(no subject)

[gansje]

It has been one hell of a night. And it's just keeping on being a hell of a night.

We put emmabovary's idea to work (thank you!!! <3) and selected a password with Jo. Jo decided on a pass-phrase (which I should keep to myself in case she ever questions if I told it to anyone else) and then she needed me to use it not two hours later. She also went to the psychologist (the rotten one, but at least there was some therapy of some kind) and reported when she came home that she now thought the psychologist was an alien because while Jo was telling her about her thoughts and beliefs, the psychologist had a "weird look" on her face. I explained that she probably had a look of concern for Jo. Whenever someone makes an unfamiliar face now, Jo immediately suspects them of being an alien.

At bedtime, she lay down in her bed while I started storytime, and then she looked over at the tank that (used to, prior to its unfortunate expiration) hold her gecko. She asked me if I saw "U Pay" written in it. At first I thought she was seeing letters (from the titles of two books behind the tank) magnified in the glass, but when I went to look, I couldn't see anything at all. She was scared of it, and I moved the tank. Then she told me that she'd seen the words, "kill Jo" in her mother's car's rearview mirror on Monday (thank you, Shasta, for not telling us, good lord), and the word, "Die" written in our basement (she said that Lawrence had seen it too and thought that probably another kid she plays with had written it for some reason). She also told me that she'd seen a sign outside SuperCuts when I took Henry and Adam for their haircuts last month. The sign said, "You're Next," and she believed it referred to her imminent demise.

I rubbed my face, thinking, "God, please don't let this be child-onset schizophrenia," whereupon she said I'd never made that face before and demanded the pass-phrase.

She also has a rather juicy cold and is coughing a lot (we just gave her cough medicine, so here's keeping our fingers crossed she sleeps through the night) and she asked me just before I ran downstairs to tell L we have a problem, "If I get scared in the middle of the night, can I wake you up to sit with me?" Which has been a behavior we thought had finally passed last year. What Jo means by sitting with her is sitting in her room while she takes several hours to fall asleep and then several more after she wakes when you tried to tiptoe out. Which, given our current needs for sleep and my current mental state, is very bad. She's already woken once and L sat with her from 10:30 - 11:30.  I know more is coming and I'm taking that shift so he can sleep -- he has a meeting in Princeton tomorrow and needs a lot of solid sleep.

Guys, I'm scared. I'm really scared. Can I wake you up in the middle of the night to sit with me? 

Comments

[gansje.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Shelby -- it's really terrifying. And I still cannot believe her mother didn't say anything about it to us. We would have known a whole week sooner if she had.

She doesn't watch a lot of TV, and when she does, it's only cartoons like "My Little Pony" and "Pound Puppies," and shows about cats and dogs on Animal Planet. On Youtube, it's the same thing. Her computer games are only The Sims Pets and things like that.

She's always had a penchant for the morbid. I remember when L and I were dating, she drew me a picture of dogs and when I asked what they were doing, she said they were howling because they were at a funeral for another dog. This, her significant separation anxiety (which only receeded a couple of years ago) and her Asperger's, which featured emotional dysregulation, sensory issues, and social skills problems, led to our getting her into therapy, where she'd been improving markedly.

She has a psychologist and a psychotherapist who is able to refer us to a psychiatrist. Because of her separation anxiety and generalized anxiety disorder, we'd considered putting her on SSRIs last year, but we were all worried about the side effects, and her anxieties improved so much with just talk therapy. Her emotional dysregulation seems to be gone, and she's very capable of modulating her emotions really appropriately. She's generally happy, and while she still occasionally talks about gore, it's in a totally age-appropriate way, if that makes sense. And her separation anxiety was much better too. Everything was so much better.

And then this, suddenly.

I just called the psychotherapist for an immediate referral to a psychiatrist, but I only got her voicemail. I'm going to be calling Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, too. Hopefully their neuropsychiatry unit has availability.

[msmidge.livejournal.com]

If your insurance has a nurse advice line, you could call and see what they say--but I suspect they will say go to the emergency room. But can you take her and consent to treatment for her if you're not her parent?

[gansje.livejournal.com]

I have no idea.