The first five years of Lexi's life were choked by my bad marriage and some abuse toward he and his sister. I will correct this statement by saying that my intention in getting married was to have a good marriage and I believe it was also the intention of his father. We were best friends. Lexi and his sister were born out of love. Along the way, some mental illness issues surfaced for their father which have led to all of us doing a lot of therapy. My husband left the marriage when Lexi was 5 and we moved closer to my family shortly thereafter.
Lexi was already displaying concerning signs, symptoms since h was one year old. He was an early developer and walked at six months old. He laughed and played and was such a beautiful baby but it did not last. He was a beautiful toddler who was prone to frequent intense rage tantrums, head banging and obsessive behavior. I was one of the only people who could understand him. It got worse and more intense. I was restraining Lexi 5,6, 7 times a day for a half hour or more each time in order to keep him safe from himself. I have a multitude of stories of being in public and having strangers shame me, offer their judgement and opinions of what they had no way of understanding as my daughter stood by watching and listening to it all. When he broke his kindergarten teacher's nose, I knew I could not avoid the inevitable any longer and I took him to be assessed.
He was diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder-pdd-nos. He was also diagnosed with Anxiety Disorder. Along his journey he has had the added diagnosis of PTSD, Tourette's Syndrome and ADD and our most recent addition is Bipolar Disorder I. All of these diagnosis cross over, share symptoms, look alike from different angles but none of them define who my son is and who he can be. I have learned that a diagnosis is important because it gives people who do not know him a place to start. When someone is not "typical" then people go into fear or confusion and when you can throw the labels out it gives them a starting place. Only the most shallow stay at that place. Anyone with half a brain can move past the labels and see the person. What an amazing person to see.
This last year my amazing person tanked. No, really...tanked. Things were going well up until then...had him in a special school for kids on the spectrum with average to higher i.q.'s. He had made a few other aspie friends and we felt he was finally learning enough coping skills to transition to a regular high school with an amazing program for kids just like him. What we did not get told is that the funding was lost for this program. Teacher's improperly trained were brought in to sae their jobs in the state financial crisis. The ability for him to work at his higher academic level was greatly diminished and therapies were wiped out. Feeling his frustration with the slower academics we tried placing him on the main campus...with 3000 other kids. Bad move. The violence began to take over our lives. We were almost evicted from our apartment and he became crazier and crazier.
We moved back to a small town we had lived in which coincidentally had a small charter school that fit his needs perfectly. He did recovery credits and pulled himself through his first year of high school with a grand finale of spending the last week of his freshman year in the psychiatric hospital for his first 51/50. For those who do not know, a 51/50 is when you are a danger to yourself or others and they need to put you away for a minimum of 72 hours to help you calm down, be assessed and get your head together. We followed this hospital stay up with suicide attempts and parasuicidal behavior as we cycled in and out of the hospital a few more times over the summer. When we finally got in to see a real psychiatrist, not just a band-aid doc from the psych hospital she clarified the diagnosis of bipolar.
Gotta admit, this one was thrown out years ago by a team at Stanford Children's Hospital but I couldn't handle it then. Somehow autism seemed easier to deal with than mental illness. Autism was a neurological disorder...bipolar was an illness-chronic and forever. I could not handle thinking of my son suffering with an illness such as this his whole life. In reality, he was dealing with it anyways whether I wanted to deal with it or not. There it was...crazy town all around. At this point, my boy was just simply suffering. The depression that kept trying to kill him. The mania that tore him out of his body and straight into craziness. I can not explain how hard it is to breathe when you watch your child suffer so deeply.
I have begun, slowly but surely, facing this new diagnosis. In the same fervor that I took on his autism, I too must take this on to be his champion. I must champion for him to live and smile again. I must champion in pulling him through his intense dark pain until he can find the light again. I must keep him alive even if he hates me for it, which he does right now. I must smile and hold stable no matter how much I feel as though I am cracked and broken all over by his horrific ups and downs. Every day is filled with uncertainty, minute by minute, hour by hour the world can shift from good to bad, from calm to explosive, from happy to wishing death upon himself. I can not leave him alone for fear that he will not fail on a suicide attempt. I can not leave him alone because he is not right in his head most of the time and his judgement is so damaged he is lost in his illness. I can not leave him alone because he is so lost in his darkness that I am afraid he can suddenly become irretrievable.
This blog is about finding ways to help Lexi, what it takes, what it is like...to document the journey and to be honest with our story...as I pray for a happy ending...some day.
Alex did GREAT at the wedding and I got to see that beautiful smile you talk about. It totally lights up the room. We love you and the kids and support you and will do anything we can to help you in this journey. xoxoxox
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