Psychiatrist Appointment

After what has seemed like an endless effort, we finally have a psychiatric appointment for Danielle coming up soon.

This is after countless phone calls, firing our pediatrician and hiring a new one, getting a prescription requesting psychiatric care, and writing several letters.

It's done.  We have an appointment.

Finally! (For any ASL students out there, this is the perfect moment for the sign PAH!)

Now I don't believe, for one second, that this will be any sort of miracle for us.  I don't think that a psychiatrist is going to be able to spend two hours visiting with Danielle, and find a cure for what ails her.

I wish it were true, but I know it doesn't work that way.

We are hoping we will find a doctor who will listen to our concerns and take them seriously.  We are hoping that the doctor will take a good hard look at Danielle's medication (currently a very low dosage of Fluoxetine) and investigate whether there is something else that might take the edge off her depression and her hair-trigger temper.

It's clear that the medication she's on now isn't really solving any of her problems. Although the frequency of her explosions has been somewhat reduced in the five months she's been medicated, the severity of them has been much, much worse.

This past week or so we've seen some pretty darn decent behavior for a change.  Unfortunately, things are back on the downhill trend again.  Danielle has been disrespectful and mildly verbally abusive for the past few days, and we got an e-mail this morning from her teacher, describing a whole new bunch of trouble she's gotten herself into at school.

Discouraging, but not entirely surprising.  It often seems that when something really dreadful happens around here, we see a few days of good behavior.  We got the double-whammy of some bad news coming from Danielle's birth family and had to deal with Sir Spudly's passing all within a few days of each other. Now that the shock has worn off, and things are starting to settle into their "new normal," Danielle is edging back into her usual modus operandi.

Of course the news isn't all bad.  We finally had a chance to "meet" (at least by telephone) the new school-provided therapist who will be working with Danielle.  We had a long talk about some of Danielle's issues, and this new person has had experience working with extremely troubled teens in a group home, so she understands the issues that we are facing.

Although I won't say that this new therapist will be immune to Danielle's skillful attempts at manipulation and triangulation, it seems she will at least be resistant to them.

At least one can hope.