Monday, August 18, 2014

In a Rare Moment of Quiet

I'll check in at long last.

I certainly dropped off the face of the planet at the end of June. Not coincidentally, that's when school ended here for all my kids who were enrolled. Much Chaos Ensued.

The child who was in and out of the hospital since mid-November continued…and was just discharged today from the most recent out patient program following yet another 2 weeks inpatient.  So that took some time.  She's not returning to school and is hopefully going to go work. However, staying at a job will require her to not continue to demand hospitalization regularly. I'm honestly not holding my breath and expect another hospitalization within a few weeks when she realizes her new job is boring. She already had a tantrum today over nonsense.

The child who was just getting into supported housing took about 8 weeks to be willing to stay at her new home, and has since left her job (to go to nothing) and almost been evicted.  She did get her first level certification in childcare over the summer, but then didn't register for any class the second half of the summer nor at this point for the fall. I have no idea what she thinks she is going to live on with no job…but she's not coming back here.

Feivel has been himself over a long summer. He had two weeks of boy scout activities and camp, and two weeks of camp at Sunflower Bakery which broke our bank account but which he loved.  He is just impossible to have around though; every interaction ends badly between him and every member of the house. Yelling, hitting, fighting, talking back, if it's an option, he chooses it. I'm trying to force the county and state to provide any services, but so far it's like talking to a wall.

The others had a good summer at the pool, and we started at the very end of June with a trip to Williamsburg with my whole family. The kids loved everything and had a great time.

Which brings me to the other reason I wasn't brainy enough to blog at all. The day after we returned from that trip, my foot swelled to twice its normal size. I turned out to have a nasty case of gout which has since required two rounds of prednisone plus various other drugs and a lot of time to begin to resolve. At the same time, I was experiencing a lot of cognitive problems like short term memory loss, confusion, getting lost; and was undergoing a lot of testing and appointments. They can't really rule out any of the really bad possibilities except I definitely do NOT have any kind of tumor. But the early stages of other neurologic diseases really can't easily be tested for. So I'm just hoping it turns out to be silent migraines (which actually can cause these cognitive problems) and have had to adopt both an anti-migraine diet and an anti-gout diet. This leaves me with the world's most unsatisfying, boring diet for the rest of my life. But it's better than the pain of the gout attack.

So tomorrow I go for another test, this one for a growth on my neck. I'm just having so much fun.

I'm desperate, absolutely desperate, for school to start and the child who is at home and not going to school to find a full-time job ASAP. I need a little mental space to start getting any kind of real healing going and it's not possible for me to get it at all in the summer. Actually, I basically haven't had any mental space for 2+ years; occasionally, say once every 2 months, I'll have a day on which I'm the only one at home during school hours (8-2:30) and no appointments. But those rare 6.5 hour stretches are nowhere near enough for an introverted sensory defensive desperate person like me to heal her psyche at all; it's barely enough for me to start registering that I am actually getting a few hours alone.  Just thinking this is getting me crying now I'm so desperate about never having time to myself (and please don't suggest I take an evening every week…not only do we not have free evenings, but on the rare occasion we do you can count on a melt-down from one of the big kids with disabilities; and in any case again 2 hours here or there makes no impression, I'm talking having a few weeks of privacy, quiet, lack of interruption, peace from tantrums from a 5'10" 180 lb developmentally disabled teen).

So that brings us up to date, though I'm sure I forgot a lot. I'll add in. You probably won't be surprised to hear that I haven't been able to do any spinning with a hugely swollen, painful foot; and I have done little knitting except a project for the LYS where I work since I just couldn't focus or concentrate not to mention that I couldn't get time when I wasn't directly involved in whatever the younger kids or someone else was doing.  But the project I did for the LYS was completed today, so if I get to block it tomorrow, I'll get pictures and actually update again.

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