The Parents that our Children Create…….

So did you know that you can go into parenting with all the best of intentions…. but it’s still totally possible to become the parent you swore you’d never be? Yup…. that’s right. Your very own child can create the parent you have hated the thought of being your entire life….. it’s almost as though they have their hand up your arse and they are the puppeteer and you are their puppet. How do I know this?  I created such a child myself. I know I didn’t ask for a kid with special needs….. nor did my child ask to have them.  But none the less here we are…….. I have written many blogs about my girl Ruby, and it is common knowledge that she can shit me up the wall! I do love her to pieces, but her incredible ability to push that big red button, over and over and over and over again, never ceases to astound me. These holidays we had to find an alternative to her medication. I knew we were in for a rough trot…. but it turns out that I still, as per usual, can underestimate just how tough things can be for her. She has been on an anti anxiety tablet that she has “needed” to be on for five years. I am happy to share this taboo topic because we tried everything we could under the sun to help her without medication for seven long years….. and her OCD and severe anxiety was controlling her little life, and it was an horrendous thing to watch.  The day we discovered this miracle tablet, her need to tap the rungs of the ladder twenty different ways to climb up into her bunk each night stopped, the chronic hand washing that saw her cracked and bleeding hands re opening and bleeding multiple times a day stopped, her fear that the very ceiling above her head would most certainly kill her in her sleep stopped, and the ridiculous rigmarole that she had to endure every day by having to walk out of school each afternoon using the exact same steps she had used at 8.45am that morning stopped…… Life started to become enjoyable again. Her Aspie ways will never change much, such as her inappropriate use of language at the most inappropriate of times, the cold and short way she can sometimes react to the most emotional of situations, the way she views the rules and this world (they are HER rules and this is HER world) well these are the things we have had to suck the hell up and accept to be quite honest. Poppy herself at the ripe old age of eight reminds me often that “She doesn’t mean it Mum, it’s just the Asperger’s…..” “You know she would help you with that if it wasn’t for her anxiety” etc etc. She has become my Trenton in her wise and beyond her years understanding of this sister, from whom has by most parts treated her like shit for most of her short life. Although it is clear that she loves her dearly, and Ruby reciprocates this love….. because they have a very special relationship in that Ruby knows that Poppy will always stick up for her, even against me. I wish I had a little more patience to take on Poppy’s advice. Over the last 8 months it has slowly become clearer and clearer that Ruby’s miracle tablet is no longer working….. and through a series of unfortunate situations, it took me six months to see a new Pediatrician, to then be referred onto a Psychiatrist, to then wait to be contacted by said Psychiatrist…. and now  months later we finally have access to this $480 an hour Psychiatrist, who thankfully has already proven himself to be worth every cent. Luckily for us, being one fairly fucked up family, we hit the threshold with Medicare months ago, so it turns out we get 80% back…. A small victory, but a victory none the less! Anyway, this incredible Psychiatrist Bill, has already taught me more in three sessions about how the body takes in and releases medications than I have learned in 7 years of seeing Pediatricians for her disability. We have her booked into the Royal Children’s Hospital next Wed at midday to have her in the operating theatre to be given the happy gas just so we can take some of her blood. Yes, that is what a child with severe anxiety has to go through just to have her blood tested. We are all hoping that once the DNA tests have been done, we will know exactly which family of medicines we can and cannot give her for life. So no more of what we’ve been through for the last fortnight of trialing new medication, and withdrawing from her tablets. Let me tell you a little of what we’ve experienced. Rubes’ anxiety hit an all time high during the last two terms of school. After parent teacher interviews we all discovered that between all of us (her two teaching aides, her teacher, the Vice principal and myself) the questions she was asking at school and at home probably clocked the thousand questions a day mark. Every piece of dust, dirt, goo, wet thing, cotton, carpet, stain on the table was surely something that would kill her. Whether it be via her hand while she ate lunch, or via her drink bottle that had sat near it, or via the air that we breathe, it would surely float up into her body somehow…. she was absolutely positively sure that it would kill her. The latest anxiety being that these things would enter her brain via her nose. Bed times have been hell because every time she lay upon her pillow or moved the doona and dust flew around it would take her another 40 minutes of questions to settle again. This part of her anxiety has never gotten to me as much as it has recently. I have been trying to teach her how to self soothe. How to use the “Catastrophe Scale” and really work out if something is as bad as she really thinks. But it’s not possible to calm yourself down when every inch of your being is telling you if you don’t ask the questions, these things will happen and you will die. She hit a peak a week ago after a week on a medicine that was great during the day, but kept her up at nights…. so after a week of no sleep she flipped her lid and became extremely irritable… to the point where rationalizing was just not something I could do with her anymore. Out of utter desperation on Sunday I gave her some tablets to chill her out, or even better, knock her out…..  and I even took the same dose as her to prove that she would be okay.  She was not. Once she felt the effects she decided that I had murdered her. She asked me why I had given her this drug that was closing her throat over and would absolutely stop her heart from beating that night? She writhed around on the bed moaning and crying and telling me what things to hand out to what friends once she was gone. She said she was glad that she’d be with Daddy again at least. I was absolutely gobsmacked. I just wanted this kid to sleep and wake up and be rational. I tried soothing her, talking it out with her, hugging her tightly……. and ultimately I cracked it at her for even thinking that anything I ever do to her is not with her best interests in mind……. but she never took it in. Three long hours later she passed out. She woke at midday the next day…. the first thing she said to me was “That was the best sleep I’ve had in years.” And so ended another shit first week of the school holidays where all other families I know are off enjoying each others time and company. We entered the second week waiting for a new medication that had to be made up at a compound pharmacist, so it wasn’t till Wednesday this week that we got our hands on it. Every day for her must have felt like a week. In the end I sent her off to Mum’s, because the cracks in my not even close to patient parenting had not just started showing but had engulfed me…. and instead of being calm and rationalizing with myself that this crappy time would pass….. I just lost my cool waiting for some medication to possibly help, or for her to miraculously stop irritating me to no end, and neither was going to happen anytime soon…… You do get to the point where you realise that there really will be no end to certain things, and this I’m afraid will be one of them. So here we are…… nearly at the end of another fabulous school holiday break, not feeling well relaxed in any way, but fucking exhausted and brain fried.  But hey, we have survived yet another crappy test from this old life of ours…… keep em’ rolling in I say! It hasn’t taken us down yet…. so I guess the odds are with us for once. Happy Grand Final weekend peoples. xxxx