Pediatric Bipolar Disorder

To celebrate our one year anniversary, we’re going to work to highlight other sites around the Internet that are Doing Good. Every Tuesday at noon (central time, yo), we’re going to bring you a story of why someone else chooses to devote their time Doing Good.

You know our beginnings. Now it’s time to see theirs.

I’d like to introduce you to Julia from Support for Special Needs. Becky and I had the pleasure of meeting Julia at Type A Parent Conference in June and fell madly in love with her -- after we realized she wasn't THE MOVIE STAR Julia Roberts and realized she was A BIGGER AND BETTER STAR than Julia Roberts. She’s got an amazing site that helps find common ground among those who are raising children with special needs. But it's not our story to tell, it's hers!

In May 2010 two bloggers, Julia Roberts and Dawn Friedman (currently retired from blogging and on leave from SfSN) saw a need in the special needs community for a social network. Julia brought experience raising two kids with complex medical, mental and developmental needs and Dawn brought her editing and community building experience to the site. Together, they created a safe place for people to come and gain support and share wisdom where they can find commonalities. Even among people with disabilities and typical people there are commonalties.

The site’s statement: “It’s an all encompassing label, yet we let a diagnosis divide us among this powerful group of advocates and caregivers into categories of rare and not-so-rare diseases, genetic conditions, developmental delays and the unexplained afflictions. We have more in common than separates us and Support for Special Needs is the community that offers a chance to exchange wisdom and ideas among one of the most powerful group of people we know. Join us as learn how to advocate as one group and learn from each other about how to help our kids and ourselves.”

Support for Special Needs is a place to support and be supported. There are groups by state and many by disability although the most popular groups are ones that encompass a larger issue parents and caregivers of special needs children face; IEP discussions, occupational/speech/physical therapies, anxiety, or anything goes, as one member started. A private non-searchable group Room for Rants (request and approval only) is a safe, non-judgemental place where members can rant about anything. Currently posts 3 days a week go live from anything to book reviews (related to special needs), informational, essays and community news. Professionals and foundations are also welcome to join and start their own group to promote their business, to act as a meeting spot for their clients/families/employees (private or public). If members don’t see a group they’re looking for, they are encouraged to start one.

Julia Roberts is active on Twitter @juliaroberts1 and @supportSN and recently pitched, planned and moderated BlogHer’s first-ever Special Needs Mini-Con. Citing high marks from the mini-con, discussions are taking place for an event next year at BlogHer. Julia and Dawn’s vision was to bring people together on-line but also in real life; and hosted one in March in Atlanta, GA with plans to expand in the future. Support for Special Needs is the only one of its kind, and has been recognized by Parents.com, Online Universities, About.com/specialneeds, and SheKnows.com as being a top online special needs community.

Join them, where people have #moreincommon.

I think about you sometimes, you know, although not as much as when I was younger and afraid of you. I think of what you did, what you represented.

You were evil. I believed that with every fiber of my being, and sometimes I still do. Your eyes, always flat and emotionless - such an icy blue. They say eyes are the windows to the soul; sometimes I wonder if you even have one.

I know you were damaged by your biological mother. That you had fetal alcohol syndrome caused by her drunken binges. You were in and out of foster care until she gave you up for adoption when you were six. Who thinks a six-year-old girl can be so evil?

The things you did to me out of rage/jealousy/lack of conscience were inexcusable.

I was two when you came to us, and you tortured me - literally - for years. In retrospect, I expect you'd been tortured in some of your foster homes. I mean, you had to learn it somewhere.

But I didn’t go on to torture others, so why should I forgive you for doing that to me?

I was too terrified to tell anyone what was happening, because I knew there was nothing anyone could do. My parents knew there was something wrong, but it was the 1970's, and therapy for children was not the norm. It's no wonder you pulled the wool over your therapists’ eyes for so long.  You were the innocent one in the family - we were all out to get you. You were so good at manipulating situations to get what you wanted.

I don’t feel guilty that I rejoiced when you were first institutionalized at the age of ten, because finally I could sleep at night. You were locked up, and I was happy.

I suppose I should feel pity that you were diagnosed with what would now be called conduct disorder (later followed by borderline personality disorder and narcissism) at such a young age.

But I hated you for what you did to me.

Who would I have been without you in my life?

Would I be able to make eye contact with others?

Would I feel good enough, likable enough to show some confidence in social situations?

Would I be able to trust people easily?

