Drugs are a blessing and a curse

Drugs...do you love them or hate them??!!  I think I do both!!  Sometimes I love them and sometimes I absolutely despise them.  

After our visit to Ohio, we started Chloe on some new medicine.  The first week she took it, she felt much better.  The second week she took it I could tell she was better.  Then the third week rolled around, and the negative side effects we had so feared kicked in.  And those benefits we had seen, have definitely been overrode by the negative side effects!  

Raising a child with clinical depression is a very difficult and challenging experience.  And we feel like we have managed that better in the recent months than ever before.  It has been a fine act of balancing medicine, psychiatry appointments, and counseling.  Not to mention the many hours of counseling mom and dad and siblings get to do!!

I find it amazing how so quickly, all that hard work can be wrecked by negative side effects of a drug!  As a parent, I never want to make a quick decision based upon fear.  Nor do I want to continue to give medicine that is going to completely wreck her emotional balance.  So, I think I have learned to weigh those decisions carefully. At least, I like to hope I do a good job of not going to one extreme or the other!

Today, I made one of those decisions.  I emailed the doctors in Ohio and let them know that I feel like medicine is causing us great difficulty!  Now, I cross my fingers and pray that they will change the course of medicine tomorrow.  And I hope and pray that once this medicine is out of her system, it is not a long road to get her back to healthy place emotionally, but rather an immediate return to where she was.

Wondering tonight what my plan might be at this point tomorrow night.  And I wonder why my neck and shoulders hurt sometimes??!!

But I want my sweet girl back!  Sweet girl that remembers things well, that is motivated to do school work, that is not in her room in bed all the time, that somewhat likes people again, that doesn't hate me when I take her out of this house, etc.  

So sad, when I can't fix the problems!  So glad that God gives much grace and wisdom!