After a long absence, though I've always lurked since the beginning of time as per normal, I really felt the need to come back and start posting for many reasons about the difficult children. In particular to this forum my oldest difficult child/easy child. She is more easy child then difficult child these days but right now she has been in crisis for months and most recently she has some really troubling symptoms that I wanted to put out here for ya'll to help me with.
As we all know, the doctors aren't Gods and especially when they aren't giving good care. In our case daughter wasn't getting proper treatment and we are currently transitioning to another one (next week) that hopefully will be better. She will get a therapist along with it. Something she didn't have prior either.
Let me give you a little back story on what has been going on to help out a bit. She went away to college a year ago. At that time she had been stable for about 7 years or so. Minor little things would be going on but mostly things that were manageable. She maintained on basically on stimulants for focus in school. The problems we had encountered otherwise was the season mood swings during Winter (depression about Octoberish to January give or take in timing) and then Spring brought on mild mania. Again, not enough that she really needed mood stabilizers. She would often have trouble getting to sleep come spring but it never disrupted her schooling or functioning. When she was about 16 she went through about a months period of time she felt a little suicidal but it was due to a broken relationship with a boy but we all survived that and the "very" brief 2 week period where she had cut her legs (has scars now) because of it too. All in all again, not bad.
Once away at college it was an adjustment for her because it was a totally new environment, no support structure like she was used to at home (me) and life was just "different" as we all know college life is in many ways in how you have classes, etc. She experienced the typical draw that our kids do once they go away to school and wanting to "fit in" and do what everyone else does there. She was always the excellent student in high school with the advanced classes and such and still had advanced college courses so the work load was a bit heavier but she maintained "fairly" well even with some of the "stupid" things she apparently was doing. I can say this now because I have learned what she had done. Come Spring time there she struggled, as she would normally, only this time with no support and a new environment it was harder and so she sought out help via the school health office. There she met with a counselor and the dr who attempted to put her on some medication, Lamactil. She has not been on a mood stabilizer since she was very young (at that time it was very disastrous!). Same thing happened this time and she had to go off it relatively quickly as it made her very angry at everyone and everything. Luckily she was able to make it through to the end of the year.
By this time we had moved to another state and things were unsure of what the future actually would be for a while. She went back to college and I was concerned for her stability but there wasn't an option for her due to deadlines of applications, etc. I really wasn't happy about it but it was the best choice at the time financially for her. I was concerned. About a month into the Fall semester I get a call from her on a Saturday night about 11p. She was extremely drunk and depressed, crying and kind of suicidal. It's a call I will never forget. She had called me in the past but never like this and with her and her expressions of suicidal (not sure if others can identify or not, but sometimes they express these thoughts but it's just "talk" and you know they aren't really meaning it?) thoughts, I knew that this time was not one I could just let ride at all.
I talked to her for about 3 hours as she had so much to say, concerns. She wanted to come home, didn't want to come, etc. There really wasn't anyone at the school I knew could help her. The student health center wasn't open and even if they were, they wouldn't be of much help. The most that might have happened is the police and/or and ambulance would have been called and she would have been taken to a hospital and then perhaps landed in a phospital but that wouldn't have been a good idea as her insurance would not have covered her in that state, not to mention she would have been hours away and her anxieties without me being there would have just snowballed and made it far worse in the long run.
So I had to make a judgement call after listening to all she had to say to feel it out of what she really wanted and needed. The need was that she needed to be in care of a "real" doctor who could stabilize her on proper medications now and work through issues and such and this would need to be ongoing. Something that in no way could be done where she was at going forward, especially again, due to her insurance. So, SO left to go pick her up at 1A and got there at 3A. They got the bare minimum of her stuff and a week later they returned to clean out her room (she roomed in with her boyfriend who is an RA). Of course this caused another bigger problem due to financial aide in the end as the school charged her 30% of everything and now that's a big mess and they are holding her transcript which means she can't get into the college here, compounding the situation at the moment. But that is for another time.
