Tuesday, February 3, 2015

My son can melt my heart even when he's causing heartache

Today my son was supposed to meet a new psychiatrist.  That turned out not to be a problem getting him out of school due to his being suspended yesterday for punching his teacher in his junk.  Yeah.

So, we had a psychiatrist we liked who had him pretty stable and had seen him through two hospitalizations.  But, my ex, who barely shows up and has no clue what's going on, despite being provided all the testing and documents, decided to throw a wrench in everything.  We've been dealing with custody issues in court for a year and a half.  The only straw he could grasp at was to claim I'm overmedicating the children.  He never got a second opinion, as he told the court he needed time for or went to any doctors' appointments or even spoke to any doctors... until he called Billy's psychiatrist and told her he disagreed with Billy's ADHD meds (that he's been on for 4 years) and that he had 50/50 decision making power and he wasn't going to give him the meds anymore.  The doctor understood the situation and sided with me, but felt she couldn't legally prescribe the meds anymore and furthermore didn't want to be in the middle of this argument and quit being his doctor.

I'd hoped the court stuff would be done in December, so our primary care physician gave us three months' worth of meds and I'd hoped we'd get it settled and could go right back to her.  But, court proceedings were continued and i tried to go back to our PCP but was seen by another doctor in the practice who lectured me about it being my responsibility to find a psychiatrist and only giving us a month's worth of meds.  I'd found some leftover meds of a lower dosage from when we upped the milligrams a few months back to get him by in the meanwhile.  Even 10 milligrams difference, we can tell there's a huge change.  Children's Mercy only takes patients who also have a physical ailment.  So, i set up this appointment with a doctor that had been recommended to us by our insurance liaison.

There was something about the guy i didn't like, but it boiled down to him saying he couldn't take Billy as a patient unless we had sole custody or Billy's dad not only signed authorization saying he was ok with the treatment but actually came to the appointments and participated in the treatment.

Our lawyer had his dad in for a deposition a couple of weeks ago and he denied ever telling the psychiatrist those things and said he believed the only thing wrong with Billy is ADHD, though ironically, that's the meds he didn't like.  He admitted he's never gotten a second opinion, gone to any of their appointments, or contacted any of their doctors.  Yet, he's ruined all of Billy's chances to get treatment.  He claims to be concerned about the meds, but this has left Billy with no one to monitor his meds since August.

Billy has 9 more of the low dose ADHD meds.  Even if the case were wrapped up tomorrow, we couldn't get in to a doctor that fast. His other meds, antidepressants and antipsychotics that keep him from self-harm and violence against others will run out, respectively, in March, April, and May.  If nothing happens to intervene, his behavior at school will deteriorate as will his grades, he'll likely start threatening or attempting suicide again, or start more violence towards others and we'll end up with another hospitalization.

Needless to say, I've been angry and upset ever since.  Fury at first, then sorrow.

Billy brought me a coloring page of the Incredible Hulk and had written on it, "you're as strong as Hulk.  Don't be sad."  On the back, he'd drawn a diagram where no pills equaled unhappy face and unhappy face equaled both of us.  Then he wrote off to the side "we don't want that, we want this."  Below, his diagram showed unhappy face does not equal us and smiley face equals strong.  He also brought me a drawing of "supermom."  He told me that even without meds, he'd try to be good, even though it's hard (though no amount of mind over matter can power through bipolar disorder).  He hugged me and it made me cry that he was trying to cheer me up when I'm fighting for him.

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