But it’s getting better, see?

OK, so.  December.  

Riley is hospitalized, in so much pain that whispering hurts his head. They had the poor kid pumped full of everything in the kitchen sink, all in an attempt to get the pain under the control.

And then Jake called: he was in trouble again.  Big trouble.  He had made such bad decisions, his actions so foolish and damaging that his future was now at risk.  It took many conversations and much sending back and forth of documents for me to get to the bottom of what he had actually done, and I was shocked by the depth of his bad judgement.  There was no logic to Jake’s actions.  None.  Only someone very, very unintelligent or someone very out of touch with reality would think they could behave this way and not suffer terrible consequences.  Jake might have become someone I didn’t recognize:  dishonest, angry, unethical, arrogant, and aggressive, but he is definitely not unintelligent.  And then is when it hit me: I was seeing mania.

This mania didn’t look like the mania I’d always heard of.  It wasn’t sky-high euphoric good-time crazy.  Jake was more like a machine running too fast and hot,  churning out oily, acrid, smoky clouds of hostility, agitation, and bad judgement.  A quick internet search provided me with a precise list of every behavior I’d seen for the last eighteen months, and a name for it: dysphoric mania.

I sat in the dark hospital room with Riley sedated next to me, shocked by my realization and appalled that I had missed something so obvious.    With close family members who are bipolar, I knew to watch for this in my children, and yet I didn’t see it when it was right in front of me.  To have one of my boys end up carrying the heavy burden of bipolar disorder has always been a parental fear of mine, but now it seemed almost a relief to know there was a name and a reason for Jake’s behavior.  He wasn’t really all the things he had seemed to become,  he was just very sick, and the real Jake was still in there somewhere.

I called Jake to ask him if he would consider that he might be bipolar.  After a few moments of quiet, he said, “I think I might be,” and started to cry.  When he had returned to UNC in the fall he had begun counseling, and Jake now told me that his counselor had questioned this, as well.  Within days I pulled Jake out of Chapel Hill and brought him home.

Confirmation that we were on the right track came with Jake’s first dose of mood-stabilizer.  After the medicine knocked him out for the better part of twenty-four hours, Jake awoke and said, stunned, “My head is….quiet.”  Over the next several days Jake’s dosing schedule was changed, briefly causing the mania to return one evening. After having a short break from mania, its abrupt return sent Jake into a panic. He likened it to every radio and every television being turned on to every station at top volume in his head, all at once.

It’s been a very long six months, and cycling through medications to find the right medicine and dose has been horrific.  We’ve had manic Jake, zombie Jake, deeply depressed Jake, irrationally angry Jake.  Now have our old Jake back, and things are getting better around here.

He has agreed to live at home until he is stable for at least six months, and true stability just began about a month ago.  He has agreed that when he does return to school, it will be to a school near a family member with whom he can check in on a weekly basis. He’s running again, he’s attending support groups, he’s rolling with the unpleasant side-effects of medications,  he’s working to build habits which will allow bipolar to have as little negative effect on his life as possible.

He’s also dealing with deep shame and trying to come to terms with his behavior while manic, and all he’s lost because of that. I wish I could wash that shame away, and I ask him to please remember how it felt that evening at the beginning of his treatment when the mania came flooding back.  That, I tell him, was not a brain anyone could control.   If this was a genetic bullet you were going to take, I tell him, then it is better that you took it now before you had built a whole life to destroy.

For my part, I feel as if I should have known sooner, and thus prevented the worst of his life path-altering behavior.  I gave this genetic burden to him, and then didn’t see it when it presented.  I feel like I should have known.  For my sake–because this is killing me– Jake has allowed his Dad and I to help him untangle the mess that occurred during mania.   While Jake felt he should not have help and should take the full consequential hit for his behavior, I see it differently.  He might not get handed a Get Out Of Jail Free card, but he was a 19-20 year old kid away from home and suffering through the onset of major Bipolar I, and he deserves compassion.  Everyone involved in this untangling seems to see it the same way that I do,  and I am touched by the compassion of an institution as large as UNC Chapel Hill.

Jake has handled this with such honesty and grace, and I cannot imagine I would have found similar strength within myself to hold such a burden at the age of twenty.  I am so proud of him.

