Looking for the humor
Sometimes you have to take the funny aspects of life where you can find them. I am actually still chuckling about this.
Last night was a dreadful... just dreadful... night for R. Sometimes her anxiety ramps up so high that she appears to be psychotic. She certainly acts psychotic. Insomnia, screaming, wandering, you name it. Most unpleasant. It started at about bedtime, and when we said it was time to get in bed, she ramped up immediately. I have mentioned that both her neurologist and I firmly believe that her seizures are not true seizures, but psychogenic ones, caused by extreme anxiety. They look for all the world like tonic-clonic seizures, except I can talk to her and the seizure will stop and she will acknowledge my presence. This is just not possible with a real seizure. Understandably, because of the psychotic aspects of the seizures (and because they were still believed to be true epileptic seizures), the adults around her before us were not anxious to start the seizure/psychotic/anxiety cycle. As a result, she has learned deep inside her head somewhere (I know it's not purposeful) that to complain of eye pain (what has been her typical pre-seizure aura), has had adults scrambling to head it off at the pass. This has been a useful tool in her coping toolbox, but like much coping learned through trauma, is not ideal.
We have decided that we need to take all anxiety and emotion about seizures, impending seizures, medicine, and eye pain completely off the table. At least on our part. Complaints of eye pain are now typically met with statements of, "Gee, that's too bad. I'm sorry. Did you have a bad dream?" or some such statement trying to identify the real cause of what is going on in her head. It is a little disconcerting to her since we are so completely off her typical and expected script for such occasions.
Last night, when she was being particularly difficult, and was even starting to twitch a bit, I matter-of-factly said, "It looks as though you are going to have a seizure. Why don't you tell me when it's done?" And sat and waited.
I'm not really the non-caring parent that this makes me out to be, because here is what happened next. The twitching stopped, she looked at me, and then a torrent of angry, screaming words in Mandarin came out of her mouth while she glared at me. I was pretty darn sure that I was being cussed out in Mandarin.
At about that same time, Y. and H. came into the room to get into bed. Y. hears what R. is saying, she stops, her eyes get really, really big, and she says in a sort of awestruck voice, "Those are really, really bad words." I assured her that I didn't need her to try to translate them for me, at which she looked relieved. (I'm pretty sure that her G-rated existence in English would also make that particular feat pretty impossible.) The whole thing was so ludicrous at that moment, that I was actually laughing. This at least had the effect of stopping the Mandarin swearing from the other bed.
I think (hope) that this all means that the wean really is waking up something inside R.'s head. By not being doped with anti-psychotic drugs and seizure medicine, she is forced to not live in a numb and vacant land. She has to come to terms with her past and present. There has been precious little grieving for China on her part, aside from random statements of missing certain people. But those are usually uttered as a passing comment and then she moves on. Last night, after the swearing, came an endless litany of needing and wanting to go back to China. Angry, demanding, unhappy words. They are the kind of statements which you would expect to have heard about a year ago.
There have been a lot of unpleasant events and emotions that have happened to this child which she has successfully stuffed away, and coping comes through not having to deal with them. The drugs certainly helped, and she still nearly constantly asks for more drugs. I'm afraid that as she loses the veil of cognition-dampening medication, she is going to have to also face the past. I'm sorry that she, in a sense, has to live through it all twice. But I also know that there is no way she can move forward and become as whole a person as she can without doing this hard work. J. and I both hope, though, that the insomnia is not a long-term coping mechanism.
__________
And for those of you who missed it the first time I linked to it, I have a new article published. It could use a little clicking and sharing love. 4 Times I Wasn't a Perfect Parent and What You Can Learn
Last night was a dreadful... just dreadful... night for R. Sometimes her anxiety ramps up so high that she appears to be psychotic. She certainly acts psychotic. Insomnia, screaming, wandering, you name it. Most unpleasant. It started at about bedtime, and when we said it was time to get in bed, she ramped up immediately. I have mentioned that both her neurologist and I firmly believe that her seizures are not true seizures, but psychogenic ones, caused by extreme anxiety. They look for all the world like tonic-clonic seizures, except I can talk to her and the seizure will stop and she will acknowledge my presence. This is just not possible with a real seizure. Understandably, because of the psychotic aspects of the seizures (and because they were still believed to be true epileptic seizures), the adults around her before us were not anxious to start the seizure/psychotic/anxiety cycle. As a result, she has learned deep inside her head somewhere (I know it's not purposeful) that to complain of eye pain (what has been her typical pre-seizure aura), has had adults scrambling to head it off at the pass. This has been a useful tool in her coping toolbox, but like much coping learned through trauma, is not ideal.
We have decided that we need to take all anxiety and emotion about seizures, impending seizures, medicine, and eye pain completely off the table. At least on our part. Complaints of eye pain are now typically met with statements of, "Gee, that's too bad. I'm sorry. Did you have a bad dream?" or some such statement trying to identify the real cause of what is going on in her head. It is a little disconcerting to her since we are so completely off her typical and expected script for such occasions.
Last night, when she was being particularly difficult, and was even starting to twitch a bit, I matter-of-factly said, "It looks as though you are going to have a seizure. Why don't you tell me when it's done?" And sat and waited.
I'm not really the non-caring parent that this makes me out to be, because here is what happened next. The twitching stopped, she looked at me, and then a torrent of angry, screaming words in Mandarin came out of her mouth while she glared at me. I was pretty darn sure that I was being cussed out in Mandarin.
At about that same time, Y. and H. came into the room to get into bed. Y. hears what R. is saying, she stops, her eyes get really, really big, and she says in a sort of awestruck voice, "Those are really, really bad words." I assured her that I didn't need her to try to translate them for me, at which she looked relieved. (I'm pretty sure that her G-rated existence in English would also make that particular feat pretty impossible.) The whole thing was so ludicrous at that moment, that I was actually laughing. This at least had the effect of stopping the Mandarin swearing from the other bed.
I think (hope) that this all means that the wean really is waking up something inside R.'s head. By not being doped with anti-psychotic drugs and seizure medicine, she is forced to not live in a numb and vacant land. She has to come to terms with her past and present. There has been precious little grieving for China on her part, aside from random statements of missing certain people. But those are usually uttered as a passing comment and then she moves on. Last night, after the swearing, came an endless litany of needing and wanting to go back to China. Angry, demanding, unhappy words. They are the kind of statements which you would expect to have heard about a year ago.
There have been a lot of unpleasant events and emotions that have happened to this child which she has successfully stuffed away, and coping comes through not having to deal with them. The drugs certainly helped, and she still nearly constantly asks for more drugs. I'm afraid that as she loses the veil of cognition-dampening medication, she is going to have to also face the past. I'm sorry that she, in a sense, has to live through it all twice. But I also know that there is no way she can move forward and become as whole a person as she can without doing this hard work. J. and I both hope, though, that the insomnia is not a long-term coping mechanism.
__________
And for those of you who missed it the first time I linked to it, I have a new article published. It could use a little clicking and sharing love. 4 Times I Wasn't a Perfect Parent and What You Can Learn
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