Well, I haven't had time to finish my story line of Natasha's life but I need to document this weekend while it's still fresh in my mind. On Saturday I took my youngest daughter Katie to have a pulpotomy (root canal) at the dentist and as I sat there watching my seven year old tremble and sob while the dentist and hygienist bent over her like some hunchbacked mad scientists, I wondered if this would really be the worst part of our day.
After the dentist, Jason took care of Katie at home while I took Natasha to her counseling appointment, which as far as I could tell from the waiting room went fine. Then we were off to meet a new psychiatrist. A psychiatric nurse practitioner to be precise. We made it to the building with little difficulty and Natasha seemed calm enough. Happy even. I can tell that she is on her way out of this cycle. It happens slowly though, with several setbacks. I've learned to recognize the signs and they always follow the same pattern. We sat with the PNP for an hour and a half and she asked a million questions. I was eager to tell her everything I know but it is impossible to describe the details of 12 years in that amount of time. Mid way through the evaluation she said that it didn't really seem like it fit the bipolar description because we weren't really describing periods of depression that followed the extreme anger and rage. I thought about it for a moment and then she went on to describe what the depression can look and sound like. Natasha looked at me with frustration that we hadn't gotten our point across and I told the PNP that she used those exact phrases and behaviors during the later part of the cycle. See... the problem with all of this is that nobody has ever told me what depression can look like in a child and what mania can look like in a child. I describe what she goes through as a "bad time" from start to finish. I always thought mania was crazy, out of control hyper, laughing, happy and delusional. All of these thing Natasha experiences but not in a "too happy" type way or for weeks at a time without stop. She usually starts off wild and angry and crazy and then it turns into "help me!" But.. both are loud and in your face kind of behavior. I assumed depression was laying in bed quietly, not wanting to get up, not wanting to talk. I guess this is why it's taken so long to figure this out. According to the lovely lady we were talking to, depression is not marked by how quiet someone is, it's the phrases they use (i.e. "what's the point in me being alive, I'll never be happy) and behaviors they show no matter how quietly or earshatteringly they are expressed.
So... we walked away from the appointment feeling more sure than ever that this is exactly what she has. At the end of the appointment the PNP seemed to feel the same way. I just feel so mad at myself that I didn't take the time before to document each day! I could have done so much good for my daughter if I had taken the time to keep a journal of some sort. *sigh* I guess that's why it takes an average of ten years to diagnose bipolar disorder in kids. We have another appointment in two weeks only because next weekend we'll be out of town on vacation. She told us that there are a couple choices for medication but mood stabilizers aren't approved for use in kids so it's a touch and go situation and you have to go very slowly. I still haven't told her other psychiatrist that we were going to get a second opinion so now I have to get everyone on the same page.
Anyway, when we got home she seemed ok for an hour or so and then went into a massive rage because we told her that she couldn't go to her grandma's house for the day. She did her usual thing, throwing the world's biggest temper tantrum in the doorway of the kitchen, trapping us all with her and her wild shrieking. I finally had to lift her up from behind by her elbows and take her to her room. She grabs onto door jambs and anything she can to prevent us from removing her from the room and since she weighs over 120lbs now, that task of moving her in itself is mighty. Then I had to stand and hold her doorknob while she tried to rip it open, screaming all the while for me to let her out. I described it once to my mother-in-law as a house cat or a tiger. When she's a cat we can deal with her like a cat, talking to her, hugging her, disciplining her when needed by a stern tone and perhaps taking away her favorite feather toy if she's acting up. And when she does act up, it's typical bad cat behavior. But when she's a tiger we can't talk, we certainly can't touch and a stern tone or removal of toy only serves to anger her more. And bad tiger behavior is really really scary. We have to put her in a safe place and cage her there until she's a cat again. We used to have a lock on her door but now her whole doorjamb is shattered. (By me when I was trying to give her her pills and she was running through the house screaming, ran into her room and slammed to door. I opened it with my foot since my hands were full. Unfortunate choice) Now we can't lock her door or even keep it shut, so my husband came down the hall and we opened her door and stood there looking at the doorjamb to see if he could fix it. She became so enraged that we were standing there together in her space that she began throwing things in our direction like she was a pitcher for the Yankees. Large, heavy things mind you.
This went on for a couple minutes and then she started wailing and scratching at her arms with her fingernails and telling her dad that he was a f$#&ing dumb*$# and to get out of her room.
