It looks like he’s going to be diagnosed with #Bipolar disorder

Lizze and I have begun accepting the reality of something we wish we wouldn't have to. That reality is the likelihood that Elliott will be diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. Elliott had some testing done eariler in the week at his physiologist appointment and it came back with a high likelihood of Bipolar disorder. That in combination with patterns of behavior over a very long period of time, and it looks like we may have to begin accepting the reality that Elliott has Bipolar Disorder. When I say accept the reality, I'm simply mean that in the sense that we don't want this for him. The fact that he likely has Bipolar disorder doesn't change him in our eyes at all. It does explain many of the behavioral challenges we face,…

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Major Update: We saw the psychiatrist today

Many things have happened today but in this entry, I want to focus on what is arguably the most pivotal.  I spoke previously about Gavin having his Lithium dose cut in half, with the potential of being totally removed in the near future. The near future has arrived and we met with Dr. Reynolds this afternoon about this very subject.  The focus of today's appointment was to discuss how things were going on the current (reduced) dosage and then decide where to go for here.  Lizze and I both agree that Gavin is or at least appears to be manic. Is this the result of the decreased dose of Lithium? My personal opinion is that it's probably not.  The reason I say that is because Gavin's been on 900 mg/day…

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He’s driving me f@#king crazy today

Let me start things off by reminding everyone how much I love my kids.  I've got tons of new readers and I just want to be clear on that because of the tone of this post. That said, and with my profession of unconditional love for my children, here's the deal. They are driving me fucking crazy. More specifically, Gavin’s driving me fucking crazy. The other two are actually doing okay today. Gavin is having a really tough day, in several areas of his life. Veteran readers will probably already guess that a large part of this is in regards to his constant, incessant need to talk to me. No one has this much to say and neither does Gavin for that matter. He's just talking about totally random things…

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OMG… He won’t stop talking O_o

I'm so tired and Gavin just won't stop talking. Look, I'm so grateful that all my kids are verbal and I know how hard it can be when they aren't because Emmett was nonverbal until he was almost four or five years old. We were told he would never talk, so to at least some degree, I get it. Gavin is one of those bipolar kids that talk incessantly when they are manic. My God, this kid hasn't stopped talking today. He'll disappear to his room for a bit and I get a reprieve but when he comes back, and he always comes back, he's got all this stuff pinned up and then unleashes a flurry of scattered thoughts at me. He's in the kitchen right now making a sandwich.…

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Is it Bipolar Disorder? That’s what we have to find out 

After discussing at length, with Dr. Pattie about our concerns that there might be more going on than we are currently aware of with Elliott, a course of action has been decided.   We went through this enormous checklist of what Bipolar Disorder looks like in kids and while he didn't meet every single item, he met more than he missed.  Again, this doesn't mean anything for sure but it does raise more concern that this could be what we're looking at.   The plan at this point is to have him evaluated at the end of August, when he has a followup appointment with Dr.Reynolds, his psychiatrist. It's been about 10 years since we've been through this process with Gavin, so I'm unsure of what to expect this time…

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