updates & underwear

so i am sorry to be so vague about what's going on with ben...we don't know much & some of the symptoms are...personal. so we will leave it at that but we get tests back on tuesday so hopefully we will know more then. but as for now, if any of his symptoms worsen, he has to go directly to the hospital. no passing go, no collecting $200.

thanks to everybody for your comments, they really meant a lot to us. sorry for the downers lately. let's spice things up again.

starting with this morning....

it is fantasia's graduation from 5th grade & here in NC that means graduating from elementary school. so it's a big deal for this little princess peebody (a purposeful misspell here). her mom is bringing her some new clothes & meets her at the school to have her change in the bathroom. well fantasia's acting funny about changing in front of her mom which is weird & her mom catches on to the fact that something's up. turns out that miss fantasia accidentally "forgot" to put on any underwear--top or bottoms--. well fantasia's mom FLIPS OUT (because this has happened before & she has given her so many talks, threats, spanks, you name it) and marches her home.

cut to me, upstairs getting ready to go to fantasia's graduation ceremony, when i hear this shrieking that temporarily stops my blood from pulsing in my veins. ben immediately texts me "GET DOWNSTAIRS NOW" and i throw on my clothes, turn on a show for caleb & shut the door behind me.

run downstairs & into the long hallway to hear fantasia SCREAMING & her mom yelling back. her mom is throwing all of her belongings in garbage bags...all of which, p.s., stink to high heaven of urine. fantasia is our client who follows the path of least resistance (aka, the opposite of "the road less traveled") and if she doesn't feel like doing laundry or wants to clean her room in a hurry, shoves all of her clean & dirty clothes in the hamper together. i actually remember doing this myself many moons ago, but the difference was, i didn't have a bed wetting problem. so now EVERYTHING smells like fermented, mildewing, pee. ben has talked about bottling up that scent in a jar & using it as a mace spray to ward off predators of any kind. i'm telling you, one whiff and even the most determined of captors who got within 20 feet of that stench would stop dead in their tracks and say, "um, nevermind."

**you may be asking yourselves...why don't ben & lynsey DO anything about this??? and let me answer you by saying i used to wake up twice a night (midnight & 4am) to wake her up to use the restroom until she became verbally assaultive (screaming SHUT UP to me while i'm half-awake, blinking & trying to figure out what just happened) & actually had the gall to tell me that she wasn't going to the bathroom because she felt that this was "her time." oh, excuse me, i forgot that YOU actually WANT to sleep in a puddle of urine & me taking time out of my REM pattern is interrupting your marinating party. pardon me. i'll make sure not to interrupt "your time" anymore and just stay asleep. that was the end of that.

then i set up motivators if she could not wet the bed. so she started lying. then i set up weekly charts so that even IF she wet the bed, as long as she got up & cleaned herself, she had a reward. she lied some more. we bought her pull-ups, depends, plastic sheets, plastic on her carpet. it's an ongoing battle. she still does earn huge consequences & rewards if she takes care of her own hygiene, but she just doesn't care. which leads us to this point. ***

so back to the story. fantasia & her mom yelling & screaming, i wait out in the hallway just in case things get out of hand or get physical. her mom walks by me with full garbage bags, heading out the door to the car. she is crying & i ask her what i can do to help. fantasia slams the bedroom door & locks it. i knock lightly, ask to come in. she lets me. i ask her how we can turn this day around, that even though this feels like it's the end of the world, it isn't. that she has been through worse & has come out on the other side of it. i tell her that in order to get what she wants...which is to go back to graduation...she needs to wipe her nose, stop screaming, start saying "yes ma'am" and help us pack up the car. and that's just what she does.

we end up having a pow-wow at the kitchen table, talking about how we can make this day better. i get fantasia's mom to agree to come with us to walmart & have fantasia buy herself some clean underoos out of her own allowance & then we would go back to the school.

the walmart trip is a success, fantasia misses the opportunity to "walk" but at least she hasn't missed the cake & punch part of the ceremony. satisfied, she heads off toward the cake table. as her mom & i walk out the door, we discuss the difficulties of having a child with a mental illness. don't get me wrong, there are a lot of behavioral issues going on with this 11-yr old mess, but the mental health diagnoses exacerbate all of the normal ups & downs of adolescence. add on the hygiene (or lack thereof), the compulsive lying & you've got a ball of fire on your hands.

but the end is coming. quickly. though she doesn't have any idea yet, fantasia is being shipped off on sunday night to a 40-day boot camp/wilderness program. so get ready. if i am out of material to blog about, i am like 99% confident there will be some action around 4:30 pm here in NC on sunday. pop your popcorn folks. and prepare yourself for the show because this one could be academy award winning.