A Brief Update

Sorry it has taken me so long to post an update on here. It was a very busy week and did not turn out as we expected it to. Mary is home from the hospital. We are far from being out of the woods, but at least the imminent crisis is over for the moment. The hospital did nothing to treat her medically, but we did have a really good "lightbulb moment" family meeting with the social worker there. It was really hard for her to be separated from us this time around and she cried every time we talked with her on the phone and every time we saw her. The separation anxiety kicked in big time and unfortunately I think that one of the things she learned through this experience is that "if I am a good girl, participate in group, and tell them that I am no longer wanting to kill myself, then they will let me go home." (We actually heard one of the counselors use almost those exact words to try and comfort her when she was crying!) We are trying really hard to focus on the positive things and remember that we are ambassadors in this dark place. It is hard though to not complain about what the hospital did or did not do while she was there. I realized that it is really hard for me to talk about it without being sarcastic and ugly. Sometimes it is going to be much easier for me to say nothing at all. After all, she thinks that it helped her, and in the end that is what really matters.

The lightbulb moment is a good and positive thing I can talk about, so here goes... We started the meeting talking about what a good summer Mary had. She was so stable and things went very well all things considered. When we started talking about what had changed and brought on all of this anxiety, depression, cycling, etc., I realized that school was the biggest trigger. Now I knew that before the meeting, but it hit me in a different way. I don't know if I can accurately describe it, but will try. For Mary, school has always been really hard. For the majority of the years that she has been in school, she has held it together all day long and when she would get home, she would have raging fits that would last for hours. That was her way of releasing the stress. People REALLY stress her out!!! Lots of noise really stresses her out! And school is full of people who are noisy. Now that she has had a time of stability to learn new coping skills, and she has matured enough to not be raging all the time, she is internalizing all of that anxiety and stress. It is building and building up inside of her until she feels like she is going to explode, thus the analogy she uses that her brain feels like a soda bottle that has been shaken up. She said that even when she is doing something that she really enjoys or has a particularly exciting day (at school or otherwise) she feels really stressed at the end of the day. She is a true introvert and the stress of being around crowds of people makes her physically, emotionally, and psychologically exhausted.

We have doctor appointments on Monday and Tuesday this week where we will be addressing the medication issues and start trying to figure out what we should do about school. There are many options out there. One option is to have her resume going to the local middle school for one or two classes and have the homebound services started for the other classes. That seemed to be working ok before the big crisis. If we go that route, we will need to work some time into her day at school for her to have some quiet, undisturbed, recharging time. Maybe listen to the lecture and then take her work to the counselor's office to finish it? If she can recognize when she is starting to feel the sensory overload and step back from it, that might make a huge difference.

Another option is to have her start going to class in the resource rooms. That is not the best option because she is probably above the level that many of those kids are at academically. But it would be a much smaller classroom environment which might be less stressful for her. And it might be good for her to be at the "top" of the class for a while to help her regain her confidence?

One other thing we are looking at is possibly putting her in a small private school. There are pros and cons to this idea. The smaller class size would be great and a Christian environment might be just what she needs to feel safer and more comfortable. On the down side, most of the small Christian schools around here probably would not have the staff training to deal with some of Mary's learning issues, nor would they necessarily be able to modify their curriculum to meet her needs. Another drawback to this option is of course funding it. Georgia has a special needs scholarship for kids who are in the public school but who would benefit from attending a smaller private school. We have passed the deadline to enroll in it for this year and if we pull her out, we lose the opportunity to get it next year. And changing schools mid-stream might be really hard for her.

Our last option would be to home school her. I know that many parents out there are successfully home schooling their bipolar children. I do not think that I would be one of those. I really feel that it might start out great, but when we got to something challenging or difficult, Mary would get frustrated with me for pushing her. I am not a great teacher and consistency is not always my strong point. I think that I would be too easily able to jump on the emotional bandwagon with her. I need to be able to be Mom and comfort her when she is frustrated, not add another thing for her to be frustrated with me about.

I am sure there are more options out there. These are just a few we are going to explore this week. If anyone has any other ideas, please feel free to let us know.

Well, it looks like my brief update has turned into a long update and there is still so much to say. I guess I will save it for another day...