The elephant in the room.

Literally. There is an elephant in the room.

And apparently it is ME.

According to Noah's psychiatrist (TNP) anyway.

OMG I say. I had no idea! I had no idea I am fat and need to lose weight!

Thank god we are paying her the big bucks, right?

Ummmphhh....I'm so frustrated after our appointment with her today. It's only the second time Rich and I have had an appointment with just the two of us. I scheduled it a couple weeks ago because I wanted to talk about how Noah is doing at school, and what else we should be trying to get for him as far as services. I also wanted to get her feelings on Noah now that she has been seeing him for several months.

At our appointment last week I told her what I hoped we could discuss, since our time was limited.

So guess what we discussed today?

OK, I know. I gave it away in the beginning. 

Yes, we discussed that I am fat. Huge. And I need to lose weight.

My weight, exercise, and her "suggestion" that Rich and I take an hour lunch break one day a week to have a "walking date" was what we spent 3/4 of the session on.

She wants Rich and I to meet once a week at lunch for a walking date. Great idea. Really, it would be, if I had the time to take an hour for lunch, and Rich had time to take two hours, considering he'd have to add in travel time to get to me. Hell, I don't even take a lunch. I take on close to a full time load of projects and do it in 24 hours a week. When I am only in the office six hours a day, four days a week, there is no time to take lunch.

TNP wasn't taking excuses.

Finally I let my frustration show. I asked her why we were focusing so much on me and my weight. That obviously I know I have a weight problem. That I have always had a weight problem. That I have issues that I am not going to spend time discussing with her. 

I asked why we were spending so much time on this when we had bigger problems, like the level of aggression and anger in our house, or that Noah can barely read. That I had hoped we would get some ideas of where we are headed now.

TNP told me that I was not directing the session, she was. 

I guess I am the "bigger" problem.

We did discuss a few other less "weighty" issues. Like Noah's need for daily exercise (duh). That swimming would be ideal for him and we should find a non-competitive swim team for him (already discussed at least twice with her). That he may need a "special school" (again, mentioned several times before, but never with any suggestions for what school).

I told her we were looking for her to give us ideas. To help us find a path to travel with Noah. 

She told us that wasn't going to happen. She isn't going to hand me a paper with a road map on it.

She said she considers it progress because he has not been hospitalized or been put in residential treatment.

I call bullshit on that. BULLSHIT! I refuse to accept that as a measure of success. She does not know me at all if she thinks I won't do everything in my power to make sure neither of those things happen to Noah unless we have absolutely no choice. And that would only be because we can't keep him or Kiel safe.

I'm frustrated. 

I don't know where to go from here. TNP came so highly recommended, by a number of professionals that work with or have worked with Noah. She is extremely intelligent. She is highly qualified to do what she does and her practice specializes in complex children.

 

She should be perfect for Noah. 

I just don't think that I should be leaving appointments with her feeling like I need to go to my own therapist to decompress. Seriously, I leave there in tears at least half the time. 

*Just to be clear, what she said is true. I do have a weight problem that I need to deal with. However, I take issue with how she presented it, and that it monopolized the time we had set aside to discuss Noah. You know, her patient.

One of my discoveries over the summer as I read more about the brain and began to understand  how Noah's adoption and the early trauma he experienced effected his brain, was that Noah most likely had a visual processing disorder.

We had him evaluated when he was four, but I didn't really understand it, and he was so out of control at the time I didn't see how we could do actual therapy with him. We were also gearing up for our third IVF procedure, the one that actually worked, and my energy became focused on my pregnancy.

This summer however everything I was learning about the brain and adoption made me realize we needed to look into it again.

So, we went in one day for the vision test. Unfortunately, Noah forgot to take his eyeballs with him to that test because he wasn't able to see much of anything. His spine stopped holding him up during part of it too as he couldn't figure out how to sit up straight in the chair. He was essentially in full PITA mode.

The eye doctor did get enough out of him to know it was worth coming back and doing the visual processing exam, so we returned the next week for that. He was more cooperative during those exams fortunately. At least he remembered to bring his eyeballs with him.

It turns out he has intermittent exotropia, which means he has difficulty with eye teaming and tracking. And that makes complete sense considering the difficulties he has with reading and doing worksheets.