(Now, to those of you who haven't lived with our daugher, I'm sure this sounds like an easy enough fix. Just walk out and let her vent her anger right? Well, that does NOT work. We've told her that her room is her safe place to explode and if she feels that anger building up she can go in her room and scream or throw things or whatever she needs to do. She won't. Each time she throws a "fit" we tell her to go to her room and that just pushes her even further into fight mode. She will literally follow us around the house doing and saying anything she can to get a reaction. We have spent countless hours of our lives trying the ignore it, do not engage technique and it just ends up lasting much, much longer and ruining everyone's day. Her persistence is so intense, I don't know how many times I've said that if she could channel that fixation into something positive, she could rule the world one day. So for those who don't know us, I know some of the things I put on here may seem like an obvious fix but those fixes have best tested, tried and failed miserably. And not just tested for a week or so, I mean tested long enough for a child to adjust to it as a fact of life.)
Back to the point, my husband has never had much control over his temper and I was amazed at his restraint. She kept it up and he stepped farther into her room and told her that he was going to take her ipod away for one day for each swear word she said. She kept it up and then got on her bed and started throwing things across the room at her wall, making dents in the drywall. He said something about her wall in a semi-calm tone and then she said, "You did that you idiot!" He looked at her and I swear, I literally saw him snap. He picked up a stool from her floor and said, "No.. I didn't do that, I did this!" and shattered the stool against the wall. He proceeded to do it a couple more times and then turned to walk out of her room.
I was unsure of what to do because now I had a tiger in a room with another tiger and I was afraid one of them was going to kill the other. I went to get the phone to call the police because I can never calm either of these creatures down on my own and I heard Jason say, "See? I can be an idiot and break stuff too. You like how that sounds when I break stuff?!?" She screamed back at him that that's how it was going to sound when his head bounced off her wood floor. I got back to the doorway just in time to see him pick up the leg of the stool and smash it into the top of her karaoke machine, breaking the cd lid off. I stood there holding the phone as he stormed out and downstairs to the garage to cool off. Natasha slammed her door shut and a moment later I heard a crashing sound.
I opened the door and she was sitting on her bed looking at me like she dared me to say a word. I looked around her room to see what could have made that sound and then realized that the karaoke machine was gone. Turns out she had thrown it out her window (thankfully opening the window first). Her bedroom is on the second floor and I looked down at the mess below, thinking in that brief second of quiet how sad it was to see her birthday present shattered in the gravel below like a suicidal robot, it's gut wires hanging out of it's belly. Then tiger dad returned, screaming at her to go pick that mess up and throw it away. She loudly and rudely refused and I proceeded with my 911 call. Things seemed to settle down while we waited for the police to arrive. Natasha swearing to herself in her room that of course I didn't really call the police and what a f#&%&ing idiot I was. Jason retreated to somewhere downstairs in the bowels of the house, probably wondering how this spectacular episode was going to end. There was over two hours between the time the police were called and the time they arrived. Evidently naughty 12 year olds swearing and breaking things are not a high priority to the cops. Go figure.
By the time they arrived Jason had fallen asleep watching t.v. in the family room and while Natasha was still mouthing off, she was doing it in a much more acceptable fashion. No screaming or swearing, just following me around the house and telling me what an idiot and a liar I was and the cops weren't really coming. (I was beginning to wonder myself!) The deputy was very nice and understanding as I talked to her outside first alone. She came in and was wonderfully kind to Natasha, telling her that it sounded like she'd had a big day and that could certainly be overwhelming to spend so much time in counseling etc. She asked her how she felt when she got home and Natasha said she felt relieved and happy because it finally felt like something made sense for the way she's felt her whole life. Then the deputy kindly explained to her that this was going to be a long road ahead but she needed to understand that just because we found a reason she gets so mad, she can't act out against her family like that or she was going to end up in handcuffs. She told Natasha that her bosses boss made the rules that if there is someone hurting someone whether it's a stranger or a family member, they have to take the person who's doing the hurting to jail and they don't have any other options. She wished us good luck and left.
