Christina, Downloaded

Evan's all set to start the partial hospitalization program on Monday. I am counting down the hours. I will enjoy my break and spending more time with Tyler. More importantly, hopefully he will get the help he needs. Or at least get us to where he can go back to therapy settings to get the help he needs. Or magically turn into a new child, the one he's always wanted to be and the one I've always hoped for. Hey, dreams can't happen if they don't exist!

The world stops when you spin
Stops to watch you
Wanting to help you
Wishing to be there, but not in your vortex

Who can survive your vortex?
Can you?

Can you ever stop
Or do you keep going and going
Running and running
From someone, from no one, but not stopping.

Not once.
Will you ever stop one day?

Will your fears get washed away?
Is there anything I can do?
Anything to help you?
I’d do anything to help you. 

Evan's awake. It's way past his bedtime.

"Evan," I said, "what are you thinking about that you can't sleep?" 

"My job."

Who knew!

Looks like my pal, Laura, beat me to the punch on posting song lyrics today. Here's my contribution (All at Once by Jack Johnson), and more on lyrics later:

All at once,
The world can overwhelm me
There's almost nothing that you could tell me
That could ease my mind

Which way will you run
When it's always all around you
And the feelin' lost and found you again
A feelin' that we have no control

Around the sun
Some say its' going to be the new hell
Some say it's still too early to tell
Some say it really ain't no myth at all

We keep asking ourselves
Are we really strong enough?
There's so many things
That we got too proud of
We're too proud of
We're too proud of

I wanna take the preconceived
Out from underneath your feet
We could shake it off
And instead we'll plant some seeds
We'll watch them as they grow
And with each new beat
From your heart the roots grow deeper
The branches, well they reach for what?

Nobody really knows
But underneath it all
There's this heart all alone
What about when it's gone?
It really won't be so long
Sometimes it feels like a heart
Is no place to be singing from at all

There's a world we've never seen
There's still hope between the dreams
The weight of it all could blow away
With a breeze
But if you're waiting on the wind
Don't forget to breathe
Because as the darkness gets deeper
We're sinkin' as we reach for love

At least something we can hold
But I'll reach to you
From where time just can't go
What about when it's gone?
It really won't be so long
Sometimes it feels like a heart
Is no place to be singing from at all

In my last post, I wondered what exactly someone needed to do to get inpatient psychological treatment at a hospital. Well, now I know the answer. Have a blow-out with a professional therapist who sees that this is beyond anything normal and proceed to hospital together.

Evan is with us at home now, but as soon as there is an opening in the next few days to a week will be admitted to the "partial hospitalization" program at our local hospital. He will be there eight hours a day, Monday through Friday. Most kids stay a week to two weeks, so knowing Evan, I'm bumping that estimate to around a month. Hey, maybe I'll be happily surprised.

He is going to the program so that he can be kept safe and closely monitored as we figure out his medications. I can't wait for this program to start so that we can get him on the right track.

I don't have much more to say. I'm fried out. Going to take a hot bath and pour myself a glass of wine.

In the past week and a half to two weeks, Summer of Fun has turned to Summer of Sh!t. We took Evan off all his anxiety meds in order to start him clean on new ones, and it's been one helluva ride.

The new one we are working in hopefully has less side effects and Evan is better able to tolerate. Only today were we able to increase the dose to a level that was helpful. So that is a plus. In the meantime, I've become emotionally and physically drained beyond belief. There have been several points over the past few days that I thought I was going to have a heart attack from the stress.

I think what was the most concerning was watching Evan fail at everything. From asking him to do something so little as chew his food or put on his shoes or take a shower or go to the bathroom, to having him evaluated at several different organizations in town for therapy. And as much as I tried to keep everything contained, my family (parents, sister, brother-in-law) witnessed a lot in the past week. I know that my mother especially is worried about him and about me, and then I worry about her worrying about us. Vicious cycle.

Maybe it was the wrong thing to have him go to these therapeutic evaluations under-medicated. But at the same time, they need to know what they are getting into. And if they can't handle him -- the worst of him -- then I want to know from the get-go.

I am going to meet with our psychiatrist tomorrow, and one of my questions will be whether next time it would make more sense to change Evan's medications in a hospital setting. I, for one, have a difficult time bearing nearly 100 percent of the breakdowns. And if there is one thing I know, if I'm not at the top of my game or near it with Evan, it makes the situation worse not only for him and me but for everyone around us.

My other question will be his opinion on what the best program is for Evan. What does he need? Where should he go? I have a whole bunch of therapies lined up, but what does he think will make the most difference. I am prepared for him to tell me that it is the school we just left. And if it is, then it's something we need to consider. Evan needs help. Help that I am unable to provide him on my own. And help that requires more than one hour at a time. 

I worry about Tyler. He is so young and growing up in a household that is so tumultuous and chaotic. The kids I grew up with called my family the Brady Bunch, and it really was like that. Actually, Brady Bunch Plus. If only our biggest problem was an enchanted tiki mask! I lived in a relatively calm environment. Got three beautiful meals a day. All my laundry done for me. Time for myself. Time with the family. My childhood was truly a gift. It's the kind of childhood I just assumed my kids would have too. And I just feel so bad for Tyler that, at least now, it's not what he's getting.

Thank God for my mom and dad and sister. They are able to take him out of this environment, especially when it gets bad around here, and be with him, care with him, play with him. It is saving him and building him up. But there are days that I just miss him terribly.

Anyway, I am determined to get Summer of Fun back. I think as we are able to get Evan's medicine better managed, things will be able to return somewhat to normal. Whatever normal means in this household.

No matter how hard it gets -- and believe me, these last 10 or so days have been the most difficult in my life -- I am determined to get to a point that life remains relatively steady and harmonious. I refuse to give up. And I want my summer back! 

First off, Evan is officially done with his pacifier. He threw a nasty temper tantrum during one of his evaluations for a school we were considering -- no chance now -- and I had it. I told him to throw away the one he had in the car, and when we got home, he had to throw away the two at home. Definitely not the "right" way or the therapeutic way to do it, but the deed is done.

Lucky for him, he lost a tooth the next day. Lucky because I had told him for months that he couldn't have a pacifier once he lost a tooth. Losing a tooth signified being a "big boy," and big boys don't use pacifiers. So I've kind of been doing revisionist history with him saying that they're chucked because he's a big boy now.

Met with the psychiatrist. We're not supposed to call them "temper tantrums" anymore. The doctor's calling them breakdowns. I guess once you get past the terrible twos, past the threes, and deep into the fours with a neurological condition, they're called breakdowns. So breakdowns it is.

The breakdown fiasco will hopefully diminish in the next few weeks. It's happening because we are changing his meds. He's now off risperdal and buspar and we're starting seroquel, with the hope that the side effects of this will not be as pronounced as they were with the risperdal.

One thing I will admit is I've been wondering at what point parents check their kids into the psych ward for inpatient treatment. I'm being absolutely serious. What's the breaking point? There are a few things that have kind of sparked this thought process: one being that when I called Children's Memorial to set-up an intake meeting to see a psychologist there, the answering system said something like "press 3 to schedule an immediate intake for admission for inpatient psychiatric care;" and the other being that one of the places where we're looking for "school" has had a child leave for in-hospital care.

Anyway.