Silliness and laughter are returning to our home, in part because Jake is our Jake again.  The other reason is that Riley is getting better, and on Monday I will tell you about the road he’s traveled since December’s hospitalization.

Have a wonderful weekend!  Riley is almost healthy and headed with Matt to the beach, my oldest guy is safe to leave by himself, I’m able to start work again, and I’m headed away for the weekend with a man who has loved me through all of this.  I’m pretty lucky, and so I’m going to have a good weekend, too!  There will, hopefully, be margaritas.

Not quite back on track, but almost.

Hello my darlings, and thank you to all who left comments regarding my absence. It’s nice to be missed.

It has been a very difficult year and a half, and so very, very much has occurred. The boys and I are not quite the same people we were two years ago. It is only now, as we are finally making big steps forward, that I can even string together the words to describe the challenges we’ve faced.

I am so incredibly proud of my sons; so proud of us.

Let’s start with Jake.  Before I stopped working and posting, you might have noticed I was not writing about Jake all that much.  Yes, he was away at UNC and no longer a daily part of our lives, but it was more than that.  Jake was not…Jake.

The summer before he left for college (2010), I had begun to notice a change in his personality.  Irritable.  Hyper. Aggressive. He refused to get a job; refused to help. In fact, helping around the house inevitably led to damaging the house.  He just wasn’t the Jake he’d always been. He was a different Jake, and one who was kind of a jerk.

Jake had never really done the “angry teen” thing; never really rebelled, and I came to the tentative conclusion that I was just seeing what happens when an 18 year old begins to break away and become independent.

Off to school he went, and while he seemed happy (if overly social) and made a lot of friends at Chapel Hill, I was alarmed by his appearance when he came home for visits.  He was sunken-eyed, underweight, dirty, wound up. He got himself into trouble in Chapel Hill, and I helped him out of the trouble and lectured about the changes that needed to occur.

By spring I had become deeply concerned, and last summer was awful.  He was angry and defiant, irresponsible to the point of endangering himself and others, rude, still dirty, would NOT stop talking, and on my heels every waking moment.  Nothing he said rang true, and every answer contradicted the last. Sending him out with my bank card to perform simple chores resulted in huge amounts of money spent.

I asked Jake to see our family doctor, and he refused. I insisted he find a job, and he refused. I asked him–FOR THE LOVE OF GOD–to leave me alone for five minutes, and he would not.

Mike and I had fights about Jake: I could not take anymore, I told Mike, and something is very wrong with our son.  Nothing is wrong with Jake, Mike would say, except that he needs to grow up. Mike paid for Jake to return to school in the fall, and that’s when all hell broke loose.

That is also when Riley suffered a traumatic brain injury.  On October 12th, Riley took a blow to the head in the first half of his high school’s soccer game.  Instead of following protocol and taking him out, the coach asked if he was alright and put him back in the game. Unfortunately, self-awareness is the first thing to go when the brain is injured.

By the beginning of November, Riley’s test results where still similar to those of patients who had just suffered a concussion within the past 24 hours, and the doctors agreed that a minor concussion had turned major because Riley had continued to play after the blow to his head.

Treatment for brain trauma is “dark therapy;” no light, no sound, no stimulation. Pretty awful for a 14 year old boy, huh? Loss of impulse control is a symptom of concussion, and keeping Riley calm and lying down in the dark required that I never leave his side. One day while I showered, Ri got up and ended up hitting his head again.

The concussion symptoms worsened, and he lost his ability to balance.  He became giggly, loopy, and had no short term memory.  It was a lot like living with a serious stoner.

Again, Riley’s condition failed to improve, and in December he was admitted to the hospital when he started convulsing.  It was during Riley’s hospitalization that Jake hit rock bottom.

And tomorrow, I will tell you the rest.

It’s not a stroke

I think this is a good idea; how could it not be a good idea to educate children about the symptoms of stroke?  After all, the faster a stroke is recognized and treated, the better the chances of recovery,  and so more people in any household knowing the signs of stroke is better, right?  Right,  in theory.  In actuality it only helps if  the people educated on the symptoms of stroke are of sound mind, and I think we can all agree that middle school-aged children are not of  sound mind.

