Learning a new term

If you hadn't picked up on it, life with R. these days has been tough. Really tough. Like feeling as though we are in over our heads tough. And it doesn't help that she has been doing her let's-not-sleep-for-48-hours-thing far too often. That would be nearly weekly instead of every few months. Even with a decent night's sleep last night, J. and I still feel pretty much like zombies.

This is one of the reasons why I was talking on the phone to the neurologist this morning, discussing medicine. (The short part of that story is that I really need to find a pediatric psychiatrist. Sigh. Oh, how I hate breaking in new doctors.) Anyway, as the doctor and I were talking, I asked if she wanted to hear my new theory I had come up with, saying I knew it entertained her. Being a great doctor whom I can get along with, she was all ears.

R. has been on a new seizure medicine for a while now, and we just recently starting going up a bit on the dosage. The plus side is that we really haven't seen any seizures since we've done that. The negative side is that we feel we are parenting an insane child far more often than we would like. But the crazy thing is that along with the tough behavior, we have also seen some significant gains, such as R. falling asleep on my lap the other day.

I suggested to the doctor that because the meds are working and calming her brain down so it can actually do its job, she is now having to deal with all the hard parts of her life that she had been able to avoid up to this point. The doctor then jumps in and says that there is a term for this... forced normalcy... and it is actually a thing. It works exactly as I had posited. (Can I tell you how much I love it when my pet theories are actually correct?)

So here we are, with a child who is suddenly having to confront some fairly significant and long-term trauma in her past. And it's not only long ago stuff. The other night, it was as if she finally genuinely realized that she is here now and not going back to China. You know, the things that most older children are working out much closer to arriving home. In some ways it feels very much like just having arrived home with a grieving older child. And the lack of sleep certainly mimics the jet lag portion of it all. I didn't enjoy it the first times around, and also didn't feel the need to repeat it.

I spent the morning working on finding a psychiatrist to work with us, because in order to survive, I think that is what we need. I am feeling a little gun shy after my last experience with this particular task. This also feels tiring.

Pretty much, if you ask me how I am these days, just assume the answer is tired.