Would I have the diagnoses of PTSD, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and depression that I currently have?

Would I enjoy sex?

Would I be comfortable around strangers?

I hate that you robbed me of my innocence and any semblance of a normal childhood, but I hate more not knowing how much I could have been had you never come into my life.

I am better now. I have a loving husband and two wonderful boys. I hold down a steady job with a  good wage. I go to therapy and I take medication. I function in society and I try not to hurt others either with words or deeds.

But your eyes - they stay with me sometimes. Deadly and cold, but was there something human in there? I honestly don’t know, and I pray that I never find out.

I can almost live with what you did to me and my family if I think you were not really human, that you had shed that skin like a reptile.  But if you were human, then dear god, who do I pity more, you for residing in hell, or me, since you dragged me into it alongside you?

In three short weeks, my life will - once again - be in turmoil.

For the last nine months, I have been living on my own, without the fear I could be killed in my sleep or be robbed by idiots who have decided they can steal my stuff because they were allowed into my house.

My only child is bipolar and went off the deep end last year.

On four separate occasions, she tried to kill me. Three of those times, the cops sent her back home to attack me yet again.

She was using street drugs on top of her regular medications because her so-called friends told her their stuff was going to make her feel better than the prescribed medication. Yeah, that went well.

She became a meth addict, exchanging sex for a hit or two. She let people in our house who thought they were entitled to whatever they could pick up because they were giving my daughter drugs and believed they were "owed."

After the last attempt to kill me, the court sentenced her to drug court and house arrest. She didn't make it a week before she invited her connection over to the house, got high and took off--wearing a freaking tracking device! The cops told me to pick her up and bring her in for drug court as usual. They arrested her and she hasn't been home except for two weeks at Christmas. And even then, it was "wash-rinse-repeat" and they picked her up again.

During all of this, we were trying to get her into a mental health treatment facility to get her off the street drugs and get her regular medication regulated. It took four months to get her in, mostly because I have flaky private insurance which still (despite the laws) do not cover mental health care at the same level as medical. We  (me, doctors, court people) finally got Medicaid to agree to cover what the insurance couldn't. If that hadn't happened, they would have had to put her in state hands, removing my custody rights, so they could get her on 100% Medicaid.

She was finally placed in a facility just before her last birthday and has been there ever since. I think that was the first time I was able to sleep with both eyes closed. No fear of waking up to strange men wandering through my house at 3 in the morning, no locking up my purse anymore, no locking up the medications.

But now, six months later, I have been informed she is being sent home because she is no longer in need of that level of care. Translated: the insurance has flaked and Medicaid refuses to take up the slack.

Now everyone is scrambling to make sure there are programs and safeguards in place before they put her on a plane to come home. Of course, no one can reach the probation officer who has to set things up with the court regarding how her final release is handled.

I have to be out of town several times in the next two months, so there has to be back-up plans for her care when she gets back.

She has also been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, ADHD and anxiety disorders. Those things won't go away. They can only be monitored and (hopefully) controlled. The medication alone will probably push me over the cliff financially, though.

Meanwhile, I have PTSD from the hell of the last year and a half. I was beaten, choked, kicked and otherwise physically harmed. My work suffered, I was denied promotions as all the time off I had to take because of all the court dates and meetings. Now, with her coming back, I will have all the same stresses because she is so easily influenced by people who tell her what she wants to hear instead of what she needs to hear.

She is already making a lot of grand plans that she expects me to pay for. Money is a big trigger for her and causes her swings.

All the peace is gone from my mind now because I keep hearing echoes of her previous problems in the "new and improved" person I am supposedly getting back.

You noticed I didn't say much about her father? He left me when I found out I was pregnant and tried to claim she wasn't his. His insurance doesn't cover much of anything. If I file for repayment on his insurance, they send the check to him and I will never see it. He has a history of mental illness himself and in his family. On my side, we are relatively free of mental illness. FOB (he doesn't deserve to be called "dad") has several kids from relationships dating back to the 1980's and all of them have had issues. You would think he would get snipped if he didn't want children in the first place, especially knowing his mental conditions (which he forgot to share with his baby-mammas) and that of his family.

It's so sad that my daughter turned fifteen in a mental facility and her entire birthday celebration was a cupcake with her dinner.

FOB never even sent a card and she still harbors resentment about that.

I love her because she is my child. But do I really want her to come home until I'm 100% sure she's going to be safe and well?

You have broken my heart;