Novant Health: arming 6th graders with too much information.

Any parent could have told Novant Health that the result of educating eleven year olds on the symptoms of  stroke was going to be, well… Blogosphere, I’ve been diagnosed with stroke symptoms several times in the past few weeks.  It’s just all-stroke, all the time.  And I don’t want to make a joke of this, because what if I do have one someday?  I’ll be lying on the kitchen floor, the stroke damage becoming more permanent with every passing second, while my children navigate around me, saying “Oh, Mom’s just messing with us again.  Whatsa matter?  You paralyzed, Mom?”

And so, with every muscle spasm or foot fallen to sleep, I submit to Matt’s stroke test.

“STOP!” Matt commands. “Smile!”

I smile.

“Hold it, hold it,” he says, as he checks first one cheek and then the other, comparing them for symmetry.

We go through all the steps of the test, finishing once I’ve clearly enunciated the words  ”You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

I’m hoping that Matt will mellow once this information is no longer so novel, much as he did after going through the school’s D (drug) A (abuse) R (resistance) E (education) program last year.   After his D.A.R.E. education, and newly armed with more knowledge of illegal drug use than your average flophouse junkie,  it took a year for that program’s effects to fade.  A year before I could pour the occasional glass of chianti and not have my son react by looking at me–a haunted, crack-baby look in his eyes– and asking, “Moooom?  Are you an alcoholic?”

On the other hand, many parents are probably unaware that their children have been involved in Novant Health’s stroke awareness program.  Were they to know this, they  might appreciate a bit more concern as they are lying paralyzed on their kitchen floors, thinking: “I’m lying paralyzed on the kitchen floor and you’re asking me for more ice cream? Did you not learn F.A.S.T.? Do the T, child, the T!”

I’m just saying that perhaps the people at Novant Health, when they decided to sponsor this educational unit in the local schools, were on drugs or something. Because there are good reasons why we don’t put eleven year olds in charge of our major medical decisions.

I like liberty!

“Why don’t you guys come up for dinner?”  Karen asks.

“Oh, that would be great, ” I say.  Karen’s Dad is in town, and it will be nice to see him. ” What can I bring?”

“A ring.  You can bring a ring. ” says Karen.  ”A solid gold ring, with the Bells of Canterbury on it.”

“Piece of cake,” I say.

“And I want the bells LIFE SIZED–”

“Oh honey, I was going to run to Canterbury to get you the ACTUAL bells, and mount them right on the ring for you.”

“Well,” says Karen, “that would be nice!”

I am thoughtful when designing my pretend, ridiculous jewelry.

“Or!” I say,  ”Or!  Maybe the Liberty Bell, instead?  It’s closer.”

“Ohhh, I like liberty,” says Karen.

“OK, then.  I’ll go get the Liberty Bell, and I’ll mount it on a ring for you and bring it to dinner.  Anything else?”

“Yes,” says Karen, “I want the word ‘LIBERTY’ written on the ring.  On the outside.”

“No problem.  In big letters?”

“Yes, an inch high.  And, I’d also like the poem from The Statue Of Liberty inscribed on the inside of the ring.”

“The ‘bring us your poor, your huddled masses‘ poem?”  I ask.   I need to be clear about what poem it is that I’m inscribing.

“Yes.  That one.  The whole poem.  On the inside.”

“Sure!  I can totally do that!  Anything else?”

“I want all the ‘i ‘s’ dotted.  With diamonds.”

“OK.  So.   Gold, Liberty Bell, the word ‘LIBERTY,’ the huddled masses poem, diamonds for the dots over the ‘i ‘s’, by dinnertime tonight. Is that all?”

“Yes,” says Karen.  ”And I’d like you to deliver it on a white horse.”

“Naked, a la Lady Godiva?”

“Yes.”  Says Karen.

“And your price range?  What’s your budget?”

“Five dollars.”

I think that’s fair.

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Waiting quietly

“You’re like a hummingbird,” Karen told me, years ago, “and the rest of the world is made of starfish.”

She’s right, of course.  And others have, unprompted,  made the same comparison: I’m like a hummingbird.

