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!

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Hospital Day #4

After a CAT scan this morning, following a really bad night of excruciating pain despite the morphine, Caroline's docs concluded she did not have an abscess or kidney stones, but still had a raging infection.  So they switched from Cipro to two other IV antibiotics which they hope will solve this.  Poor kid.  She has been through too much.  She was so drugged today with the morphine and percocet, that she doesn't even remember the CAT scan this morning.  They were talking about taking her off of the Lithium because they wanted to put her on Toredol instead of the morphine but had concerns that the Toredol could increase her Lithium levels to toxic levels.  We really wanted to avoid dropping the Lithiuim, because even missing one dose means instability, and to miss several would probably mean a stay in the psych hospital following discharge.  Not a pretty picture.  We convinced them to just stick with monitoring her Lithium levels and possibly lowering the Lithium not stopping it.  The pdoc was hard to get a hold of today to talk to the doc at the children's hospital.  For real? Come on, this is an emergency!  Be a little more responsive please!

I was sooooo tired this morning and emotionally wrung out.  Hopefully a good nights sleep tonight will help a lot.  Several friends from church brought us meals tonight, for which I was grateful just because I don't have energy to cook right now.   I haven't been working either, which is a mixed blessing seeing as I use that money for the "extras" right now.  Oh well.  God is in control.
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1 comment:

ann said...

I am so sorry that she has not improved. It is horrible that she is so much pain. I hope the change is anti-biotics makes an improvement. I am praying for your family. God loves you and so do all your blog friends.
Ann

November 17, 2010 at 9:13 PM

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