Friday, March 4, 2011

Recovering and Insights

Last night I thought Daughter would be back in the hospital today. She was dehydrated and sleeping, and I was battling to get her to drink anything. This morning she woke up hungry and thirsty and obviously feeling better. I took her to see the nurse practitioner, and her urine is much better. Blood sugar still high, but temperature is down. Still struggling with some constipation, but we have a plan. We're also taking the necessary steps to get her medication costs down.
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I realized somewhere along the line that Daughter probably doesn't recognize when she's really sick. She has always complained of being sick to get attention, and she has always denied it when she really is sick. I remember the first (and only other) time she had a kidney infection. She was 9. Her teacher called and told me I needed to come get Daughter. They thought she had a UTI. She was insisting she was fine, but was obviously sick. She was furious when I went to pick her up, arguing that she was fine as she stopped to rest several times on the way to the car and threw up once or twice.
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When she's healthy, she'll say she's too sick or too tired to do something, but when she's sick, she claims she can do more than she can. Yesterday she was mad when I told her to go rest. Yet as soon as she sat down, she fell asleep. She was crying after walking across the parking lot to her appointment with the psychiatrist, but unhappy when I told her to wait at the door and I'd get the car and pick her up following it. I'm going to have to be even more observant to figure out when she really is sick.
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It's not easy being Daughter-- or her Mom.

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