Homework Anxiety

 It has been over three weeks since I broke my ribs.  In that time school has begun for the kids, my grandmother, their great grandmother (Oma to them) passed away at 98 years and I have finally started working again.  Unfortunately in that same time my son has already slacked off in school and is behind in several classes and almost failing one.

     That brings me to homework.  This has been a struggle for the last few years.  I usually let him start the year and step back to see if he will do it.  Then I find out he is way behind and he has to struggle to catch up.  So this year I am on him from the beginning.  I check his homework daily and still he manages to not get it all done.

      Today I found out he lied to me about doing an assignment.  He told me he typed it at school and

printed it at school.  His teacher told me he never handed it in.  I also found out the teacher gave him an extra two days and added to the assignment.  It is the same assignment with an extra 9 sentences added to it.

      Because he lied and I told his teacher he would turn in the original assignment I wanted him to print it after the original 8 sentences and again after the added 9 sentences.  No real extra work, and both assignments would be handed in.  I contacted his teacher and he agreed with my homework solution.  My son however freaked out and was convinced he would be in trouble for handing in the extra page.

     When I say he freaked.  I mean full blown panic attack, hyperventilating to the point that he

almost passed out.  He was dizzy and unconsolable.  I called his doctor and got the service.  A doctor from another state called and suggested all the things I was already doing.  He wouldn't use a paperboy, because he was sure it wouldn't work.  Every suggestion I gave he fought.

      Finally I had to take him to Urgent Care.  It was over 40 minutes and he was in bad shape.  I drove there while listening to his rapid breathing.  Talking to him, trying to keep him conscious.  He was scared.  I was scared.  Okay I think we both were terrified.

When we stumbled into Urgent Care, he couldn't even walk on his own.  I had to hold him up and I sat him down while trying to stay calm.  The person behind the desk got up and got help immediately.    I didn't even get to check him in before they saw him.  I wanted to be with him, but I needed to give them our information.  That was the first of three separations.

     Then they needed to ask me what happened while they got him settled in a room.  So again we were separated.  I had to explain about the homework and the argument.  It sounded so petty with him so upset that his anxiety caused him to hyperventilate.  I finally got to the room where he was.  He was too hot and scared.  This had never happened to him before.  He wanted hugs but he was too uncomfortable to be touched.  My poor baby!

     Then the doctor came in, and asked to talk to me outside of the room.  I didn't want to leave P but I had too.  Then we walked all the way across the building to another room and he closed the door.  Now I was nervous.  Why did he take me so far away from my son?  Was there something really wrong that they needed to tell me so far away from my son so my reaction wouldn't freak him out?

     He just sat down with me and listened.  He wanted to know what triggered the anxiety.  Even
better he didn't want to give my son more meds.  I told him all the things I did to help and they were all what I should have done.  He needs to learn to soothe himself when he feels the anxiety.

     Another doctor came in and told Patrick to try all the things I asked him to do earlier to stop the anxiety and slow his breathing down.  Of course P listened to her.  Deep inside I liked knowing that I was doing what needed to be done.  Now I just need him to believe that those techniques will work.

                    Added September 30, 2015 - My ex-husband has gleefully decided that the panic attack my son had was my fault.  He won't allow our son to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist.  He is willing for P to learn meditation or relaxation techniques if he does;t have to pay anything for them.  It is very frustrating to no be able to get your son the help he needs because the other parent blocks your efforts.  

I Cleaned My Room!

 

 

I am surprisingly happy to say that the med dosage change is going well.  I have not gone insane.  No major mood swings, both my children are still alive and I feel good.  I have to admit I was expecting some issues and I am happy that I was wrong.  In fact the only side effect I have been experiencing is that I am more tired than usual.  Hopefully this means I don't really need them.

     The side effects of not taking them when I am supposed too are less than  before.  Honestly that makes this all worth while.  I think I stayed on Cymbalta as long as I did because I was afraid of the withdrawal effects.  At times it has been so bad that I couldn't function.  It wasn't depression it was the dizzy lightheaded feeling that overcomes you until there is nothing else you can think of.  I won't miss that feeling ever.

     I tackled my bedroom this week too.  I know — how boring!  Why am I sharing this with you?  First of all I never have been one to clean my bedroom.  I love a room of chaos I think.  When I was a child my room was a mess.  If I don't make an effort to clean it chaos wins everytime.  Well, there have been time when I was so depressed that I couldn't get out of bed.  I wouldn't do anything.  I wouldn't clean.  I wouldn't be me!  So it thrills me that when I am reducing my depression meds that I cleaned and rearranged my room.

Okay I admit it, I had ulterior motives.  My bookshelves are full and some of the things I own do not have a home in my room.  I have gone from a house, to a duplex to a smaller house and now to a room in a house.  My things have been weeded through, given away, thrown away and sold.  I look around my room and know that this is basically all I have left.  There are some things here and there elsewhere, but this room is what I and my thing have been reduced too.

     There is not much else I can sell, and believe me I could use the money.  There is not much I have that I don't grasp onto with an iron fist.  I lost so much in the last year losing anything else I view as important is not an option.  So I look at the books on my dresser because there is no room on my bookshelves and I made sure I could fit one more bookshelf in my room.  One more place to be home for things that mean a lot to me.

