I have an appointment today with Pint's Psychiatric prescriber. Therein lies a dilemma.

She has been, of late, taking little forays into the beginnings of psychosis. Not in a big way, but in a little way that seems to be progressing. Very little things which I have recently discussed with her counselor. Little things that are bothering me.

Her absolute insistence that I be on that old ladder every single night without fail, for however long it takes her to fall asleep. That I can pretty much handle, and that is really not a psychosis type thingy. That is more of an, um...insecurity issue.

But, the bugs. And the coughing. And the don't touch my food. And the hysterics over nothing.

I thought those were just weird.

But, the counselor says that is not just weird behavior. They are the beginnings of psychosis.

And that, is scary.

She doesn't go into the bathroom without checking for bugs. There are times a night, but not every night, (only when she is really tired or had a very bad day) when I have to strip the entire bed to check for bugs. She no longer goes outside to play because of bugs.

Now, every night, as she is falling asleep, she constantly coughs and clears her throat. There is nothing wrong with her. She has a drink. She has no fever. She is not having allergies. Yet she is constantly, and I do mean constantly clearing her throat. Once she falls asleep, the coughing and gagging stops.

The other morning, I poured her bowl of cereal. Normally, since they also eat breakfast at school, I don't pour very much cereal into their little corell ware bowls. About ½ full is what they get. Why waste it? That morning, I either wasn't paying attention, or wasn't awake enough, and I poured a full bowl. Not even thinking, I reached my hand into the bowl (my hands had just been washed and dried) and picked up a handful of cereal and returned it to the box. Gross maybe, but it is probably done lots and lots by busy mom's all over the US and wherever else they have boxed cereal.

She totally tweaked. I mean total hysterics. Crying and screaming and snot running down her face tweak. “you touched my food with your fingers....”

I explained, that I touch her food all the time, being as how I am the PREPARER of her food. Didn't matter.

So, I mentioned these things to her counselor two days ago. And, she is VERY worried.

The dicey part comes in now. She is on ADHD medication, the Daytrana patch. And,.....drum roll....ominous music.....

One of the side effects of ADHD medication is occasional psychosis.

Damn.

Now, I would like very much to take her off the medication. But honestly, she cannot function without it. Imagine a roomful of bouncing, verbal diarrhea, moving, mobile, hysterical kids hanging off your elbow. Then condense them down to ONE kid doing it all herself.

That is my Pint with no medication.

With her meds, she can MOSTLY track. Without it, not at all. With them she is an A student, without them, she would be in the principals office daily.


Even with the meds, she has bad days at school. This is a straight A student, who occasionally (okay, ONE time) gets a B. You can tell her bad days, because she just simply forgets to do work. Like she will do the front of page 1, and the front of page 3 and totally miss page 2. she normally gets over 100 on every assignment. The occasional difference is somedays, she will get a 93 instead of 100 or above. Not a big deal. Still an A kid. I don't personally give a dang whether or not she is a d student or an a student. Each to his/her own potential

So I am thinking that this guy will change her from the patch which I like, but which may not be working as well as it used to, to a pill.

I hate this. I hate medicating my child. I hate giving her something that changes her reality.

And yes, for all the naysayers out there, we tried organic foods, cutting out sugar, cutting out proteins, cutting out carbohydrates, cutting out food coloring (and THAT was hard), all the different diets and behavior systems out there to control ADHD.

There is only one word to describe how I feel right now.

Shit.