I was never a big fan of roller coasters

Up and down, and up and down, and round and round.  This has bee life recently with Oksana.  Last I posted I had realized that I had made a mistake in her meds and she was not getting the amount she was supposed to.  Can you imagine my relief when I realized what a simple fix it would be for the behaviors I had been seeing to disappear?  She had been on the same dose of her mood stabilizer for 8 months and had experienced great stability.  When I realized our mistake I knew that going back up to her normal dose would bring that stability back. 

I was wrong.

We went back to her normal dose on a Monday night after realizing our mistake.  While we waited for things to get better I watched them get worse....or maybe it was the same but just felt worse.  Her behaviors were disturbing.  Without hashing it all out here I will say that things had escalated to the point that her therapist became extremely concerned.  For the first time ever we had to put a baby gate in front of her door while she slept because we needed to hear if she tried to get up since we couldn't trust what she would do.  At this point the biggest fear is what we will see when puberty hits and she is bigger and stronger.  Right now I can handle her physically, but she is rather tall and it won't be long before she is taller than me.  Her therapist had us put a safety plan in place so that when we need it we have it.  For example, we had to consider how to keep the kids safe.  We  now have a code word and when we say it the boys know that means that they are to take Anya downstairs and not come back up until we say they can. 

We did another increase of her mood stabilizer on Tuesday evening and by Friday we had a different child.  She is happy, playful, and she can handle correction without becoming violent.  I hope this is the beginning of a good stretch of stability again. 

We are still learning and still very early in the life of a family living with mental illness.  I'm learning that this is the roller coaster with no end.  I'm also learning to truly enjoy the stability and to understand that the behaviors that come with instability are not a reflection of who Oksana is but rather the influence of her illness.  That has really helped us to love her through some rough behaviors and not take offense to what she says or does.  That is easier said than done but we are learning!

OOOOPS!

You will not believe what I did.  Back when Oksana was first put on Trileptal she was on 300mg twice a day.  Well the next day she was knocked out so I called the doctor and we cut the dose in half.  I would just take a 300mg pill and cut it in half to give her 150 in the morning and 150 at night.  When Oksana started going to respite we had a problem because our script still said to take 2 300mg pills a day and the respite center can not give meds any differently than what the bottle says without a note from the doctor.  So I did get a note and in the mean time I also contacted the doctor and the pharmacy and asked them to change the bottle so that it reflected the accurate script.  It was no problem and the bottle was changed to say take 1/2 in the morning and 1/2 at night....perfect. 

Well back in July I noticed that I had 0 refills.  I called the pharmacy and they called the doctor for a new script.  When I picked up the bottle I realized that it said to take 1 pill twice a day again.  I was already home so I just made a mental note to ask them yet again to get it fixed, but I never did really get around to it.  I just kept giving her 1/2 in the morning and 1/2 at night. 

On Monday we had an appointment with Oksana's psychiatrist.  The nurse asked us if all of her meds were correct that they had on file.  I told her that we were having trouble getting the script right on her Trileptal.  The nurse turned her computer screen around and I saw "take 1 twice daily" and I started to tell her that was wrong but before I even got it out of my mouth I looked again and said "Does that say 150mg?"  Sure enough it did so I immediately called Larry and told him to get her bottle and tell me how many mg the pills were.  They were 150.  Oh my.  I did not realize what they had done and I had been giving her half of the 150mg tablets and not the 300mg tablets!  Well now, that explains a WHOLE lot!

Her psych got a good laugh out of my mistake.  I just keep telling myself that at least I was giving her too little and not too much!