     So cleaning my room right now is a big deal.  That I wanted to do is a big deal and that my things have a place to go is a bigger deal!  That I am living in a house where the work I do is appreciate is glorious.  When I do the dishes and I get a thanks, my life is perfection.  I don't need my meds anymore.  I just need to be who I am and be around people who appreciate that.

    I need to introduce you to the newest member of my family, this is Hip Hop!  He is so cute and snuggly.  If you have been keeping track there are now two dogs (Tango and Hip Hop), five cats (Simone, Oliver, Cinder, Mitten and Munchkin) and three tarantulas (Hannah Montana, Strawberry and Red Knee) in our house.  I think we officially qualify as a zoo now.

I Have to Empty a What?

Three in the morning my brother wakes me up.  They are home from the emergency room.  Dad's bladder after the surgery needed a break and Dad now has a Foley Catheter in to give his bladder some time off to heal.  Not that there is any great time to learn how to use a Foley Catheter bag, but three in the morning after waking up out of a sound sleep is definitely not the best time.  But I did and lost track of how many times I had to tell Dad that he couldn't remove the catheter.  It had to be uncomfortable, but the pressure was relieved and he was feeling better.  He went right to sleep, I tossed and turned for a while and finally went to sleep.  I am so glad that I had the presence of mind to call off of work the next day.  That is one advantage of being a substitute teacher I can choose not to work if I need to.

I picked up my anxiety meds today, so they were no use to me last night.  I luckily had a guided meditation app on my iPad so I used it a couple times and finally I was able to control my anxiety enough to go to sleep.

I was sure Dad would sleep in this morning.  He went to bed at 3 am, no such luck.  7:00 am he was up bright eyed and bushy tailed.  I however was stumbling around because well I did not sleep well.  Add to that the fact that I don't do mornings well and I took a deep breath and started the day.  I got him downstairs and gave him his meds.  He had his breakfast (The same exact breakfast that ha has every morning, how?), a bottle of water, coffee, and drained the bag into the reservoir.  Now I just had to figure out how to empty the reservoir.

The fun part of the day was convincing Dad that the bag and catheter were necessary.  He was convinced it was an open wound on his leg.  Now there was a plus side to this.  I didn't have to guide him in and out of the bathroom over and over again at night.  Plus I knew when I had to run errands he would sit in his chair and not have to get up.  That means less times I have to help him when he gets lost in the house.

The bag was getting more full.  It was fast approaching.  I was going to have to empty the bag.  I got a bucket and took a deep breath.  I studied the locking mechanism and figured it out.  The bucket was in place and I did it, I opened the latch and the waterfall was unleashed.  The bag was empty and Another one of my fears were conquered.  Now I know I can handle it.  He as to do his part, but I think we can do it.  Still February 21 is ten days away.  How many more times will I have to empty it?

So Many Worries

Tomorrow I need to get my father to the VA hospital at 7 am for bladder surgery.  He has bladder cancer.  He has had it for a long time and it seems more of an annoying cancer than deadly.  Of course that can change.  Every year or so he needs surgery to remove growths from his bladder.  No chemo, no radiation, nothing like that, just surgery every so often.

Of course usually Mom is the one who deals with this.  I only know what I have been told and I found out accidentally.  So I am sure there are things about his cancer that I don't know.  Dad is not a fountain of knowledge on the subject.  Then again he might be but just can't tell me what he knows because he can't get his brain to allow his voice to say the words he wants to say.  Mom can barely talk because of the tracheotomy so it is hard to get information out of her right now.  I wasn't prepared to deal with cancer, then again I wasn't prepared to deal with my mother almost dying five times.

Dad has been out of sorts these last few days.  I know the surgery is on his mind.   He has been getting ready for it for a week now.  Usually he doesn't know what day it is and thinks he needed to go to the hospital for the surgery over and over again.  He has been having more trouble sleeping than usual.  Today he came downstairs after bed to see if I knew his ID number for the VA.  He couldn't remember if he had the number right.

I am worried that I will over sleep.  I don't wake up well, I don't do mornings well.  If I could sleep all day I would.  Maybe I should stay up all night.  Probably not, I am sure driving on the snow covered roads while falling asleep isn't the best idea.  Of course that is just the beginning of my worries.

This is a surgery, he will be put under anesthesia and there is always a chance that he won't wake up.  I made sure to take him to visit Mom today, just in case.  Ugh, I hate even thinking that.  But one thing I have learned in the last few months is in the blink of an eye life can change.  The wind can knock a person over and cause a cascade of one health crisis after another.  A surgery can not go as planned.

Of course the house is quiet tonight it is my ex's night with the kids.  So my mind can easily dwell on all the bad that can happen.  I wish the kids were her to distract me a little.  I almost brought B back home because D was yelling at both kids and she claimed to not know why.  I tried to talk to him to find out what was going on, but he refused to speak to me.  Sometimes he can be just as bad as a pouting child.  So I don't know what was going on.  She wanted to come home and if I didn't have to take Dad to the hospital so early I would have gotten her.

