One thing about having a child who has bipolar disorder you learn many lessons. The biggest lesson to understand is the medications that do wonders today will not work tomorrow, or later in the same day even. We are ending our 3 day of medication change. My post from yesterday now told of a young man who does not even have the energy to hold his head up. Now it is midnight of that same day and that same boy is still awake. His eyes are tired but his body is awake, his mind is awake. When my wife was out of town every night was a 2 am night for me crawling into bed. Then we had the med change and I was enjoying getting to sleep at a decent time. Then he adjust somewhat, we have a restraint, and now ever so often as he tries to go to sleep he hollers out.
Your friendships with other adults. As your child grows you will see those friends less and less. Folks who would come hang out with you don't know how to react to such outburst. They just don't understand. Now we have some very good friends who have not vanished. My wife has one friend who has been with her through thick and thin and comes over still on a regular basis. They have been friends since they were middle school age. We have a very dear couple that we have known many years who still come have dinner with us when they can, and when we can we go and have dinner and drinks with them. Other than those 3 people that's about it. Not all of that is directly related to our little fella's situation. But when you give all you have to handling your situation there just is not enough energy for too many add ons.
The things you thought were important before are no longer important. The only things that matters is keeping your child safe, trying to get that child the help they need and keeping the family safe. At one point in my life not so long ago I was working 6-7 days a week up to 14 hours a day. It was my business and it was important to me. Now I am the stay home dad, protector of the family, from the family. This is what is important. Trying to keep everyone in the house from getting hurt. Learning that even medication can't keep us from getting hurt. What knocked him out earlier today is not knocking him out tonight and some aggression has slipped in the side door while I was watching the main door.
Now I have been asked why I write about these situations. There are two reasons. One is to show other parents of bipolar children they are not alone in their struggles. Our struggles seem all to close to home for many parents. Every bipolar child is different but the disorder presents itself very simular in most cases. Two is the financial side of blogging. The first reason far exceeds the second. At my current rate I will have to have more than 15000 entries posted with advertising attached to see any real benefit financially. Currently its about .22 per entry in income. That money will be set aside for anything little man may need later that we can not afford. Our guy will never be able to live independently.
Thank you for reading. Please feel free to comment either on blogspot or on facebook.
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