Wednesday, April 7, 2010

How Not to Find a Shrink

The new headmaster convinced me that the school could do it. A big, bearded guy with a long career in education, he was exuberant about getting a kid with some issues. He showed me every room in that school, spreading his arms wide, booming "Doesn't it look like we can do everything here? We can do everything but a self-contained classroom." He adjusted his blue and white knit kippah and gave me a goofy grin. I was sold; that was before we knew.

Max's entry into kindergarten was okay. His teacher, Mrs. M., had a quality that Dave and I can't quite describe. Sometimes we meet someone, and we tell them about Max, and there's a look they get; they know what we're talking about. They don't say anything that would tell us that, they don't have to, Dave and I can just tell. Sometimes they say less than most people do when we talk about Max. But Mrs. M. had that quality.

Prospects was part of our weirdo routine. Max's notebook from Prospects traveled everywhere with him now. He had goals for school, goals for home, goals for Prospects. He got points for doing things he was supposed to. He never understood that some rules are the same everywhere. If he wasn't allowed to scream obscenities at home, then that wasn't allowed other places, for instance. max could make no sense of that. He was transitioning poorly. When recess ended and the kids came inside, Max would stay riled up for hours. He couldn't just settle down and listen. Things were deteriorating as October approached, and somehow, Prospects rushed him into a graduation. I know now that September is always a good month for Max. I don't know why, although lots of kids with bipolar have a seasonality to their symptoms. So Max graduated, and we were done. But things were getting worse, not better.

We needed a new psychiatrist. We had been able to continuing seeing Dr. L. because Max was at Prospects. Now that Max wasn't at Prospects, we had no shrink. And Dr. L. had no advice on where to find one. I think he knew that most of them are awful, and that Max was totally out of their league. in an extreme cop-out, he proclaimed, "Max is not a private practice kind of kid". He was right of course. Dr. L. was always right. but my kid needed a shrink.

I called all over. The Yale Child Study Center was going to be seeing kids at Greenwich Hospital, where Dave works. But they didn't know when that might be, and never called me back when I left messages. The Child Guidance Center of Stamford felt that Max was "too sick" for their agency. Thus began an inter-agency battle between Prospects, hosted by the Norwalk Child Guidance Center, and Stamford's center.

I had a hard time understanding that Max was too sick. I mean, they offered psychiatric care, right? To whom? There were un-sick kids who saw a psychiatrist? I couldn't read between the lines yet.

2 comments:

  1. hi. i found your blog from the CABF support group. i'm known as j-momma there. i also have a blog about my 4 yr old son just dx with bipolar in November. i'm enjoying reading your story. what's even more interesting is that i recognized new canaan, then the tapanzee bridge, then stamford, norwalk, and yale and realized you live in CT! i do too! now i live in the north east area (so opposite side of the state) but i grew up in fairfield and shelton. the rest of my family still lives in shelton. oh, and we also took a 6 week trip to the yale child study center. you weren't missing anything. i got nothing from all the testing they did. i had high hopes for them since they specialize in young children, but the clinician found a way to make things my fault (same old story!). it was aggravating. i ended up telling him off (yes, really) and walking out. anyway, you can check out my blog anytime. hope to hear more of your story.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Reading between the lines is where the most painful part of the story lies.

    I, too, remember those unspoken truths that rang silently yet pummeled us to the core. The head teaching pediatric psychiatrist who had to leave the country abruptly and handed Logan’s case off to her favorite resident while the class sat in front of us. Poor resident was unable to maintain a professional composure as she gasped and said “You want ME to take this case?” Stupid resident, unwilling to say to me what they all discussed every time Logan and I left the room. Had someone spoken up, any one of them, we may have been warned before he started trying to kill the dog, before he started hurting himself, before my other children and I lived in constant fear.
    But no one did.
    Instead we, too, got to start calling other shrinks to see if anyone was even willing to take us on.

    Amy
    Logan's Mommy

    ReplyDelete