So that's the back story of where we are at with her home. She has been having trouble with her BiPolar (BP) and began seeing the doctor in December (took that long to get her in) and put on Lithium, Seroquel, and Ambien for sleep. In the beginning it did seem to level out her moods a whole lot but even with the medication she still had sleep issues. I have to say though, that she would opt to sleep during day more often then not even when she could sleep some of the time because of sibling difficult children due to their behaviors ( again, another post in another forum at another time) since she can not tolerate them so she sleeps to avoid them and will get up in the evening and then stay up late into early morning hours. Something I've repeatedly told her is "not" helping her in the long run and she knows.
She has been having issues with diarrhea, feeling nausea and when she eats immediately having to "c*ap it out, as she puts it. Nothing seems to agree with her other then if she simply eats a granola bar or yogurt. I realize to some extent that the diarrhea and nausea can be side effects of the lithium but even this many months later? I don't think that the inability to eat anything is, is it? The more disconcerting thing that has been happening that I've learned and is really "scaring her" and making her wonder if she is manifesting symptoms of schizophrenia is that she felt the following:
She went back to her college over the weekend to visit with friends. On the drive home she felt very surreal feelings as if their was a "veil" in front of her that she was trying to look through. Not a literal piece of material. Clear wall she had to view through. She has felt it again each and everyday, including yesterday. Some other things that have been occurring is that she has a "hatred" of her little sister due to her behaviors (in reality she doesn't hate her but she gets to feeling like this anymore, like she just can't stand her) and when oldest difficult child/easy child was very little and I was pregnant with sister oldest said "I'm going to flush her down the toilet". LOL Now what that has to do with is the fact that oldest difficult child had a really odd experience 2 days ago where she didn't think younger sister was real. She actually thought she was dead, that she had flushed her when she was little and she was manifesting her, though she knew she was really alive. Do you understand that? She also had another experience last night where she was online talking to someone she knows and this person was telling her about their life (tragic things that have happened to them) and suddenly she got that strange feeling "surreal" as she puts it, and comes downstairs to me freaked out because she wasn't sure if that person was real or not even though she "knew" she was talking to him online but could not understand how someone could go through such horrible things and she was actually talking/typing to him online (was sure she actually was). She also had a "paranoid" thought about some lady when she was at her exercise class at the Y that this lady was some government agent but realized that she really wasn't. She said she has experienced this things in the past, not just after this weekend. She has never spoken of this to me before so I'm a little shocked, concerned. Everything is surreal to her when it happens and she is "freaked out" that she is losing her mind, going crazy. In the past she was not on these medications.
A few days ago I was thinking she was having Lithium toxicity with the physical symptoms of the diarrhea, nausea, tremors of her hands, etc and then these strange feelings. Partly because the stupid dr hasn't checked her level in 3 months!!! She is on 1200 mg and that's a high dose. They should have been checking it at least once a month. My younger daughter gets hers checked once a month. I also thought "maybe" it was an interaction because stupid easy child/difficult child drank (WAY too much) alcohol and smoked over the weekend at a party (yes I am very disappointed and she knows it but she did tell me which I give her credit for - though suspected she might do it prior to her leaving so was hesitant to even let her go). She said she's never drank so much before like she did this weekend to where she "didn't pass out" but sat there "out of it" and has blank spot of time. I questioned her about the possiblity of someone having access to her drink in case something got put in it, also something being in the smoke (that is the only factor we can't account for at the moment). She said she had her own bottle at all times and no one had access to it at any moment. It is something I have spoken to her since young teen years (even though I don't like the idea I am proactive in self protection). I warned her that smoking can kick back at you and interact with her medication (and alchohol), but more importantly the smoke can kick back at any time, even up to a year later and who knows what might have been in it even if it was a pesticide.. ..... *big sigh*
I am so so disappointed in my difficult child/easy child. This one is not one I would have ever thought would go down this path and if you knew her you'd know why. But more then anything right now I'm concerned for the symptoms she is displaying and what might be causing them. Does anyone have any input or thoughts? Anyone with experiences? It seems that they only display in the late afternoon/early evening into the night.
I welcome any responses.