So, a couple weeks ago we started vision therapy. We work with the therapists once a week and do daily exercises at home. So far Noah has been very cooperative with it all.

I like the approach they use because not only are they strengthening the eye - brain connection, but they are strengthening other parts of his body as well, like his core muscles and balance.

Today at the end of the session they brought me in to show me a new exercise they want me to do with Noah. It involves wearing 3D glasses and having a flashlight shined at your face.

The therapist did it to me and told me to tell her what color light I saw.

So I said "green."

And she looked a little confused, and said "ummm, OK, let me take a step back, now what do you see"

"green"

"OK, I'll move forward, tell me when it stops being green or becomes two lights."

So she was almost at my nose before it became two lights, and it was still green. Only briefly did I see some red spikes through it.

So she had me tap on the bone next to my outer right eye, to try and wake the eye up.

What color do you see now she asks.

"Green"

"huh, do you know if you have any undiagnosed eye disorders?" she asked?

"Well, if they are undiagnosed, I guess I wouldn't know would I."

She didn't really have an answer for that.

Despite my failure to see doing the exercises with Noah is going well. We will have a reevaluation in two months I believe and see what improvement he has made.

It feels good to be working on a therapy that I feel confident about and believe is going to help him.

Even if I can't see the light.

I can't make conversations like this up

Rich and I "graduated" from couples therapy tonight. In and out in 20 minutes tonight. Well not really, since he was 20 minutes late seeing us, so really, in and out in 40 minutes. Still had to pay our $20 copay, even though it is supposed to be a 45 minute session.

Have I mentioned Len before? You have to say Lehhnnn...with a bit of a nasal edge to it. He's our therapist. Well was. Like I said, today we graduated.

Lehhnnn's an OK guy. Nice enough. Rich liked him. I tolerated him because he made Rich comfortable and we were making progress.

Mostly he irritated me because he was always at least 15 minutes late seeing us. And he never got my sense of humor.  And when I mentioned phone sex once I swear the man blushed. Tonight I caught him doing the big eye roll at something I said. 

On our drive home I mentioned Lehhnn's eye roll and asked Rich if he saw it, which led to this conversation:

Me: OMG, did you see that eye roll when I made the comment about me not letting your brother kick you around?

Rich: huh? oh. no.

Me: oh yeah, it was huge! I've told you, he never got my sense of humor. At. All!

Rich: huh. a lot of people don't get your sense of humor.

Me:

Rich: there are a lot of eye's rolling when you are around

Me: huh

Rich:

Me: but my blog friends think I'm funny!

Rich: well yeh, you do have a talent for comedic writing

Me: *glowing* wow, that's like one of the nicest things you have said to me in a long time. Thank you!

Rich: Yeah, you just aren't that funny in person. I'm the one with the live talent.

Me: huh

Me: but you think I'm funny, right?

Rich:

Rich: yeah, most people don't understand you.

Me:


We start back in therapy next week.

Why I love my therapist

She said my mother is psycho,

and called my dad a doofus.

She said some other great stuff tonight too, but those two things made me smile.

part 5 - a little about growing up

I almost feel like I need to defend my mother now. Ughh...

I really appreciate everyone's support about all of this. It's nice to know I'm not alone.

My parents aren't horrible people, and I certainly didn't have a horrible childhood. My dad was probably pretty typical from that era. He worked, came home, my mom waited on him, he watched TV, read the paper, etc. She took care of us kids.

I really don't remember ever sitting in my dad's lap, or snuggling with him. He never read to us or tucked us in at night.

Mostly I remember the times he gave me "advice."

I don't ever recall him telling us he loved us without one of us saying it first. I do know he does love us. I just never really felt I lived up to his expectations. I still don't.

My mother on the other hand was more affectionate and loving when we were younger. She went through several years of depression when I was in my teens. At that time in our life I felt more like I was the mother taking care of her, than her taking care of me. It had an impact on our relationship that she would never acknowledge.

She's not a bad person though. And her comment about leashing Noah sounds so much worse than I think she ever intended. That's not usually the way she comes across. For god sakes, she taught special ed classes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades for almost 30 years. It's not like Noah is an unknown entity to her. I think that's why I'm having such a hard time understanding the way she is treating him.

Oh well...I'm off to my therapy appointment. Thank god for my therapist. She is amazing and is really helping me work though a lot of this crap.