The whole time she was there my lovely daughter was agreeable and attentive to what she was being told. Then about 5 minutes after the deputy left she sat on the kitchen floor and started up again about how I was such an idiot for calling the cops on her because she got mad. My heart sank as I watched Jason come up the stairs, fresh from a nap, to find his child still in mouth-off mode on the floor. He said something about her ipod and told me how I was foolish for bothering the cops with a kid who is just a rude obnoxious little brat. She told him to go ahead and keep her ipod, break it even, she didn't care. He said, "Fine, I will." and she gave him a particularly nasty look and said "Yeah right. Just like you told me last time you were going to break it and you lied about that, dummy." He picked it up and walked into the living room where he proceeded to throw it as hard as he could against the rock fireplace over and over until it shattered. The rest of the evening went on with her calming down and talking to me in a normal tone and then she started sobbing all of a sudden, grieving over her broken stuff.
Her ipod is, was the one thing that seemed to bring her joy and take her mind off things. My mom had been buying her an app or video for every three days that she took her pills without trouble and as she lay on the floor in tears, she asked me what could she ever have that won't get taken away. I, of course, didn't have an answer for her. It seems to be the trend lately, I'm more and more often faced with days when I don't have a clue what to think, do or say. The rest of the night was spent in an anxious semi-panic mode where she was terrified of what she could imagine as dark shadows and didn't want to be alone or go to bed. She finally fell asleep and so did the rest of us.
Sunday was a mixed state of smiles, laughter and anxiety about going to school the next day. I told her that she had taken the last two weeks off from school and if she refused to go this week, she wouldn't go on vacation with us on Friday. She could tell I was serious and became highly agitated that she had to make such a choice. She told me I obviously didn't know anything about her because she was NOT starting to feel better like I had said and now she was going to miss out on our family vacation. (Although why anyone in their right mind would want to go on vacation with us is far beyond me!) She calmed down after a time though and most of the day was fine for her. Her dad and I fought like crazy all day. He has decided he hates me because I think he goes too far and I hate him because I can't hate my child. The usual Sunday-after-Apocalypse behavior. We finally settled everyone down and went to bed only sort of angry.
Natasha woke up this morning, made herself breakfast, took her pills and went off to school with zero problem. It's like I live in an alien world. Nothing makes sense to me. She can be so off one day and then be so fine the next like nothing ever happened. Meanwhile, I have an ulcer, alternate between loving my husband more every day and thinking divorce is the answer and feel like my brain is slowly shrinking and one day I will awake only to realize I am paralyzed and live the rest of my life staring into the distance, drooling as the fighting continues in the background.
So... that sums up the weekend.
After the dentist, Jason took care of Katie at home while I took Natasha to her counseling appointment, which as far as I could tell from the waiting room went fine. Then we were off to meet a new psychiatrist. A psychiatric nurse practitioner to be precise. We made it to the building with little difficulty and Natasha seemed calm enough. Happy even. I can tell that she is on her way out of this cycle. It happens slowly though, with several setbacks. I've learned to recognize the signs and they always follow the same pattern. We sat with the PNP for an hour and a half and she asked a million questions. I was eager to tell her everything I know but it is impossible to describe the details of 12 years in that amount of time. Mid way through the evaluation she said that it didn't really seem like it fit the bipolar description because we weren't really describing periods of depression that followed the extreme anger and rage. I thought about it for a moment and then she went on to describe what the depression can look and sound like. Natasha looked at me with frustration that we hadn't gotten our point across and I told the PNP that she used those exact phrases and behaviors during the later part of the cycle. See... the problem with all of this is that nobody has ever told me what depression can look like in a child and what mania can look like in a child. I describe what she goes through as a "bad time" from start to finish. I always thought mania was crazy, out of control hyper, laughing, happy and delusional. All of these thing Natasha experiences but not in a "too happy" type way or for weeks at a time without stop. She usually starts off wild and angry and crazy and then it turns into "help me!" But.. both are loud and in your face kind of behavior. I assumed depression was laying in bed quietly, not wanting to get up, not wanting to talk. I guess this is why it's taken so long to figure this out. According to the lovely lady we were talking to, depression is not marked by how quiet someone is, it's the phrases they use (i.e. "what's the point in me being alive, I'll never be happy) and behaviors they show no matter how quietly or earshatteringly they are expressed.
