No Hell Week Part II Post! Purgatory, at the Most.

We made it.  Whew.

Tuesday was the worst. I outlined the basics in the email to the therapist that I posted on Wednesday.  Sunny was in a terrible state.  He seemed full of hate.  It was like the hate came from outside and took him over.  He took the hate out on us, but I could tell, more than anything else, he hated himself for being that way.  When he told me in the car about the voices in his head that said "I hate you", it made me feel so sad for him.

We started him back on his old med that night.  Wednesday was a little better, but he still got called him from school for acting out.  We had a school meeting about him on Thursday -- we kept him out of school that day -- then let him go back for a half day on Friday.  He made it.

Thank goodness I can trust the people at his school. They're treating this like a "lost week".  They're full of sympathy for him.  There won't be any lasting consequences.  At another kind of school, they might have been talking expulsion or a move to a special education classroom.

By Friday, he was begging to go back to school! He was missing his "Math Message".  I don't know exactly what that is, but he sure does love it.

He had a sleepover with Nana on Saturday night.  Guy and I took a much-needed date night and saw The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, then went to Loca Luna for tapas.  We didn't go to bed until midnight and slept in until 10AM.  Then we met Sunny and Nana and another friend of ours for dim sum.  Overall, this has been a pretty good weekend.  The smile is back on Sunny's face.

The situation in Haiti, of course, has been weighing on my mind.  I emailed a Haitian friend I met through the Obama campaign and asked him how his relatives were doing and if we could do anything else besides donating (which we've already done). 

This man worked harder than anyone else on the campaign, and he couldn't even vote.  He must have registered hundreds of new voters.  When our small group went on a weekend vanpool together, he drove the whole time.  And he knocked on twice as many doors as any of us, with a bigger smile on his face, in the blazing summer heat... all while wearing a three-piece suit.  I really admire him and I feel terrible for what he and his family (a wife and six very sweet kids) must be going through now.

Sunny's therapist talked to him a little bit about the voices.  She told him that when he heard voices inside his head saying mean things about him, like "I hate you", he could tell himself positive things, like "I'm nice".

So we're back to square one with his medication.  I guess we'll try taking him off again next year.  I don't want him to go through the rest of his childhood on meds, but I can't risk 1) his  school and 2) our sanity.  Thinking about my younger cousin and his life, the thing he really regrets most bitterly is how he was warehoused in special ed because of his behavior, and never even learned to write until middle school.  He made me promise that I would never do that to Sunny.