Phone calls, screaming kid, and migraines....

Not fun.

Peter has been off the wall today. Nothing is making him happy, everything is either too loud or not loud enough. He's pulling his own hair, jumping everywhere, and screaming. I've tried every method I can think of to help him. Now he's sitting on me and kicking me as he watches cartoons but he's quiet so I'll take it.

What have I learned from today's phone calls? The psychiatry department at Children's doesn't take our insurance. Now we're working on finding a child psychiatrist that does. The neurologist and the family support liaison at Children's think Elizabeth's IEP is awful and are working on how they can help get that fixed. Our insurance will, in fact, pay for a neuropsych eval as long as its billed as a medical necessity and not an academic one. We really don't need one for academics so that works for me. L, from Children's, is working on finding a provider that will do that.

This neurologist evaluation was one of the best moves we've made so far. I'm absolutely thrilled at the work they are putting into advocating for my girl. Her therapist and I can hold her together... we just need the evals done so we know what we're dealing with and how to help her best.

On a completely separate note,

I want to take classes online in psychology. Traditional school isn't going to work for me. I can't leave the kids and make appointments around a class schedule I have to attend. Yes, most of those close to me think I've lost my mind but the truth is I really find all of this fascinating and I want to learn more so I can help my girl too.  

And the migraine....

It's become a daily event again. Ugh.

Neurologist...

First, I simply have to say that Combos.... cracker Combos, to be precise, are amazingly good today. Snacking on Combos and diet Mountain Dew. I know, bad for the diet, blah blah blah.... save your breath today, Bethany  =P

Last night Beth and I talked a lot about the neurologist and what to expect. Truth be told I wasn't positive myself but I was honest with her and told her we would get through it together. I knew it wasn't going to be hard physically but I wasn't sure what the emotional toll would be. She was having an insane day yesterday anyways so I figured discussing it was better than letting her bottle it up. She gave me every reason why she couldn't go to see the neurologist. Everything from not wanting to miss prize day to not wanting to miss art class. I knew they were avoidance tactics, but I didn't want to blow her off either. I promised her I would call Mrs B myself and request that she still get her prize, and her daddy told her he would do art stuff with her when she got home. It took forever for her to fall asleep last night. The stress of everything was crushing her, but when she fell asleep she did really sleep.

We got to the neurologist about 45 minutes early. I hate how I can never accurately predict traffic. The office was bright and the staff was very nice. We met the doctor and Beth liked her right off the bat. We went over the history and I gave her a copy of just about every report I had on Beth. She was seriously impressed with my organization. Yep, I have her fooled.

Basically what it boiled down to is that we need more input from specialists that have seen this before. She is referring us to the psychiatry department and the center for developmental medicine. We are absolutely not medicating until we know what we are actually dealing with. There is going to be about an 8 month wait to get into the center for developmental medicine anyways. At some point she may want to do a sleep deprived EEG to rule out front temporal lobe seizures and maybe an MRI but right now those would be too stressful for her and there isn't enough data to support it being necessary.

Interestingly enough, yet not surprising, she was disgusted with Beth's IEP. She said Beth really has no shot at being successful with such a vague IEP. She is going to help us get the specialist input necessary to make sure the school system can not continue to get away with this. She took copies of the evals that the school has done and said there was more than enough info right there in their own evals to show that she needs more and can't understand why we are having to fight so hard to get her necessary supports.

That's it for now. My head is killing me.