x-posted to Miraclebean...
The See-Saw of BiPolar....
And as you all know the most upsetting moments come at the most inconvenient times.
Last weekend -- really starting Thursday evening -- Bean's younger brother, Tank, was ill. We weren't sure what was going on. Stomach Ache? Flu? Constipation? Weirdness without a Fever...Turns out that he had appendicitius. So by the time everyone figured out what was going on -- it was a middle-of-the-night surgery in the wee hours of Sunday night/Monday morning.
As it happens, both Bean and Pnut were staying the night Saturday at friends. This is the "good" friend, between the two he mainly hangs with, so I had much less anxiety. And Jay's mom has a head on her shoulders. When Bean came home Sunday, conveniently between shifting from one hospital to the other for Tank, he had a twitch. His head was jerking and his eyes blinking rapidly. I looked and he had missed meds on Thursday and Friday. Two days. Then I find out at youth group he had THREE -- count them THREE -- monster drinks and if that wasn't bad enough TWO mountain dews. Uh, do you not remember the last time you had those products what it did to you child? I talked to Jay's mom. He was in trouble too for making poor choices at the "Teen Night" event.
So, while I'm trying to deal with Tank's issues at hospital (HELLO, a 9-yr-old having surgery!), I get calls from the school on Monday and his twitching (which is now lessened but still present) is distracting the class. What's going on? Well, in short, dear teacher, my son is an idiot who doesn't care about his own health. He's beeing a lazy shiftless surly teenager who thiniks he knows it all. He was in high manic mode on Saturday night, due in part ot normal shifts and his med lapse and OVERINDULGENCE in caffeine, which Bean should consider an illegal substence for his body. Then when Tank is released from the hospital late afternoon on Monday, I come home to find that Bean didn't take his meds again that day. I was livid. So, if I'm not there to kindly coax him or conversely drill sgt. him into taking the meds, he won't take them? This is really aggravating.
Then I find out Tuesday a.m. that he "donated" the special-cost and installed kick stand I got for his bike. I tell him that he needs to get it back from the bike shop. So when he gets home that afternoon, he said he retrieved it from the shop, but they were too busy to put it on. And somewhere between the bike shop and home he lost the stand. Obviously he's showing some not so good signs.
As of Tuesday at bed time, the ticks had gone away -- finally flushed out of his system because I harped and harped (which I HATE doing) to drink water and good foods Monday night through Tuesday night.
I'm so irritated with him, and of course, worried, because I cannot be with him always and as he trys to give himself more freedom as he moves towards adulthood, I certainly cannot continue to be his substitute frontal lobe. I have not a clue how to get him to start taking responsibility for what he does and doesn't put into his body.
On top of it all, he's been highly disrespectful to me and his sister. He has been very kind to his ill brother -- and hardly balked when he had to give up his bed which is low to the ground and easier for post-surgery Tank to get in and out of. But when it comes to me and his sister, he's immediately angry -- no matter what the situation.
There was also an incident Friday evening where he strode through the house naked because he couldn't find any clean clothes -- making his sister, particularly, uncomfortable. Even though the weekend before while I was doing laundry I noticed hardly any of them were Bean's clothes. And I told him he was going to find himself in a spot where he didn't have any clean clothes. I was happy to wash them, but it was his responsibility to get them into the laundry so that I could wash them. It wasn't my job to hunt through his room and get them to the laundry. So by Friday, he had no clean clothes, but it hardly occurred to him to put his damn bathrobe on. Again, unusual behavior for Bean. But given that he wasn't on his meds regularly, it's hard to know if it's something different in his behavior or just an imbalance because his meds were off.
So that's it. Not what I need right now with a convalescing 9 year old, a cranky boss, and a demanding school load right now. I'm taking summer off as far as classes go. And hopefully everyone's health will hold up so I can focus on getting Bean back into some level of stability.
Right now I'm ready to strangle him. /sigh.