So... we walked away from the appointment feeling more sure than ever that this is exactly what she has. At the end of the appointment the PNP seemed to feel the same way. I just feel so mad at myself that I didn't take the time before to document each day! I could have done so much good for my daughter if I had taken the time to keep a journal of some sort. *sigh* I guess that's why it takes an average of ten years to diagnose bipolar disorder in kids. We have another appointment in two weeks only because next weekend we'll be out of town on vacation. She told us that there are a couple choices for medication but mood stabilizers aren't approved for use in kids so it's a touch and go situation and you have to go very slowly. I still haven't told her other psychiatrist that we were going to get a second opinion so now I have to get everyone on the same page.
Anyway, when we got home she seemed ok for an hour or so and then went into a massive rage because we told her that she couldn't go to her grandma's house for the day. She did her usual thing, throwing the world's biggest temper tantrum in the doorway of the kitchen, trapping us all with her and her wild shrieking. I finally had to lift her up from behind by her elbows and take her to her room. She grabs onto door jambs and anything she can to prevent us from removing her from the room and since she weighs over 120lbs now, that task of moving her in itself is mighty. Then I had to stand and hold her doorknob while she tried to rip it open, screaming all the while for me to let her out. I described it once to my mother-in-law as a house cat or a tiger. When she's a cat we can deal with her like a cat, talking to her, hugging her, disciplining her when needed by a stern tone and perhaps taking away her favorite feather toy if she's acting up. And when she does act up, it's typical bad cat behavior. But when she's a tiger we can't talk, we certainly can't touch and a stern tone or removal of toy only serves to anger her more. And bad tiger behavior is really really scary. We have to put her in a safe place and cage her there until she's a cat again. We used to have a lock on her door but now her whole doorjamb is shattered. (By me when I was trying to give her her pills and she was running through the house screaming, ran into her room and slammed to door. I opened it with my foot since my hands were full. Unfortunate choice) Now we can't lock her door or even keep it shut, so my husband came down the hall and we opened her door and stood there looking at the doorjamb to see if he could fix it. She became so enraged that we were standing there together in her space that she began throwing things in our direction like she was a pitcher for the Yankees. Large, heavy things mind you.
This went on for a couple minutes and then she started wailing and scratching at her arms with her fingernails and telling her dad that he was a f$#&ing dumb*$# and to get out of her room.
(Now, to those of you who haven't lived with our daugher, I'm sure this sounds like an easy enough fix. Just walk out and let her vent her anger right? Well, that does NOT work. We've told her that her room is her safe place to explode and if she feels that anger building up she can go in her room and scream or throw things or whatever she needs to do. She won't. Each time she throws a "fit" we tell her to go to her room and that just pushes her even further into fight mode. She will literally follow us around the house doing and saying anything she can to get a reaction. We have spent countless hours of our lives trying the ignore it, do not engage technique and it just ends up lasting much, much longer and ruining everyone's day. Her persistence is so intense, I don't know how many times I've said that if she could channel that fixation into something positive, she could rule the world one day. So for those who don't know us, I know some of the things I put on here may seem like an obvious fix but those fixes have best tested, tried and failed miserably. And not just tested for a week or so, I mean tested long enough for a child to adjust to it as a fact of life.)
Back to the point, my husband has never had much control over his temper and I was amazed at his restraint. She kept it up and he stepped farther into her room and told her that he was going to take her ipod away for one day for each swear word she said. She kept it up and then got on her bed and started throwing things across the room at her wall, making dents in the drywall. He said something about her wall in a semi-calm tone and then she said, "You did that you idiot!" He looked at her and I swear, I literally saw him snap. He picked up a stool from her floor and said, "No.. I didn't do that, I did this!" and shattered the stool against the wall. He proceeded to do it a couple more times and then turned to walk out of her room.
I was unsure of what to do because now I had a tiger in a room with another tiger and I was afraid one of them was going to kill the other. I went to get the phone to call the police because I can never calm either of these creatures down on my own and I heard Jason say, "See? I can be an idiot and break stuff too. You like how that sounds when I break stuff?!?" She screamed back at him that that's how it was going to sound when his head bounced off her wood floor. I got back to the doorway just in time to see him pick up the leg of the stool and smash it into the top of her karaoke machine, breaking the cd lid off. I stood there holding the phone as he stormed out and downstairs to the garage to cool off. Natasha slammed her door shut and a moment later I heard a crashing sound.