My mind goes a million miles a minute as I zip about in different directions.  A million miles a minute, all the time, except when I’m asleep.  Being on turbo, my mind plays with every thought, every idea, every feeling, exploring it until it comes to its natural conclusion, quickly.   But thoughts, ideas, and feelings usually affect other people–starfish– at a much slower pace.  Left alone, they often come to the same conclusion as I did, just a bit later.

But, it’s the waiting.  I’m not good at the waiting.  I’m not good at sitting on my hands while others puzzle through at their own pace.  FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, can’t we just GET THERE?  CAN’T YOU SEE IT?

And in my impatience, I have trouble staying silent, waiting quietly, and in a way that lets life unfold as it would if I would just……wait quietly.

Tiaras and fake babies

Pointing to a display of rhinestone and pearl-encrusted plastic tiaras, I tell Karen,  ”You know, Ima wear me one of them ti-aahh-ras when me and DaWyane get married, ’cause DaWayne  says I’m his princess. “

We’ve  stopped by AC Moore to pick up gesso, and we’re shocked to find they now have a wedding craft aisle.  The aisle is full of….. well, it’s full of really questionable items, blogosphere.  No part of your bridal attire should come from this aisle, and I don’t care that AC Moore says otherwise.  They lie.

Wistfully fingering the tiara, I confide, “We just wanna wait ’til L’il DaWayne’s  outta diapers.”

Karen nods.  Tiaras and potty-trained babies are a reasonable part of wedding plans.

“I wore a tiara when  me and Harlan got hitched,” she says.  ”It was pink with real faux diamonds.”   Karen holds her hands up to her head,  gesturing to indicate that the pink faux diamonds were the size of eggs.

“Ohhhh!” I say, ” Pink diamonds?  Like JLo!”

“Yes m’am,” agrees Karen.  ”They’re the classiest kind of faux diamonds.”

A  woman standing in the adjacent framing department is covertly watching us, listening, perplexed.  Poor dear.  Eavesdropping is tacky, and Karen and I are too classy to notice.

“DaWayne said he and Harlan was goin’ bowling,”  I tell Karen.  I shake my head and purse my lips,   “But they got that whole case of Budweiser, and  I just know they’re going to a titty bar.”

“I know it,” she commiserates, “I told Harlan if I find ONE MORE PAIR OF PANTIES in the pick-up truck….”  She trails off,  and I’m left wondering what Harlan’s fate will be if he’s caught packing panties ever again. It won’t be good.

My heart breaks for Karen; pretend Harlan can be a dog.  My pretend DaWayne is too much of a gentleman to bring home panties when he goes to the strip club.

We’ve moved on from the wedding department, and as we walk through the store we comment on various items we pass, speculating on how we might use them.

Glitter-covered feather boas would be perfect with the tube tops I picked up at The Walmart: L’il DaWayne was NOT good in The Walmart, I tell Karen,  ”…and I told L’il DaWayne: ‘ You eat any more of them Cheetos and I’m gonna SMACK YOU!’ You gettin’ orange all over my tube tops!”

Day-glo panties made for the application of decals: “Ima put ‘PROPERTY OF DA WAYNE’ straight cross my butt,” I tell Karen.

She nods, but she’s clearly not in the mood to consider the same for her Harlan, what with all the stripper panties in the pick-up.  Now I feel badly about pointing out the panties;  panties are a sensitive subject in Harlan and Karen’s pretend marriage.

Plaster columns and pedestals: “We used to have one of them pedestals on each side the door,” I tell Karen, “and my DaWayne used to make me stand on ‘em all the time, and I said ‘DA WAYNE!  I cannot be getting up and down and up and down all day!’  We got rid of ‘em cause they kept falling over on the baby, but DaWayne says I’ll always be on a pedestal to him. But I don’t even know what that means..”

“Harlan says the only reason to put a woman on a pedestal is to look up her skirt,” Karen responds.

Karen is just jealous, but I’m secretly tickled that my pretend DaWayne wants to look up my skirt.

“Well, I am definitely gonna need them decal panties now!”

www.vakadesign.com

Stop calling him that

“No, he’s actually not a medieval dickweed,  so stop calling him that.”

Riley, Bill and Ted: Not medieval dickweeds.

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