Everyone meet Apollo. He’s Hillary Mae’s love, the light of her life, her daily serotonin booster. And while I do not feel I need to justify adding another animal to our zoo to the world, I’ve been granted permission to discuss what led us to Apollo in an effort to maybe give guidance to any other teenagers out there who are passengers on the Struggle Bus like Mae.
Sometimes God gives you a kid that doesn’t quite fit the mold of what society dictates. Sometimes that kid is an old soul, strong-willed, impulsive, who’d rather be immersed in books than in trends in a little bitty body. Sometimes, life moves you around enough and it’s never really quite an issue that your kid doesn’t act like her peers. Sometimes though life gets you settled down in one location for more than just a year or so, just in time to add hormones.
Sometimes that kid starts being short-fused and belligerent more often than not, but she always comes back around and apologizes. Sometimes that kid starts having missing assignments and complains about not being able to focus. Sometimes that kid asks to change up her ADHD meds because she feels like they’re not working any more. So you meet with regular doc, change things up, and continue forward, noticing minor differences but not being able to differentiate between what’s ADHD and what’s hormones.
Sometimes that kid’s dad goes on a work trip for a couple of months and it brings back deployment fear that no one expected, so she starts seeing a therapist who notes that she’s struggling with depression. So you make sure that she’s getting enough rest, eating well, exercising, doing self-care and meet with regular doc to add a depression medication and you think things are going better: kid reports feeling a little better, no complaints from teachers, still struggling with focus a bit but you wonder how much of that is baseline ADHD, hormones, and society’s desperate need to be distracted all of the time.
Sometimes you take that kid on a Spring Break adventure with her siblings to the ocean and you discover 20 minutes into the flight that she cannot handle the constant noise from that planes make and then while staying oceanside you discover that unless she’s toes in the water, she’s overwhelmed by the roaring of the waves as well. You also notice that the kid is sleeping a lot and generally unhappy, but you wonder how much of that is recovery from the overwhelmedness and growing teenager.
Sometimes a global pandemic strikes and that kid is forced to stay at home, do online school and you finally actually see how much she is struggling with focus, insomnia, anxiety, and depression. Sometimes the universe creates the perfect situation and her therapist can do a full neuropsychological and academic evaluation wherein you both learn her ADHD meds are not working at all, her depression is worse than imagined, anxiety is running amuck, a sensory issue is probably in play and she meets the criteria for a Bipolar Type 2 diagnosis.
Sometimes you bring on a well-recommended local psychiatrist to help manage medication changes. Sometimes the new psychiatrist does not take any insurance, but you are willing to pay out of pocket to get medication situated because kid is doing worse now. Sometimes the new psychiatrist only does video appointments, but kid and you are wiling to do whatever it takes to help her. Sometimes the new psychiatrist reads over records and immediately dismisses the potential Bipolar diagnosis much to the kid’s irritation. Sometimes the new psychiatrist wants to stop all ADHD meds and increase depression meds for two weeks, then add a new depression med and lower the old depression med for two weeks, then do genetic testing to see how her genes react to medications and/or produce mood altering chemicals, then stop old depression med completely and increase new depression med and add non-stimulant ADHD med for two weeks, and then 8 weeks later when the kid yells at her that nothing is working, the psychiatrist adds a mood stabilizer and kid’s shows a bit of improvement.
Sometimes though that bit of improvement isn’t enough for you though because the kid talks about death more often than not. Because the kid cries about how much she misses reading. Because the kid who wanted to go back to school all summer to be around other humans decided to do online school because she didn’t feel her meds were working enough. Because the kid who loved school is now no longer doing any school work and failing most of her classes. Because the kid who is strong and independent to a fault is losing her ability to function. Because the kid cries that she is beyond fixing, that she’ll be stuck like this forever.
Sometimes you sit down and decide that instead of waiting and hoping she doesn’t get any worse, you have to find a solution. Sometimes that leads you to Children’s Health in Dallas and to their Day Treatment Program for kids just like your kid: passengers on the Struggle Bus. So you pitch the idea to the kid’s psychologist who is 125% on board because she too sees kid losing ability to function and because the program is family-education orientated. And you pitch it to psychiatrist who also is on board but warns it’ll take months to get in. So you reach out to Children’s Intake Coordinator who is the most helpful human on the planet and she informs you of the responsibilities from not only the kid, from you, what your insurance will/won’t cover, how school factors into everything, and that kid can start in two weeks. So you then pitch it to kid who flips back and forth everyday between excited to finally feeling like she’s going to make progress and being terrified of discussing feelings with a group of peers.
Sometimes for 5 weeks you drive 1 hour each way, twice a day, in rush hour traffic to take kid to a life-saving Day Treatment program, wherein she learns she’s not stuck like this forever, she develops an effective coping plan for her anxiety, gets medication adjusted which allows her to function and laugh again, successfully communicates with her teachers/504 Counselor/Assistant Principal about school work and develops a return to in-person learning plan. She also learns that she is very self-aware for 15 years old, she enjoys working with med students that rotate through Children’s (a part of UT Southwestern Medical School) and asks to keep her psychiatric care with Children’s instead of local psychiatrist. She also remembers that she is incredibly strong and finds her courage again.
Sometimes, 3 days before kid is discharged from program, you have a friend who posts a picture of the cutest tiniest orange kitten that is looking for a home. So you ask kid’s team at Children’s what they think about getting her a kitten and they all agree it would be a positive force for her. And you beat down the cat-loathing husband until he finally caves.
And sometimes when you show the kid a picture of her new tiny kitten, she promptly names him Apollo because “he looks like all the light”.
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