Balancing Act

Life with a bipolar child can be a real balancing act. Sometimes it feels like we are walking on a high wire over shark infested waters, trying to juggle everything that life throws at us, and keep everyone on the high wire with us. I know that everyone feels that way about life at one time or another. It just seems particularly difficult to keep all the balls in the air without letting one fall to the sharks below right now.

We had a really good, but tough visit with the pdoc on Monday. None of us are really happy with the level of stability that Mary's current medications are providing. I was thinking a few days ago, that she is not terrible so if this is it, then that is okay. But we know that she can be better than this because we have seen it before. So that leads to some major medication changes, which always scares me! We are going up on the atypical antipsychotic medication. Good news on this is that we can switch to a different brand name that is extended release so we will hopefully see some of the negative side effects slowed down or eliminated. The bad news is that because it is not available in generic it is quite expensive. If we don't see real results in the way of side effects we will just switch back to the other generic brand, but we are hoping that it really does help with the side effects. We are also going to be tapering off of one of the mood stabilizers since it doesn't really seem to be working any more. There are other medications that we are switching out as well.

Another thing that we are all concerned about has to do with the side effects of the medication. Over the past 7 months, Mary has gained 25 pounds, her cholesterol is going up, and she is becoming at risk for developing diabetes if the weight gain does not slow down. Now, she has gone through a real growth spurt so part of that may well be a normal part of her age. But the elevated cholesterol is not good. And she is becoming self conscience of her weight. It is frustrating when you can't get any of your pants zipped. And it is getting expensive having to go out and replace her wardrobe every month. Now added to our list of things we need to do each and every day is alter our diet (which is not a huge thing as we don't eat lots of high fat foods anyway), and try to find some type of exercise that is fun and will get her up and moving more. She is not sedentary anyway, but we need to incorporate more movement and exercise in our daily routine. If we don't see the weight gain slow down or stop over the next month (HELLO-CHRISTMAS TIME???), then we will have to start looking at adding in yet another medication to balance out the weight gain.

All of these discussions led to the topic of school. WHAT DO WE DO???? She is so uncomfortable in her own skin right now, add in feeling so adamantly against middle school, you have a real mix for disaster. She just started back to school for a partial day yesterday. She was really nervous about what to tell all the kids who ask where she has been. We practiced some good answers that she is comfortable with and were appropriate to share with a group of kids so she would have a ready answer for anyone who asked. It is not that we are ashamed that she has been in the hospital or of why she has not been in school. But rather we want her to be sensitive to the fact that most kids don't know what to do with a friend wanting to kill themselves. She ended up doing really well and hopefully we are on the right path for now.

Unfortunately I got fussed at for introducing her to the idea of a small Christian school at this point in the process. I completely understand what the pdoc was getting at, and it was all things that I needed to hear, no matter how hard it was to sit there and listen to it. But the gravity of the situation has been weighing heavily on me. Mary's personality is such that she latches onto ideas that sound good to her and then she will accept no other alternative. She will campaign and beg and pray and plead until she gets what she wants. If she doesn't get what she wants, it sets her up to start cycling or worse start down the suicide road. Ultimately if we continue to let her control all of these situations with such a strong opinion we are setting her up to add a personality disorder to her list of diagnosis's. So how do we parent that??!!?? It makes me question everything that comes out of my mouth and every decision that we make. I guess I have to trust that my God is bigger than every mistake that I make and can redeem even my pitiful attempts at parenting this child He has given us.

So back to the question of school... we are still debating and praying about that. If we pull her out now, she wins (bad in the long term personality department) and we might be shooting ourselves in the foot financially since we would lose the opportunity to qualify for the special needs scholarship for next year and all the following years. If we leave her in, she is frustrated and miserable. How do we make the best decision for the immediate circumstances and not jeopardize her future success? How do we teach her to be part of the decision making process and be responsible for the decisions that are made without her input? She is not being demanding or ugly about her desire to go, but she is very belligerent about not going a full day to her current school. We still don't know if the Christian school will even take her. We have an appointment with the headmaster tomorrow. We have a list of questions from the pdoc and are planning to be very open and candid about our situation. And if we do decide that is the best place for her and she ends up hating it, where do we go from there?!? So many questions swirling around in my brain. This is only the very small tip of the iceberg. Again, I guess I need to remember Who my trust is in.

I am sorry that this post has gotten so very long. If you have labored through reading all of this, bravo for you. If nothing else, I am finding that writing everything out on here helps me process things more clearly.