War with The Invisible Illness

This is something I wrote to the Editor awhile back so many of you have read it already. Fast forwarding many months later I can tell you putting my children on medication was one the hardest decisions I ever had to make in my life.  I made myself so sick over this decision...my girls are sooo young and still "babies."  Now, I can tell you it was by far the best choices I made for my girls at this time in their life.  If I had a child who was diabetic I would give them insulin, a child who had cancer I would give chemo, a child who needed surgeries to "fix" them I would do it..I am helping fix something you can't see.  The chemical imbalance in their brain that needs some  medication to help make things "normal" for them. 
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War with The Invisible Illness

When you meet these children, you see beautiful smiling “healthy” boys and girls. What you do not know is they are children with the “invisible illness.” Children with numerous visits to pediatricians, neurologists, social workers, and psychologist trying to “see” the illness. Visits are limited to the restraints of health insurance companies who do not recognize this “invisible illness.”

Parents wake up in the morning taking a deep breath wondering how the day will be for their children. The wake their child up with great ease and tread lightly not to fire up the “invisible illness.” Will this be the day the school calls for yet another “incident?" Will they be allowed to stay in school? Will this be a day with “good choices?" It’s 10am no phone call yet…3pm and made it through another school day…Whew!.

Parents wonder is public school system meet the needs of children with this “invisible illness”…They avoid answering the question because they know they answer. A system full of preparing for tests. Teachers with record numbers of children and fewer paras to meet the demands of a shrinking budget. Administrators and teachers know this is not right. It is the game the government has made them play…for now. It is a system with fewer recesses, PE and music times, or even a time to calm the fire waiting to explode in these children.

Parents of these children have tried multiple behavior modification systems, a spiritual miracle, and all the “natural” options…they failed. The doctor calls and suggests medication to treat the symptoms of the illness. Parents struggle with the right thing to do….so much social stigma with medicating young children. They will look like failures, they will get the “look." The unknowing know they can “fix” the child after a few days with them. The parents get the medication and read the side effects a mile long…suicidal temptations, increased irritability, depression, lack of appetite, seizures, possible addiction. They wonder if they are poisoning their child. How can they give their child something with all these risks? The debate continues…one of the most difficult parenting choice yet….what if something happens can they live with the choice they made.

The child looks at them with an empty look, so much going on in their mind they do not know what is happening. Many medications and dose changes later…The anger…stopped. The phone calls from school…stopped. The mind going in a thousand different directions…stopped. The hour long rages..stopped. The sleepless nights…stopped. You look into the child’s eyes…you see wonder, happiness, thankfulness, and a sense of peace. The house is a now a home where everyone wants to be…no longer hiding in separate rooms waiting for the next “incident” but waiting for the next family game.

You see the “invisible illness” is ADHD, PTSD, ODD, OCD, Conduct Disorder, Depression, Bipolar, and Schizophrenia just to name a few. Doctors, blood tests, and machines cannot see in the head as you see a missing limb, a chromosome disorder, a blind person, or a heart defect. These are children with Mental Health Issues…the “invisible illness.”

Society has placed such a negative view on the “invisible illness.” The children are not to talk about what makes them who they have become through nurture and nature. These children will have a lifetime of obstacles as with any other illness. These obstacles will be overcome with therapies and possibly medication as with any other illness.

Next time you are in line at the store and you see a child who has gone “crazy” or hear about the child who made “bad choices” at school all day…..know they are the children who need the relationships the most. They are the ones in a war with the “invisible illness”….they need friends, they need support, and they need to know they are not battling this war in their head alone!!! Do not give the parents the “look” for allowing their child to act that way…know this may be a child who fights this “invisible illness” all day without a break….know this parent is exhausted mentally and physically beyond imagination.

These children just may be the next Hans Christian Anderson, Ludwig Von Beethoven, Winston Churchill, Kurt Cobain, Charles Darwin, Emily Dickenson, Thomas Edison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Betty Ford, Paul Gauguin, King George III, Johan Goethe, Ernest Hemingway, Victor Hugo, Ignatius of Loyola, Thomas Jefferson, John Keats, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther, Michelangelo, Florence Nightingale, King Saul, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Isaac Newton whom suffered from mental illness. Will you be able to say you helped that child????