I have been doing the special needs parenting thing for almost 10 years now.  One thing I have learned is that most of my life is out of my control. No matter how much I desperately want to help my wife and kids I can't make anything better. I pray every night and ask God to please remove these burdens they are forced to carry and give them to me. Every morning I wake up to the fact that either he's not listening or what I ask for simply isn't possible. As a father and husband I feel (admittidly unrealistically) that I should be able to make things better for them. The fact that I can't fix this eats me alive inside. As I sit here writing this Gavin is walking into…

So if you see my mind running around please let me know because I've lost it. This is not going to be a fun part of our journey. Gavin is back on the Lithium but is still very manic right now. He doesn't stop talking about pointless things. I don't mean that in a bad way but he feels he has to tell us EVERY SINGLE thought that runs through his head. He has also lost a ton of motor control so he is falling over and walking into things (like walls). As frustrating as it is for me I cannot imagine how frustrating it is for him. Everyone has paid a very high price this past week. Gavin is literally in emotional pieces. He is completely lost right now.…

Today is winding down to a close. It has been a day. Gavin behaved for the most part but he is really struggling. He is literally walking into walls. We spoke with Dr. R for about an hour on the phone and basically we toss out what we were told this past week. They treated Gavin medically and not psychologically. We are avoiding anti-psychotic medications but we are treating the bipolar. Dr.R says this has no impact on the movement issues. He doesn't understand why we wouldn't treat the bipolar because clearly it's a problem and a major safety issue. So we start back in the morning on Lithium. That will help Gavin tremendously. Dr.R is one of the dew people we have learned to trust. There are only a…

Gavin has been home for 12 hrs and we are already having issues. Last night he saw a plane and told ER it was a UFO. Then he told ER about how alien abduction. So ER had nightmares again. Gavin is and will remain unmedicated because the risk involved in mediating him is now to great. The Cleveland Clinic said we have to wait at least 8 weeks before we can look at meds again. He is a mess and I mean it. He needed to come home because they were done with what they could do and we couldn't afford to be decided between here and there. It was almost $100 +/- per trip. Gavin was getting into the routine of getting what he wanted when he wanted it.…

EJ and I just got home from Cleveland. Gavin is being released tonight but we waited for 7 hours to talk to the doctors. Both of the kids were there and I needed to get EJ home cause he was having tummy issues and went through all the clothes we packed. ER refused to leave without Gavin so he stayed with Lizze. Gavin is unmedicated and will be returning that way. I called to check on them and Gavin as screaming because Lizze turn the violent cartoon off he had put on and changed the channel to something else. This is the first time he didn't get his way in the last week and he exploded and apparently began hurting himself. One thing that concerns me besides the medication issues…

We received a very welcomed call from the Cleveland Clinic a little while ago. It seems we may may be able to bring Gavin home early. They have ruled out all life threats and he is detoxed. However, he is completely unmedicated. That's not necessarily a bad thing though. We can see he is without for a bit and go back on when we need them and I'm sure we'll need to. We have to meet with them around 11am today to figure everything out. I think we'll some how manage as we always do. It will be nice to have everyone together again. As frustrating as he can be I really miss him (we all miss him). Nothing is set in stone yet but they think today is the…

We are all home. Gavin is still at the Cleveland Clinic. We get his MRI results in the morning. I really thing they are going to keep him for a while. The risk of sounding like a bad parent this isn't happening the way it was supposed to. Gavin was supposed to get help and we were supposed to get a much needed break. That is not what's happening. Gavin is 1.5 hours away and we have to keep driving back and forth. Lizze is not able to take her meds when she is going up there and that has a hugely negative impact on her. I end up staying with the other two kids and that is beyond exhausting. Everyone that has watched even one of them can't do…

Today has been bell already. We got a call about 6am this morning saying gavin is having mri this morning. gavin will need to be sedated in order to have his mri. One of us needs to be present so we scrambled to make arrangements. If we had known we would have been there last night. Lizze and her mom left for Cleveland this morning. Both ER and EJ are sick and my back is out. For some reason Sprint shut our phones off this morning. They don't know why it happened but it did. It took me forever to get that fixed. They were supposed to replace Lizzes blackberry but never shipped it out last week. So after 2 days of battling now we have 2 coming which will…