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, April 11, 2011

Back from Birminghmam

I arrived back from Birmingham late Friday night after spending the week with my sister and her husband and their newly paralyzed son.  This was not a week one easily forgets.  I am glad to be home with my family, but my heart is with Heidi and Michael and their precious son Daniel who is facing a huge paradigm shift as they say, learning all over again how to walk, eat, and get around as a partial quadriplegic at the age of 19. We have great hope for that he will walk again someday. We are so thankful that God spared his life that night as the outcome could have been even more tragic than it already is.

Caroline laments quite often over how unfair her life is, how few friends she has, how many schools she has been shuffled between, how many meds she must take, but honestly, compared to being confined to a wheelchair, having others bathe you, dress you, feed you, and speak for you, she has very little to complain about.  I hope she really sees this, that as challenging as her life is, she can run, and play lacrosse, and go to college on time if she works hard.  She has so much to be thankful for even when things are really difficult!!

I am doing fine myself.  I think I have this weird ability to compartmentalize my thinking when shocking things happen.  I sort of detach emotionally and go into action mode.  I have been doing this since I was in college, and maybe it is a mild form of dissociative disorder or maybe it is just a God-given way of protecting myself emotionally when the world collapses around me.  I don't feel much of anything when others around me are feeling so much that they are falling apart.  I just go into thinking mode.  Maybe later, at other times, I allow myself to feel and to cry.  But in the moment of crisis, I become a machine and just do. This is quite helpful at times when needed and I have used this a lot when Caroline has been in crisis time and again.

Caroline continues to develop friendships on the lacrosse team, and one in particular shows great promise, the other homeschooled girl I mentioned before.  An opportunity arose for Caroline to go on the retreat with our church's youth group and she showed interest in going, but unfortunately she has two back to back games on Saturday.  She could have missed one of them, but missing both would have been very unsupportive of her team and this is the second to the last weekend of games.  So she decided to stay and play in the games, which was a very hard decision.  We would have encourage her to skip the game if she had only one.  Oh well, at least she is showing an interest int the Youth Group again, which she did go to last night even though she was afraid.  We will just continue to encourage her to go on Sunday nights.

We leave for a week at the beach soon, for our last "family" vacation with Elizabeth before she goes to college.  We debated about spending this kind of money while my husband is unemployed, but there are somethings you can't put a price tag on, like making memories with your kids before they fly the nest. Thank you for the tax refund, Uncle Sam!

I hope you are all well, though I know many of you and your kids are not, facing hospitalizations and school issues and health insurance nightmares.  Thank you for all of the messages of support and prayer for Daniel and his parents.  They appreciate them sooooo much, really!

Blessings!
Megan

3 comments:

asplashofsunshine said...

As stressful as many times can be, it is almost as if you can see a smile through this entry. Enjoy your getaway before the empty nest. Keep us updated on how your nephew is doing. We're all thinking of him.

Jessica @ The Leggett Family Circus said...

I am very sorry to hear about your nephew. I will pray that he is able to walk again someday.
I have a question for you about Caroline. Have you ever taken her for Chiropractic treatment for her BP? I took my son to one yesterday who explained to me that when the C1 vertebrae is out it compresses the top of the spinal chord and brain stem and makes it so the brain can't get information in and out as well (think of a flexible funnel that is smooshed to one side). He told me that they have found that children with more difficult deliveries and especially those with injuries to their left sides tend to have more problems with ADHD and other disorders with similar symptoms because their brain can't get the information out to the body, or back from the body as well. My son had a VERY difficult delivery - even having his left shoulder dislocated and ended up with torticollis on his left side.
After explaining this to me, he examined my son and my daughter. On both of them their C1 vertebra was out. My son's was so bad that it was like he had a mass on the left side of his neck. (my son has been diagnosed with ADHD, OCD, Anxiety, and Early BP) He was also out in other places - and just by testing and examining my son and my daughter he was able to tell me the symptoms that they have.
The change has been amazing! This morning is the first morning in WEEKS that we have not had a fight with my son to get ready for school. He was completely calm, sweet and agreeable. I know the proof is in the pudding - but if this is how he is going to be then my prayers of him someday being able to come off his medications may have been answered!
Have you ever heard of Chiropractic treatment being able to help kids with BP and ADHD before? What do you think about this?
Thanks for your insight!

Megan said...

Chiropractic sounds very interesting! I wish our insurance covered it, and I would go too! Thank you for sharing this. I appreciate it a lot!