So many worries and I try to focus on the good, the fun and the happy.  I had a visit from a friend today.  We grew up on the same block.  She helped me do some deep cleaning because my hip has been preventing me from doing a lot.  It just doesn't prevent me from worrying!

When It Rains It Pours!

For the last few weeks at school, when they have had school that is, P has been getting regular asthma attacks at school.  Only at school and only at a specific time.  The regularity of it worried me, the timing worried me and the fact that it didn't happen out of school peaked my interest.  He wasn't faking, he was definitely wheezing, the school nurse confirmed it.

My ex was the one the school kept calling.  He would call the doctor and call me.  I felt a bit out of the loop.  I usually take the lead with medical issues.  Usually because I can explain things better and pass along a message clearly.  But with me at my parents house I was not around to take care of my children's medical issues.  I was taking care of my parent's medical issues.

Still the "asthma" attacks nagged at me.  This week started out with another asthma attack.  As usual the meds didn't work and the symptoms eventually went away after a couple of hours.  Usually after school was over.  That night P came up to me and asked me if he had to go to school the next day.  If he goes to immediate care and is kept out late sometimes I would keep him home.  Especially if he didn't get much sleep.  However in this case he was home before school let out and staying home wasn't an option.

He begged me to let him stay home.  He pleaded with me and told me how scared he was about having another attack.  I don't blame him there is not much scarier than not being able to breathe.  My mom just went through that with an obstructed trachea.  She ended up needed a tracheotomy.  He was in tears and there was real fear in his voice.  He clung to me with a death grip.  He wasn't being silly and this was not fake.  He was afraid to go back to school.

The next day I called his pediatrician and made an appointment for him.  This was more than asthma. I was sure he was having anxiety issues.  I had no idea how bad it was though.  Luckily I was on the right track.  Luckily I made that phone call and luckily I told my ex that I was taking P to the doctors and I was taking an afternoon of work off to do it.  He didn't think it was urgent and didn't want to pay the copay.  I would pay the full amount for the visit if I had to.

The appointment was for the next day.  That day I also found out that P had failed English last quarter  of school.  He wasn't handing in his assignments.  He was misplacing textbooks and assignments in school.  His teachers were concerned and now I was too.  I was almost in tears.  The last few months added to this was about all I could take.  Still I was at work and I had to pick up the kids from art.  Back to the real world where I had to act like everything was okay and teach some math and reading.

That night I was mad!  My dad went to bed and P asked to watch TV.  Seriously I find out he is lying to me about homework, and failing English.  NO!  No, TV for you!  He is in tears and screaming at me, telling me how much he hates me (to which I always reply that I love him) and that I am the worst Mom EVER!!!

Even after I went upstairs I could hear him crying and I remembered what it was like when I was a child and I thought my parents were the worst and how alone I felt when that happened.  Of course I went back downstairs and called him over to the couch.  He sat next to me and I hugged him, just a tight hug and told him that I loved him.  That was exactly what he needed.

Before I knew it he was telling me that he couldn't handle school.  He had three locker combinations to remember, he couldn't remember which binder was for each class, where all his classes where, who his teachers were, what his homework was, what he needed to hand in to whom, where he needed to go after school, what house he would go to, when would he see Dad, when would he see me, what items were at each house...  He is in sixth grade.  He was overwhelmed and I think almost ready to pop.

To hear your 11 year old say that he can't handle school over and over again and to know from to quiver in his voice and the uncontrollable sobbing that this was real was almost more than I could handle.  I listened to him and told him I would do anything I could to help him out.  I held him and let him cry in my arms for two hours.  I made sure I was there for him and I was so glad that I made that doctors appointment for the next day.  Even the next morning when he went off to school and I saw the fear in my eyes I knew that I was on the right track to finding a way to help him.

Right off the bat at the doctors office I told P's Pediatrician that I thought it was anxiety and he immediately aground with me.  He picked up on the fact that my ex was not someone who understood anxiety or how it can effect the body.  He had no idea.  Yes, my ex was fired by our psychologist.  I had already called my psychologist, who had helped P before his diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome.  I also had emailed (it bounced back), called (I was transferred to another extension) and walked into my son's school psychologist office to let him know my suspicions and to see if the school could help P out.

Everything I had done was exactly what his pediatrician wanted me to do.  He was hoping P could be seen soon by the psychologist, luckily I was going there that night.  It had been a few years since I had last gone, but my world has abruptly changes these last few months so I gave him a call.  HELP!!

He also agreed with me and because he can't get P in for at least 4 weeks he refereed us to another practice.  P needs help now.  Of course when I told D about all of this he heard it with reservations.  He wants nothing to do with the mental health services.  I hope that P doesn't pick up on that.

That night P offered to do the dishes, not something he usually does.  He was so loving and snuggly and happy.  He knew I had spent the day starting the process to get him help.  I listened and let him talk.  I didn't over react and reassured him.  Still I couldn't help but think, "When it rains it pours!"  How much more can I take?   Luckily I called my psychologist and I think I am going to need him!