second or third grade. I started laughing so hard remembering when they asked her to draw a self-portrait. Now I know one thing they look for is small details, like the indication of a neck, but she had drawn two people in her self-portrait. Being the daughter of an artist, of course it was a wonderful drawing, but the therapist told me she said, “Da, this is you, but who is this?” well Da replied with total indignation that the lady did not know who the other person was… “It’s my date!” Send up a flag!

In addition to the destruction and lack of sleep she displayed daily, Da did some pretty strange things as a small child. One could say she was lost in Freud’s oral and anal stages. I believed she sucked her thumb way longer than most kids. But it was the other area that drove us crazy.

Some kids wet the bed longer than others, Da would continue to do this to the point when she was invited to a slumber party (although this be rarely), she just pulled out a diaper and say, “okay you guys can laugh if you want, but I have to wear this”. Her attitude has always been encouraging. In third grade she came home with a different uniform than the one she left with, I learned later in the day, she just sat at her desk and left a puddle. The teacher who we really liked told me she (the teacher) just stood there in shock. The next day I told her she could go to school and be hurt when the other kids laughed, but she really needed to think about how funny and surprising it kind of was, and it might be best to laugh right along with them. She handled it great.

It was the poop thing that made us nuts.

When she was in kindergarten we had the poop kit, this would be like what most people would have for their dogs – we had one for our daughter. She either pooped a lot or got a kick out of pooping in strange places. We would keep old baby wipe boxes in the rec room for small toys, and the first time I remember, we about died when we opened a box, and an old deposit had been made to the poop fairy. Yuck! She also must have loved entertaining the other neighborhood kids with her pooping expertise, because this is why we had the kit – what’s a mother to do? After she would leave her mark in a yard, and I would get the dreaded call from the parent in charge. Da would get the kit and we would go on scooper patrol. One would think a little humiliation would not be so emotionally harmful, but might get her to stop this most unacceptable behavior. Luckily I don’t remember this happening a ton of times, but once was enough.

This is a good example of how other parents think your parenting skills are lacking and need attention. I doubt they got the fact that she must have needed attention.

Young kids with bipolar disorder wear their friends out quickly.

I was once told that all the kids liked Da, they just didn’t know what to do with her, or how to keep up. She was a pretty lonely kid by her adult years; it must make it even that much harder. I know its heart breaking for a parent to see their child excluded; you want to make things so right.