by Band Back Together | Nov 27, 2018 | Uncategorized |
It’s Giving Tuesday! This day kicks off the charitable giving season to follow-up Black Friday and Cyber Monday with recognition for non-profits who’s budgets are often stretched thin by the end of the year.
The Band strives to provide you a safe, secure place to air your feelings about anything that affects you, from mental illness, to addiction, to loss, to family stress or even happy things going on in your life. To do this we are hosted by AISO.net which is a 100% solar run facility, that in the event of a power malfunction (shit happens) they are able to run completely off-grid for 3 days, which ensures that your stories and profiles don’t go anywhere. In addition, they provide state of the art security services to protect your personal information. Along with this, we have a number of legal fees associated with keeping our non-profit status. This allows us to accept your donations tax free (every cent you give is used to keep The Band running) and gives you a tax deduction each time you donate to us! We have operations costs to ensure that your stories get edited and published in a timely manner. I have to tell you, there’s a few of us on the team that live in very rural areas and keeping our connection to you is very important to us. We consider it a priority to keep The Band staffed as much as possible regardless of internet availability and equipment malfunctions. There are, of course, costs associated with this.
We have 4 volunteers that run this site full-time, along with several others that give their time when they are able. We’ve poured thousands of hours of love into this site to make you feel less alone. We’re humbly asking you to give back to The Band today for #GivingTuesday. If you are able to donate (even a little goes a LONG way) you can do so here. Facebook and Paypal are teaming up today to match $7 million in donations to eligible 501(c)(3)charities! If you’re not able to donate (we totally understand) could you click that link, give it a share and invite your friends and family to donate? If you don’t feel comfortable with that please consider giving us some of your time. We’re always looking for more people for editing, fundraising, social media posting/sharing, and authors!
We love you so much, we literally could not do any of this great work without you all. Thank you so much for being a part of The Band in whatever capacity you are able. Yes, even YOU, THANK YOU!
by Band Back Together | Nov 27, 2018 | Anxiety Disorders, Bipolar Disorder, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Depression, Depressive Disorder, Loving Someone With Bipolar Disorder, Mental Health, Parenting, Parenting Teens, Pediatric Bipolar Disorder, Pediatric Depression, Teen Bipolar Disorder |
How’s Gabriel?
I hear that all the time. There is no simple answer. But answering it is the focus of my daily life. Every day. The real answer is Gabriel’s not OK. Gabriel is Bipolar. His moods shift. Daily. Weekly. Yearly. He is never OK. I spend my days like a detective trying to sniff out any small clue of a mood change, charting, taking notes, observing him. Worrying about him.
He spent 10 months of the last 12 (literally, not figuratively) suicidal, dangerous, aggressive, and explosive. His meds are controlling that a little, but he is manic right now. Which is dangerous in other ways. And his meds aren’t holding that in. They aren’t ‘stabilizing’ him like they are supposed to. And without going into a tirade about doctors, I don’t have a ‘handle’ on this the way I PROMISED myself I would last October. And last May. And last July. You get the point.
The fact that mania seeps out now means that Gabriel is hyper (he isn’t normally at all), he is giddy, inappropriate (laughing, jokes, rude comments, butt jokes, pulling his pants down in front of a friend during a play date, etc), and more likely to jump off the roof (or trick his brothers into doing it) than anything else. Which is, in some ways, better than the dangerous depressive side. However, as October comes to a close, so will the mania, and the bipolar depression will replace my giddy-inappropriate child with one who hates the world. Who hates me. Who hates his brothers. One who is so negative and dangerous that he threatens to take knives to school and kill people. That kid is hard to live with. That kid is hard to keep safe. That kid threatens my sanity and the safety of my other two children.
We have to put him on another medication. A stronger medication. And although our ‘nurse practitioner’ is willing to give him a new medicine now, (they want to put him on Lamictal), my next appointment with his actual doctor, a real psychiatrist, isn’t until November 24.
Yes, the day before Thanksgiving.
Why wait? Because Lamictal has a 1 in 1000 chance of a deadly side effect. A deadly rash that may just start itself in the depth of my son’s mouth where I am less likely to see it. Less likely to be able to get him the immediate medical attention required. That scares me.
And scares my husband. So much so, that he refuses to give our son this drug until we see our psychiatrist. Who we can see the day before Thanksgiving.
So, I will bake pies early this year. And spend the that glorious Wednesday afternoon admiring the artwork on the walls of Children’s Hospital, nervously wondering if I will be rushing Gabriel to the ER with a rash on Thanksgiving day, and trying to hold down all those bites of pie I shoved in my throat in the anticipation of this moment where we are forced to make, yet another, hard decision about our son’s care.
But I have no choice. So we wait.
But the cycling won’t wait.
Depression is nipping at his heels and I am not sure we can out run it.
