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!

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Trying Krill Oil from Mega-Red

I am switching my kids to krill oil to see if 1. they will take it more often since it is in a much smaller tablet and 2. they can take fewer pills because the krill oil is more highly concentrated than regular fish oil. I bought some at Walgreens today because they had a special of buy one, get one free and an in-store coupon for $4.00 off, so I paid about $18.00 for two bottles of 60 pills each. I am supposed to start out with just two or three pills a day for two weeks, and then back down to just two a day. I will let you know how this goes. I am especially interested in seeing if this has an effect on my youngest daughter and her severe ADHD.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Be careful with the "off the shelf" krill oils as it's often "watered down" with other stuff. Also, it needs to be VERY deep amber color to really be of much use. In short, it's sometimes hard to find a good brand. "Neptune" is one such brand.

Megan said...

Thanks, Carla. I opened the Walgreens store brand pill and poured it onto a white surface. It was reddish in color, very dark, almost like blood. No food dye was listed in the ingredients, just the krill oil, so I am assuming it is potent. We will find out! I will look into Neptune and MegaRed as well.

Anonymous said...

I have to kids who are bipolar...fearful my other to might be as well. All 4 of my children have focusing issues. I'm going to start the whole family on this, and see we there is a difference. How has it worked out for you?

I put my bipolar daughter on fish oil pills before, and that seemed to help...but she hated taking the huge pills.