Step by Step

Things have been considerably better around our house recently.  I hate to even acknowledge that, on the off chance old superstitions are true and I'm tempting the fates, but it's true.  So I suppose I feel it's even more important to take note of our progress.

Lily is back in school full time.  Public middle school, 6 classes.  And it's going really well.  Even better, she's doing things with a nice group of friends.  I'm driving a lot, but I'd drive all day to facilitate those friendships.  I'm so happy!

I've been able to get in a lot of work hours.  I owe so much to my managers.  They really stood by me and protected my job and benefits far longer than many bosses would.  They're wonderful people and have made our journey so much more manageable.

We still face plenty of struggles at home.  I suspect Lily is working so hard to hold it together at school that she's pretty stressed by the time she comes home.  That's when she acts out, yells, and has some borderline meltdowns.  I'm giving her lots of space to work through those emotions, but calmly let her know when she needs to back off and apologize.  Sometimes that works.

She'll be fourteen in less than 2 weeks.  It's a reminder that she's growing up fast.  But I tend to think she'll be with me a long time.

Yeah But . . .

Still on a huge learning curve here.  Lily's psychiatrist was out for a week, but available by phone for emergencies.  But we didn't know any of that.  Lily needed a refill for her Zyprexa, and I phoned it in to the pharmacy.  They faxed a refill request to our pdoc, who didn't get the fax because she was off.  I finally phoned at the end of the week and got things figured out, but meanwhile . . . I screwed up Lily's meds.  I had 5 mg tablets of the Zyprexa, and gave Lily 3 each night for 4 days, until I realized she should be on 20 mg,  or four pills. 

That wasn't bad enough.  We also ran out of Intuniv.  I thought, no big deal, it's a small dose of a mild ADHD med and we're set to see the pdoc next week, so we'll get a refill then.  Wrong.  Lily experienced increasingly higher levels of mania and anxiety and went into a full on panic attack by mid week.  We ended up in urgent care (not ER thank God!) and her heart rate was in the 150's and 160's.  She hyperventilated, and was finally calmed with a Xanax.  We also administered Toprol to bring her heart rate down and we were able to go home.

And really, it was my fault.  No matter that this was the first time I've messed up her meds, she wouldn't have had to go through any of it if I'd been on the ball.  My lesson is, no med is too insiginificant in this equation, they all matter.

So we managed through it and learned the lesson, and had Lily's IEP meeting this week.  She has good support at school and I appreciate the team involved, but I did feel the undercurrent of an adversarial attitude.  Much was made of the fact that Lily's attendance has been poor.  She was out all fall semester because she was too fragile to attend, and she did have a truly miserable time of it last year.  But I'm also the  mother of another kid at the school who has perfect attendance and straight A's.  So why do I feel like they were censoring my parenting?  Was it really about my own feelings of inadequacy, should I just blow it off and move on?  Probably.  What's important is that Lily will get some much needed support on campus, and I may get to return to my regular work schedule. (and maybe be able to pay some bills . . . )  But it nags at me that the principal, et al, don't understand or acknowledge how hard I've worked to help my daughter.

Time to get over the need to please.  I have more important things to handle.