About our Daughter

I am mother to four wonderful daughters, ages 17, 19, 21, and 23, and wife to the greatest husband on earth. God has given us a special child to raise one who was diagnosed with early-onset bipolar disorder at the age of seven, though she showed signs of it from the age of fifteen months. She also has ADHD, Sensory Integration Disorder (sensory seeking), Dyslexia, and Non-Verbal Learning Disorder-NOS, all typical comorbidities for a bipolar child. In spite of the trials, she enjoys lacrosse, running (finished her first marathon in October of 2014!), and reading and writing her own books. I will share with you the many joys and sorrows we have faced and will face in the future with the hope that you may find better understanding about this mental illness caused by both chemical and structural abnormalities in the brain. I desire that you will be encouraged by this blog if you are also dealing with a bipolar child. Thank you for reading and sharing in our journey.

How Did You Know She Was Bipolar So Young?

I wrote a long explanation of how we came to this bipolar diagnosis in a child so young under my post of March 19th of 2009. If your child or a child you know bears similarities, please seek out a good psychiatrist and don't wait for "things to get better." Often they will simply get worse, and the longer a child is unmedicated, the more damage their brain can accrue. Early diagnoses and treatment are key to providing these children with a chance at a successful life later as a teen and an adult.
Never change, start or stop a medication without the approval of your child's physician!

Monday, March 8, 2010

The High Cost of Psychiatric Medications

Our health insurer, Tricare, has begun to send us a monthly statement listing our prescriptions, the retail cost, what they paid, and what we paid. Caroline's prescriptions in the month of January alone would have cost us, without health insurance, $4209.15! The most expensive was the Seroquel, over $1000. Now, some of those were 90 day prescriptions, but, you wonder, what do people do who don't have health insurance, or who are under-insured? We paid nothing for those prescriptions because we had already met our $1000 out-of-pocket catastrophic cap for the fiscal year that started October 1st. If my husband has to leave the Navy, we will really miss Tricare. I would have to go and get a job most likely, especially if if we had to pay for more than a small percentage of those drugs, because it would kill our living expenses. I am prepared to do that if necessary, but that would mean I would be that much less available to Caroline during the summer months and during those times of "crisis". Not a good thought. No drug should cost so much that you can't put food on the table. I am a conservative politically, but healthcare is a huge problem that must be solved for the millions who do not have the kind of coverage that we do! No one should go bankrupt because they must pay thousands of dollars for their prescriptions, or end up unable to work, have relationships, or just plain have a life.

3 comments:

Bev said...

I can tell you what I had to do for prescriptions before I had ChampVA... there was absolutely nothing I could do. The doc put me on anti-depressants (which are cheap because you can get generics) but then every time he'd try and put me on a mood stabilizer to counterbalance the antidepressant, the pharmacy wanted $600. I just couldn't pay it. So I spent months so angry and manic that I had to wean myself off the antidepressants.

I wish there was something that could be said to alleviate the worry.

Hartley said...

Is there a real chance your husband would have to leave the Navy? I would hope that his job there was stable -- for all of your sake!

But, as I know all too well, us moms will do what we have to for our kiddos. Your girls are lucky to have you -- all of them!

Hartley
www.hartleysboys.com

Amy said...

Megan,
I totally understand the high cost of medicine. Our insurance is so bad that they will not cover some of iKenzie's medicine. They would not cover the intuniv which was $190.00 a month and the vyvanse they do not cover which is $155.00 a month. They also would not cover her zoloft when she was on that because it has not been approved for her age group. It is crazy and so expensive to take care of mentally ill children. It does not seem fair. I hope you all never loose your good insurance. we are trying to get different coverage. Hopefully, it will happen soon. Take care, Amy P.S. It is so cool that your sister follows my blog and prays for us. Hopefully, she got my "thanks" post but if not please tell her thanks for me.