We were admitted

So, a while ago, after my dad died, my girl asked me if he had really come into the house and carved stuff into our bathroom wall. “When I died, Oreneile and Oreratile were four years old. Amarissa was nine years old” and on and on. Given she had claimed to have heard a woman’s voice, something we didn’t have the heart to punish as a lie because sadly, these things really DO happen, I thought we should check everything out.

And she started giving us a lot. At about the same time we started a new supplement. The headaches she claimed to have, maybe they were caused by the l-theanine. But not the hallucinations. Nobody has complained of those. Or maybe she was also faking the pain just like she made up the devil who was out to get her. But I couldn’t tell. And she was slurring her words and unable to think properly when doing puzzles so we couldn’t ignore it, could we?

I asked a paediatrician to examine her then we could figure out if we’d do any brain imaging, get a psychiatrist to see her…One told me to wait five days. But my girl kept escalating and saying she was scared. And she kept insisting her head was thudding and being squeezed.

I asked my oldest son if perhaps she had not watched something that had a patient with her symptoms, he said no. And that was that. After all, everything I download, every educational or real story I download for them, they watch together.

I then started to believe her after he said no. The second paediatrician I contacted said she should immediately be hospitalised and then have brain EEG, MRI under sedation. We went from zero to HOSPITAL! She hadn’t even seen us and examined her so we could see if she really was sick.

Got to the hospital and I kid you not, headaches all gone, no more visions of Satan, she even was able to track my finger which she’d been unable to. I wanted to leave when I saw that. I knew she had us fooled. But, we were committed. We all knew she didn’t have anything scary in her body, but all feared that doubt would lead us to not test her thoroughly. We spent three day in hospital doing the tests I mentioned above, and blood tests and lumbar puncture.

All fine.

Just like she was in hospital. Extremely happy now that we were in hospital, giving her the attention she craved.

Long story short, after countless painful days in hospital – painful for me sitting for hours- we left under the care of a psychiatrist indeed.

On Friday, I’d slept at home while my husband did the next night duty. As I got ready to go back to hospital, my teen daughter says, “I hope she’s not copying the hospital show of the nine year old who had encephalitis.”

NOW you tell me? The week before, she’d gashed her knee open purposely to go see the doctor because I was going to take her eight year old brother in. If I’d known that she had watched something similar, I’d have not believed her. I would have known! What a waste of resources! Lots of extra pain from sitting in hospital, lying on an uncomfortable hospital bed, sitting and waiting for MRI and for her to wake up…Lots of pain.

The only positive was in the post before this. The suggestion made by the psychiatrist that we ask our paed to put our non-talking girl on Strattera. Everything else was a colossal waste of time. Psychiatrist assumed we hadn’t done an educational psych assessment. We have. Twice. We are doing all we can.

Theme came up that perhaps I’m doing something wrong with the curriculum or I changed something that became traumatic for her… Nope, she wanted the doctor. We’ve changed school curriculum many times over the years, trying to find something suitable for her learning disorders and easier for her to handle. Something she will want to do instead of constantly complaining that she hates to learn. And she doesn’t even have to write much anymore, she types and types well. She is doing well with her school so there is certainly no trauma there. It’s a dyslexia friendly curriculum and I do some of the reading for her so she doesn’t get tired and unable to process well because of decoding the actual letters and what they mean and trying to make sense of the whole line or paragraph. I praise her and even much later remind her how well she did that day and how she is progressing.

I break the lessons down, mix book and technology and brain breaks. I do it all. I definitely do more than a typical school would. And so for my attention seeking child to start having people interrogating me thanks to her lies, is awful. A betrayal. She herself told the psychiatrist that she was disappointed she wasn’t at the other hospital where her leg op had been. And that she prefers the paed there.

Something I do know because she’s extremely obsessed with him that it’s unhealthy. Oh, I can believe that part. She makes paper planes and names them after him. She once got online and found his website and sent an inquiry perfectly spelled out, “Can you please help my sick baby. I love her. So mortifying! She’d gotten into my profile so they contacted me to ask if they could help me!

It be your own people.

I’m depleted of strength and defeated.

My husband threw me under the bus too. Ammy said to the psychiatrist that she and Mickey don’t get sweets but the twins do. I said nope, not true! Husband said, “But what about the days when they buy their treats earlier than treat day and so don’t have their treat on the proper treat day? What if you are making them feel like that?”

Me..not the children who ask to eat their treats earlier than the twins. He has no clue what I’m doing with the children. He’s not here! And even when he’s hear he doesn’t hand out any treats or teach them or tell them Bible stories, it’s all me. So he has no reason to try show from what he thinks is happening in his absence.

And the psychiatrist was clear. Ammy specifically said sweets. I give them sugar-free sweets on Fridays and Saturdays. ALL of them. I asked my eight year old if he knew his sister had said I only give the twins sweets. “But you don’t! You give us all! What??? Why did she say that?”

Why indeed.

And of course, the psychiatrist then asked Ammy if it feels like it’s bio kids vs adopted! What?? How dare she put that in her head when it had not come up in her own narrations to the psychiatrist? And thankfully there, my girl was honest. We don’t treat our children differently based on where they came from.

That part made birth mom extremely angry. “Sis, you love them all so much! I know you do! How can she say that about you?? Why? How can she hurt you?”

That’s a good question. Lying about me is one of those sins I hate. And we know how these people are brainwashed into believing the child over the parents.

Maybe my current AS flare up has been triggered by the emotions roaring and rolling around my belly.

We were admitted. Now we are out.