*IT* Happens...

some times more often than others..sh*t happens! Yesterday was one of those days. My phone was on the fritz, my GPS sent me to timbuktu, every time I needed to get out of my car it rained, Cali hurt her left front foot, Hunter left his window open & soaked the window frame, sill & carpet, Hunter has a sprained left wrist, (thankfully not broken..again!), the kids have been fighting non-stop, I had to take Hunter to an urgent appt. with his specialist, there was a glitch at the pharmacy when I tried filling his prescription, & on & on & on! Just another day in the Shore nuthouse!
Hunter has been taking medications for ADHD for about 2 years, & for the past year he has also been taking medication for Bipolar symptoms. (Bipolar isn't usually diagnosed until puberty, but he has all the symptoms of it.) His Dr. & I had decided to take him off all meds once school ended to cleanse his body & get a baseline of his behavior. I can usually handle Hunter, but I have to admit I was at my breaking point when I took him to his appt. yesterday. There is a big difference between "just being a boy" and the behaviors that Hunter exhibited when off his meds; he had emotional outbursts to the extreme. He became hysterical or enraged by trivial things. He broke things, or more often, cut things when he got mad or upset. there is no rhyme or reason as to what set him off. He became physical when playing or when he got mad. I could not leave him unsupervised at all. He made very unsafe choices, such as using a very sharp hunting knife he got out of a toolbox in the garage to cut a milk jug he was supposed to be putting in the recycle bin. He could have seriously hurt himself. He also jumped off the back end of his bunkbed trying to break his storage shelf because he was mad. That is when he hurt his wrist & we thought it was broken. He was also becoming more physical with the twins. I made sure they didn't play unsupervised to avoid them getting hurt. I would never put them or Hunter in danger. It is a hard admission for any parent to make.. that they are afraid their child is a danger to themselves or others. But it is what it is.. or was.. because I got him in to see his doc & he is now back on medication. It was a very rough month.
I think I was hoping there would be a magical change, a cure. That he would be unaffected by being off his meds. There wasn't. Those behaviors were out of control unmedicated. They are almost nonexistent when he is on medication. I wish he didn't have these conditions. I wish I could have done something to make it all better. I feel guilty that as his Mom I couldn't "save" him, or "protect" him from this. His Dr. reassures me that this is something no one, not even Hunter, can control without the help of medication. There is biological history of ADHD & Bipolar for Hunter. Unfortunately he has both. There isn't behavior modification for this. It isn't something he will outgrow. so we grab the bull by the horns & do what we have to do to help him, to do what needs to be done for him to learn & realize that medications are neccesary for him to fiunction to the best of his ability. But it sucks, it is not fair that at 8 years old he has to deal with this, as unfair as it was for him to lose his sister & gain 2 siblings when he was only a month shy of his 5th brithday. Life is rarely fair. You can overcome it or let it overcome you. Control freak that I am, I will overcome it, for him, with him, we will fight the fight and get this under control. He started back on medication today.
I would not trade Hunter, Tristan, or Alexa for any other child in the world. Anymore than I would trade having Kierra, Brianne & Chad. They are my heart and soul. They are why I get out of bed every day, even on the days like yesterday when I really don't want to! Yesterday was a bad day, but it was yesterday, not today, & hopefully not tomorrow. When the rare day like yesterday gets to me, I vow when that day ends the next day will be better, and so it is. We have the power to give in or get up. I got up yesterday & trudged through it, I got up today & walked a little stronger, & I will get up tomorrow be stronger still. Yesterday is over, done, finito.
It's irrefutable, undisputable... the fact is... *IT* happens!