Last year I began one more time the journey of obtaining a diagnosis, this time for my son.
I recall how blithely naive I was when we embarked on this voyage with my daughter four years ago. I thought we would be able to easily identify what her issues were, get therapy and medication and be on our merry way to having a more peaceful life and a happy child. The cold hard reality of having a child with mental health issues was something that took me a very long time to wrap my brain around. Every day I have to adjust my expectations to meet reality, and while I'm getting much better at it I will never tell you that it is easy. Or desirable.
It wasn't a far stretch to assume that with the family background of both J and I that both of our children would have issues. Why we didn't recognize this before deciding to procreate is beyond me, but I suppose we were young and in love and damn the torpedoes, let's have a baby!
For the first couple of years, Race Car Man absolutely outdid his sister in the categories of "easy" and "happy." He was a much less stressful baby from the very start, in part I'm sure because the second one is much less of a life-bomb than the first. Once you know what you're doing the "Oh God I'm going to break the baby by accident!" factor is mostly eliminated. He smiled more, he slept better, he had less reflux. He was a happier toddler, and when he did start to display some tantrum-like behavior, it seemed very likely to us that he was learning this from his sister and that it wasn't an inherent issue.
Age four was tough for him, though, and he started to exhibit serious sensory issues. He is not a morning person at ALL, and once woken, he would often sit on his stool at the breakfast bar slapping himself in the head and screaming at the top of his lungs that his eyes were bothering him or his hair was falling down. Sometimes it was his legs that bothered him, other times his nose. He began to reach an intensity with these incidents that I became seriously alarmed. Nothing worked - soothing didn't work, ignoring didn't work, talking didn't work. No matter how I responded, the length and severity of the tantrums were not lessened. Some weeks would go by with no problems whatsoever, and then out of the blue, he'd have 10 days in a row where by the time I left the house for work in the morning I felt like I needed a Xanax just to be able to breathe.
I kept putting off considering the search for a diagnosis until last summer. I had enrolled him in the same large children's organization for the summer as his sister. There was a multiple child discount, and dropping them at the same place in the morning made for time savings. Mostly though, it was because it was a very well-funded program with really good caregivers. He was doing OK there, not great, but he seemed to love going. Right before J and I separated, though, all hell started to break loose. He would be OK in the mornings when we dropped him off, but as the number of children in the center increased, so would his anxiety and misbehavior. At the point where he started throwing chairs and screaming, we knew it was time to move him out. I was able to take him back to the smaller preschool program he had been in, where he remains to this day.
The worst part was what I think was a little bit of PTSD when I realized I was going to have to go through the same agonizing process we'd already experienced with his sister. I fell apart, honestly, for several days. Mentally I relived the phone calls and doctor appointments and waiting lists and neuropsych testing and the service denials and out of pocket costs, and I just lost it. I felt I couldn't do this AGAIN, but eventually had to pick myself up off the floor and get started. Not doing it wasn't really an option.
Our pediatrician, who specializes in children with ADHD and Bipolar illness, confirmed a mood disorder and possible ADD without the hyperactive subtype. We saw one psychiatrist who felt that the issues were not serious and that we need do nothing in terms of treatment or medication. That was a frustrating appointment - C was on his best behavior, and displayed none of what we had been dealing with. Finally, after a three month wait, we were able to get an appointment with the neuropsych. After reviewing everything, he advised me that he felt my son has an anxiety disorder, probably of a biological nature but exacerbated by situational issues with the separation and home life problems. This made sense to me - but that's where we still sit. Neither the neuropsych or the pediatrician felt that it was necessary to begin medication at this time, and we started working with some behavior modification strategies to help him cope.
Rather suddenly it appears we have kindergarten on the horizon. We went back to the pediatrician to start discussing strategies, but his feeling is really to wait until school starts and see how C is coping. We have an evaluation for his teacher to fill out after he's been in school a month or so, and then we'll look at what's going on and what our next steps will be.
Logically I understand that this is the sensible approach. We can't anticipate how he will respond to the classroom and the change involved with going to school and changing before/aftercare programs. He might be a trooper about it all, or he might fall apart.
Of course, this doesn't stop me from somehow feeling like I should be DOING SOMETHING about it RIGHT NOW. I periodically enter full-blown Control Mode wherein I just KNOW that he's going to melt down. I just know he's not going to be able to handle it. I feel like we should be starting him on something now to alleviate what I fear will happen when school starts. What exactly that something is I don't know but I feel, when I'm being irrational, like the professionals should be able to look into their crystal ball and just TELL ME WHAT IT IS. And then I take a deep breath and remind myself that I am anticipating something that might not happen, that there is no possible way to medicate for anticipated behavior. His sister was medicated before she started kinder, but I have to remember how bad things were with her. My son has difficulty, yes, but he comes nowhere near approaching the severity of his sister's symptoms. And so I concentrate on breathing in and out and telling myself that it is OK to wait.
I wish sometimes that there was some sacrifice I could make that would make my children well. Is there no way to appease the gods of fate? Its not that I feel that having children with issues is so awful for me - its really not. My pain stems from seeing them struggle. I don't mind struggling for them, but I hate watching them deal with things that I cannot help them with. In so many ways, they have to learn their own paths to navigate their illnesses. If I do everything for them they will never gain self-sufficiency and self-confidence. They have to learn to exist in a world where their illnesses will impact their ability to have interpersonal relationships, to learn appropriately, to be happy. Someday to hold a job, stay out of jail or off of drugs or god forbid...stay alive. What wouldn't any mother give to ensure her child's happiness and well being? I know I'm being selfish. I know there are parents out there who have experienced the most horrible type of loss, who have children with worse illnesses, with worse symptoms, with severe limitations, more fragility, more serious medical needs.
I am thankful that I have these wonderful children, more thankful than I can ever fully express. I am thankful that they are more or less healthy and happy. I am grateful for all that we have and I try not to dwell on the things that aren't possible or that we don't have. There are times, though, like now, when I consider our lives and I just wish for something a little less hard for them.
And I wait so that someday soon I can act.
