Oksana

This update is going to be a mixed bag.

I'll start with what she has been up to.  Oksana also started cheerleading with Anya.  She's very excited about it.  That's why we are doing it.  She struggles with the cheers.  Coordinating words and movements at a fast pace is hard so she will mostly say a word here or there and shake her pom poms.  That will work because her smile will probably make up for it!  I hope she continues to enjoy it.  We learned early in the season that baseball wasn't her thing.  That was free.  This was not!  Their first game is sometime in January.

Oksana was in the Christmas play at church this year!  Every year the 3rd graders act out the Christmas story.  Any child who is interested can do it.  They have 4 rehearsals and then they perform during both services (not the main service but in the gym).  Oksana's helper at church said she would come to the practices and help her during the play so I could watch and enjoy it.  She is awesome!  Oksana was an angel.  She loved it!  The angels led the crowd in songs throughout the play.  She was very serious about learning the songs and loved the sparkly costume :).

We had something a bit disturbing happen a couple of weeks ago.  Oksana had her first psychotic break.  Oksana has always struggled with the line between reality and fantasy.  Over the last few months we have seen that line get smaller and smaller.  In fact one of the reasons that her psychiatrist first sent her to a therapist was to find out if she was psychotic.  Because she could still be reasoned with when she had delusional ideas and she could put boundaries around her imaginary world and hallucinations she was not psychotic.  It became obvious earlier this  month that things were changing.  She became convinced that she was growing wings and nothing we said could convince her otherwise.  She also had no boundaries on her other world or her hallucinations.  She sometimes spent up to 95% of her school day talking to them or interacting with them in some way.  School is one of her boundaries.  She isn't allowed to interact with them there, but she could no longer control it.  I took her to her therapist on a Tuesday and after a disturbing session she told me to call psych.  Her psychiatrist decided to increase one of her antipsychotics.  She also ordered an MRI which was done yesterday.  We will compare that to an MRI done in 2011 to see if there is any brain deterioration.  She also has referred her to have some very extensive testing done at another local hospital.  I don't know a whole lot about that yet.  I'm hoping to hear from them after the new year.  She feels it can help us get a better grip on what we are dealing with.  I am seeing improvement since the increase in Seroquel but I won't know for sure how effective it is until she goes back to school. 

On the up side her aggression has decreased.  She is still very irritable and moody on and off throughout the day but most of her aggression now is directed at herself and 90% of the time it is connected to one of her delusions.  She believes that her head is magic and if she hits it as hard as she can when she is frustrated the magic will come out and fix whatever is causing her frustration.  Despite the fact that it has never worked for her she keeps insisting it is there. 

One last update.  We had another meeting with our IEP team to discuss Oksana's placement next year.  We had some good discussion.  They got to hear our fears and concerns and we got to hear their thoughts.  In the end we have not made a decision.  It's just isn't clear what to do with her.  We are going to meet again in April to see if we have a better idea of what might work best next year.

It's never a dull moment around here!  I'll blog about our Christmas very soon.