I opened the door and she was sitting on her bed looking at me like she dared me to say a word. I looked around her room to see what could have made that sound and then realized that the karaoke machine was gone. Turns out she had thrown it out her window (thankfully opening the window first). Her bedroom is on the second floor and I looked down at the mess below, thinking in that brief second of quiet how sad it was to see her birthday present shattered in the gravel below like a suicidal robot, it's gut wires hanging out of it's belly. Then tiger dad returned, screaming at her to go pick that mess up and throw it away. She loudly and rudely refused and I proceeded with my 911 call. Things seemed to settle down while we waited for the police to arrive. Natasha swearing to herself in her room that of course I didn't really call the police and what a f#&%&ing idiot I was. Jason retreated to somewhere downstairs in the bowels of the house, probably wondering how this spectacular episode was going to end. There was over two hours between the time the police were called and the time they arrived. Evidently naughty 12 year olds swearing and breaking things are not a high priority to the cops. Go figure.
By the time they arrived Jason had fallen asleep watching t.v. in the family room and while Natasha was still mouthing off, she was doing it in a much more acceptable fashion. No screaming or swearing, just following me around the house and telling me what an idiot and a liar I was and the cops weren't really coming. (I was beginning to wonder myself!) The deputy was very nice and understanding as I talked to her outside first alone. She came in and was wonderfully kind to Natasha, telling her that it sounded like she'd had a big day and that could certainly be overwhelming to spend so much time in counseling etc. She asked her how she felt when she got home and Natasha said she felt relieved and happy because it finally felt like something made sense for the way she's felt her whole life. Then the deputy kindly explained to her that this was going to be a long road ahead but she needed to understand that just because we found a reason she gets so mad, she can't act out against her family like that or she was going to end up in handcuffs. She told Natasha that her bosses boss made the rules that if there is someone hurting someone whether it's a stranger or a family member, they have to take the person who's doing the hurting to jail and they don't have any other options. She wished us good luck and left.
The whole time she was there my lovely daughter was agreeable and attentive to what she was being told. Then about 5 minutes after the deputy left she sat on the kitchen floor and started up again about how I was such an idiot for calling the cops on her because she got mad. My heart sank as I watched Jason come up the stairs, fresh from a nap, to find his child still in mouth-off mode on the floor. He said something about her ipod and told me how I was foolish for bothering the cops with a kid who is just a rude obnoxious little brat. She told him to go ahead and keep her ipod, break it even, she didn't care. He said, "Fine, I will." and she gave him a particularly nasty look and said "Yeah right. Just like you told me last time you were going to break it and you lied about that, dummy." He picked it up and walked into the living room where he proceeded to throw it as hard as he could against the rock fireplace over and over until it shattered. The rest of the evening went on with her calming down and talking to me in a normal tone and then she started sobbing all of a sudden, grieving over her broken stuff.
Her ipod is, was the one thing that seemed to bring her joy and take her mind off things. My mom had been buying her an app or video for every three days that she took her pills without trouble and as she lay on the floor in tears, she asked me what could she ever have that won't get taken away. I, of course, didn't have an answer for her. It seems to be the trend lately, I'm more and more often faced with days when I don't have a clue what to think, do or say. The rest of the night was spent in an anxious semi-panic mode where she was terrified of what she could imagine as dark shadows and didn't want to be alone or go to bed. She finally fell asleep and so did the rest of us.
Sunday was a mixed state of smiles, laughter and anxiety about going to school the next day. I told her that she had taken the last two weeks off from school and if she refused to go this week, she wouldn't go on vacation with us on Friday. She could tell I was serious and became highly agitated that she had to make such a choice. She told me I obviously didn't know anything about her because she was NOT starting to feel better like I had said and now she was going to miss out on our family vacation. (Although why anyone in their right mind would want to go on vacation with us is far beyond me!) She calmed down after a time though and most of the day was fine for her. Her dad and I fought like crazy all day. He has decided he hates me because I think he goes too far and I hate him because I can't hate my child. The usual Sunday-after-Apocalypse behavior. We finally settled everyone down and went to bed only sort of angry.
Natasha woke up this morning, made herself breakfast, took her pills and went off to school with zero problem. It's like I live in an alien world. Nothing makes sense to me. She can be so off one day and then be so fine the next like nothing ever happened. Meanwhile, I have an ulcer, alternate between loving my husband more every day and thinking divorce is the answer and feel like my brain is slowly shrinking and one day I will awake only to realize I am paralyzed and live the rest of my life staring into the distance, drooling as the fighting continues in the background.
So... that sums up the weekend.
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