January 16, 2002 But Mike and I started talking about it in bed in the dark -- the one place and time we do our most serious talking. We started kind of checking our evaluations and our reactions of him with each other. Yesterday, I talked and wept on the phone to my neighbor's daughter, Mel, who's becoming my friend. We all think that Russell might be ADD. Hell, I have struggled with that and depression a good chunk of my life. ADD is genetic and my mom certainly qualifies in her own way. I think that I have a light case of it, but that extreme trauma makes it hard to manage it well. I had a teacher in high school that referred to me as flighty, and I would agree, actually. That would certainly explain my occasional need for medication and my really good reaction to well-butrin, which is an anti-depressant one molecular bond away from the amphetamine molecule. I don't always need medication to function well, however. My love of a plan, for example, I think is one of my better coping mechanisms. I've learned to put up a calendar both in my computer and on my wall and use it religiously. I've learned to write everything down. I've gotten militant about documenting my expenses for my budget. I do them every night because I was sick of checks bouncing and fucking up my accounts and then worrying myself to sleep because I couldn't remember if I put everything down or not. Mike and I filled out this sheet to rank Russell for him having ADD from the school psychologist and 70% of the answers we gave were in the higher ranges. His teacher and his speech therapist will also fill them out, but I know that there are just some things he does universally. I know that when he keeps things together at home, that school falls to hell in a handbasket and when things go great with school, home becomes a living hell. The counselor cancelled on us and has postponed us two weeks. I was frustrated and angry and rather despondent. When he called tonight, I told him that I wanted to consider pursuing medication because things were just way out of control and that Mike and I had just had it. He said that was pretty doable and that I should set up an appointment with the pediatrician for the very next day after our appointment with him in the late afternoon, so he would have had a chance to go over his results with her on the phone in the morning. I hate to think that there's anything wrong with my child. Russell is a smart, sweet, kind child, when he wants to be, but with the overlay of being very high maintenance. I wish everything were perfect and idyllic, but it's not. And it wasn't before he was molested either. Certainly, that event didn't help matters and I think has been a trigger to this current round of hideous behavior. I think we just have gotten really good at tolerating his annoying behaviors. Mike's mom thought we were weird for saying that Russell was just not really tolerant of changes to his routine, like the weird Christmas hours at the holidays. I even realized at the time how odd that was in some ways, but I also knew it to be a Russell truth. When put in the framework of an ADD child, it's not really weird at all. I know that there are people who go to great lengths to go without medication if their child has ADD. Honestly, Miss Hippy Dippy me, I was starting to beat myself up about it. Then I realized that I've been doing the non-medicating route as best I can for 8 years and I'm starting to really lose steam. At this point, I think I've given it my all and so has Mike. I think that trigger episodes like he's currently cycling through shouldn't put the whole family into turmoil for months on end. A 8 year old child should not be so difficult to manage, require so much keeping after on a constant basis. When I am having to handle him more than my very busy and very into everything toddler, something isn't right. I think with Genny as counterbalance we're actually able to see that there's something more significant going on with our little bear than something we've been lumping under "development delay." Understandably, I've felt guilty for a long time about not pushing the doctor harder to get Russell tubes for all of his ear infections, so I've put up with a lot of crap as a result. Mike went along because I treated it as if it was normal because I didn't know any better. I think there's also that Post-traumatic Stress thing, too. However, I'm not a professional and I don't play one at home. I just know we're all suffering and it has to end. I don't know what God's got in mind for Russell or us, but I sure hope it's better than this. |