Dawn sent me an email earlier to ask where in the process we were with the evaluation for Gage. I’m not suprised she is confused, because, frankly, I am confused. I’ve been going so much on Momma-Just-Get-It-Done- Instinct that I am not sure I’ve recorded it entirely here, and I want to have it recorded!
Ah, behold the insanity with me!
May – I worry Gage doesn’t have a remorseful bone in his body because, ON MOTHER’S DAY he draws a picture out of anger, of me tied down on a train track, and him on train, with the words “Do it!” in talking bubbles. It was, by far one of my low lights in being a mother.
June – Same ole, same ole. He’s defiant and largely uninterested in extra activities like soccer and piano. We’re loose on the behavior mod, and Quinn pays for it because he is mean to her. Why she idolizes him, I’ll never know. We do keep up on time-outs, but they are starting to be ineffective as a deterrent to meanness.
July – A few days before vacation Gage drop kicks Quinn in the gut while Julian is out of town. And during a time on the phone when I need Julian to agree that Gage is out of control, he says the one thing that most hurts me. I spend a few weeks not getting over it. Then one day, I just forgive him. This evening I sent an email to our behaviorist, but to no avail. I believe he must be off for the summer or on sabbatical. This does not please me, because I know that I will have to find someone else to help us, and pronto.
During vacation I mention something that included the words “remember when you were on dialysis?” when I was referring to a time period and Gage replied “When I almost died?” It was a pivotal moment for me because while I knew something was amiss (he’d just started the “I want to die” statements) during the previous weeks and we need to address it, it sure solidified my desire to do it quickly.
July 22-26 – I called a friend who gave me name of a therapist who a friend of hers recommended because her son also had talked about wanting to die.
That therapist wasn’t taking new clients and referred me to another therapist.
That therapist said she could see Gage but she thought another therapist would be better because she’d dealt with kids who’d had medical interventions/trauma.
That therapist called me back and agreed to meet us a week later.
Gage’s talk about wanting to die intensifies, as does my desire to ease his pain.
July 31 -We have a bad experience during a lab draw that pisses me off.
August – A week before the first day of school we met her and began a weekly play therapy session for Gage. Two weeks into this process he is diagnosed with clinical depression and we start to seek meds to help him.
I call the transplant team to see if he can even have meds for depression and he can, in fact, many kids that have had transplants are on them.
I call the pediatrician for meds. Five days later she says no go.
I call our local nephrologist to see if she has experience prescribing anti-depressants and she doesn’t call me back. When I do talk to her a week later she apologizes and we hardly talk about Gage, because she is alarmed about Quinn and now she wants to talk to the transplant team about Quinn’s unusual situation with her creatintine numbers being pesky.
I declare to Julian that our life is insane, and he agrees.
I call the transplant team and tell them about the trouble getting Gage prescribed an anti-depressant and the coordinator (love her) said she’ll ask the transplant team psychologist for a recommendation/referral of a psychiatrist. They call me back 5 days (includes a weekend) and the coordinator told me the psychologist said for me to call our behaviorist. Um, yeah, already thought about and tried that.
I reach out to our out-of-town nephrologist, Dr. Wonderful, who has her own little freak out session about the situation and asks my permission to contact their head of pediatric psychiatry. The chief says I can come there or he will contact the hospital here, which incidentally is across the street from our own Children’s Hospital, to see if he can help. He says he knows the head at Emory. And he refers him to the head of a new clinic for kids and he provides me the number and contact names of two psychiatrists – who have a 4-6 week wait to get in.
I take the new doctor in the group because I can get an appointment the next day. I call to get a referral from my ped. I call again the next morning because I have to take it with me to the appointment. They fax it to me within a couple of hours.
That was three weeks ago. The doc says she needs to do an evaluation. I give her permission to talk about Gage to these people.
Special Ed Teacher, Transplant Team, Liver Doc, School Counselor, Therapist and Pharmacy at Children’s. This takes three weeks.
So here we are. I have Zoloft in hand. We’re to start a very low dose and if the first two weeks on it go well, then we will up it.
I’m keeping expectations low. Because, well, I’m trained that way, you know.
