Rants from Work

When I head to work for the week, it usually consumes those three days. This week was full of undiagnosed kids who were expelled from school, mood swinging kids who potentially could have been admitted in patient unit and the 5 year old who killed the pet hamster.

Good news? I survived the week, well really only three days, but it can feel like a week.

My poor mood swinging kids I have seen for some time now, but getting the psychiatrist in our office to actually change medication seems to be an act of Congress. He has a 12 year old on 4 different medications, but are they truly helping? He is still swinging. Some days I would like to wipe all their medications clean and start from the very basic again like a mood stabilizer, and not anti seizure and anti psychotics when they are not having seizures or psychotic episodes. I am by no means a psychiatrist, nor an expert in medication, but if things are not working, we better go back to the drawing board, which does not mean continuing to add more and more medication.

My next rant is the poor 5 year old that killed the pet hamster. Our company has a 10 page assessment that has a multitude of questions for possible disorders, conditions, symptoms and characteristics. Before the session I looked at the assessment completed by another therapist and there is not one box checked, or one comment. To look at the assessment one would think this child was perfectly normal, but it is not normal for a 5 year old to kill the hamster! What did you ask in the assessment??? During my assessment, which actually should have been their first therapy session it became very clear this little 5 year old has Asperger's disorder.

I could probably open my own specialty practice working with those with Asperger's and be scheduled full. Not sure why there is such a large number of kids with Asperger's or if diagnosing them is just improving. Either way it is very interesting, plus I love little Aspie kids, although they do not think in our neurotypical world their world is pretty fascinating.

A First

It's official, and it's a first. Carson came home with a phone number from a girl in school. This little girl gave him this slip of paper and asked him to call her if he wants to come over for a play date. I think that is just too funny. As a 7 year old boy of course, he was very embarrassed, and it was so fun to tease him for a bit.

A Day in the Office

Was today a day, in my office of course. It stated with an extremely sad case of a lady with what the psychiatrist diagnosed as a mood disorder, that I felt was a bipolar disorder with psychosis (she was hearing a voice in her head). To make this more painful was that she had just given birth 5 weeks previous. As she sat and told me what was going on with her, her tiny baby was nestled into his car seat. She talked about anger, anxiety, mood swings, depression and the fact she did not feel she was "bonding" with her baby. She was taking care of him and nurturing him but could feel no connection to him.

The next client was a 13 year old girl who had been expelled from junior high for drinking alcohol in class. Wow, that was a tough one. All she could do was hold her head in her hands and try not to cry.

I had a few kiddos who needed extreme prompting to participate in any therapy activity, and sad to say, I was glad for my last cancellation of the day. Notes to write, calls to return to families, oh and also those dreaded calls to Child Protective Services, gotta love that to end the Friday.

Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Heart Break

So sad, one of my Asperger's clients, who is in junior high, just experienced his first heart break.

It was so hard to watch him break down in tears, hiding his head into his mother's shoulder, and watching his protective mom's reaction to her son's first broken heart.

Social situations are extremely difficult for those with Asperger's and then to add a little heart break to it, just heart wrenching. They try so hard to fit in and navigate their way in this complex social world that is so not like their Asperger world. Then to be able to properly experience and express emotion in a socially appropriate way is huge.

I hope his heart heals soon.

One of Those Nights

Tonight has been one of those nights.

A night with valuable time spent looking in every nook and cranny for something. Tonight it happens to be the extra iphone clear protectant film I was in search of. I knew I had extra lying around the house, in particular the junk drawer. Although my film has been in great need of changing, I had held off until my new custom hard cover came.

Well, the cover came today. Yippee! Except that is was cracked. Shit birds! I thought I would change the film anyway, and ended up spending a half hour looking for the darn extra film cover. I looked everywhere top to bottom and bottom to top again. Of course I found it located in the crock pot, that is the first place I should have looked right?

It appears the junk drawer got to full of junk and it slid out the back of the drawer and fell into the crock pot.

To sum up, I have a new film cover, but a case that needs to be shipped back.

No Teeth

The other day I was looking at Carson and saw something a little funny in his mouth. I asked him to open his mouth for me, and I saw his bottom two front adult teeth growing behind his baby front teeth. How strange, he almost looks like a shark with his rows of teeth.
I got him to the dentist who said it was no rush to get them out, but they needed to come out in about two weeks. No rush huh? He told us we could either wiggle the baby teeth, or Carson could do it, or we could have a friend or family pull it after it has been wiggled silly. What the dentist did not realize is that as he was wiggling Carson's tooth I was getting nauseated and ready to vomit.

So I made the call to have the dentist extract those little teeth, because Lord knows there was no way I was wiggling and pulling.

Carson was a great sport, he was numbed, injected and given laughing gas. Apparently parents cannot ask for a whiff or two of the gas. I thought that was only fair as I was just as traumatized with this process as Carson was. Those teeth were pulled within minutes, and have had no real problems.

The final outcome is pictured below. Carson has two very open holes from the baby teeth and his adult teeth are behind his little holes.

Now that this little, but expensive episode is complete, I will be on the hunt for a new dentist. This dental office is a pediatric office and they have a fabulous kid friendly waiting room, toys, video games and TV galore. Plus every child walks out with a hand full of toys, stickers, tattoos and balloons, and when I paid my bill, I could see why the practice was so lavish. $315 for x-rays, cleaning and two teeth extractions! My kids have toys at home, and TV, sorry kiddos, no video games, and we get little trinket toys from our kids meals all the time. What I don't have is the stomach of steel to yank out teeth or the proper dental instruments. That is really all I want to pay for, don't inflate my bill to help kid accessorize your office.

ADHD Piles

For all you neurotypical people out there, this post will probably make no sense to you; nor will it be worth figuring out why us non neurotypical people do what we do.

These pictures help to depict the "piles" of stuff that ADHD people usually have. ADHD people think they are great organizers, and we have tried every organization system known, but for me, it seems I always revert back to my piles.

In this first picture there is a pile of work stuff I had to take out of my car in order to pack for our road trip, plus all the stuff that had accumulated in the car during the trip. It was so neatly organized in bags and backpacks until the car actually started moving, then it was a free for all. So, here is the first pile, and the aftermath of work and traveling crap.

Then the pile seems to get sorted into new piles on the kitchen table.


Then it slowly moves to a pile on the stairs, where each child has to put away their belongings or I organize them into the garbage can.

I have no idea why I cannot just put it away the first time while it is actually in my hand. Then I think about it and believe that it will take longer if I have to go back and forth to get stuff put away, so I seem to sort, pile and put away.

This same concept applies to laundry, to the washer, to the dryer, folded in the basket, sorted on my bed, then taken to a pile in each kids room, to hopefully, eventually, be put away.