Okay, so we ended with Thursday so Friday morning we sent both kids to school and was a very normal day. Picked them up after school and we had a home varsity game that night and we got home late.

Saturday morning, got the boys up at 8am for football practice. There is no game until Monday afternoon. They had practice and then I picked them up and took them to the bowling alley for their league. They were done at 2pm and then craziness ensued! LOL!!

It’s homecoming night! So, I am running Joe all over town looking for the perfect silver tie, getting a flower wrist corsage and a black shirt. We rushed home just in time for him to take a shower and then we all left at 5:10pm. I dropped Chuck off at the bowling alley and then took the boys over to Bridget’s photography studio that her and the local doctor just opened up. Joe’s date met us there and the three of them got their pictures taken. I haven’t seen them yet, but I had a blast watching them getting them taken!

I had to leave because it’s my bowling night and Joe’s dates mom took both boys and they went to Perkins and then to the dance. The dance was over at 11pm and I could tell by the way CJ was walking that he was miserable! UGH!! He said he had a horrible time. *SIGH*

Joe had a blast and can’t wait for the next one. The girl he went with his a good friend and her boyfriend couldn’t go and was NOT crazy about Joe taking her! LOL! So, we went home and went to bed. I let CJ stay up an extra hour on the computer since he was so down. He was happy about that! LOL!

Sunday was pretty uneventful. CJ went to his friend, Taylor’s house for the afternoon and Joe just bummed around and Chuck and I watched TV and chilled.

Then Monday came, LOL! I dropped the boys off at school and CJ was fine and normal. I worked out and then was home by 8:30. At noon the school called saying that CJ was saying he wanted to hurt himself and Mr. Applebee (the school counselor) said he wanted to stay at school and he followed CJ to each class the rest of the day. We went in and talked with him to see what is going on. We made CJ go to the football game with the team but we made sure that we would take him home so we could talk to him alone. It’s an hour long ride back to the school.

So, we stopped at a truck stop on the way to the game to talk more about CJ. We are seeing that his main trigger seems to be his relationships and he needs to learn how to handle relationships. He takes on the feelings and problems of others and he needs to learn how NOT to do that. So, I thought maybe I would have him to a project for his therapist. I am going to have him take a piece of paper and write one of his friends name on the top and then on the left side I wrote “Things I like” and on the right side I wrote “Things I don’t like, things that hurt my feelings”. It seems some of his “friends” hurt his feelings but he refuses to let go of these toxic relationships.

So, after this intense meal, we went on our way. We got 15 minutes away and I blew a tire on the interstate! OH MAN!! My spare is stuck up under the van so we had to call Chuck’s brother and he drove all the way out and took us and the tire to go get it fixed. I had a puncture hole in it, so I must have run something over. He only charged us $5! We got back to our van and got it put back on and made it to the game an hour late! We would have been 30 minutes early!

We missed CJ and Joe having a nice big play! I was so upset!! They lost 6 to 32! *SIGH*

So, found out that CJ was crying at half time and did NOT want to play but the coach talked him into it and he did really good and had a good time. He didn’t really talk to us on the way home but he did confirm that he is having problems with his friends at school. This is so frustrating!

When we got home, they got showers and CJ seemed just fine and was laughing and playing with Joe. Chuck and I got to talking and we just don’t understand how he can be so suicidal at school and at home his laughing and fine. That is when it hit me, CJ has sever anxiety and it escalates when he has it school to a point to where he wants to die. This was WAY more to do than just depression. These therapy sessions and going to the hospital isn’t working and I think we need to find out why!

On Tuesday morning CJ seemed just fine. I dropped them off at school and then went to workout at the gym. I wasn’t there 15 minutes when Chuck called me saying that our nephew, Zack, Bridget’s husbands son who is 7 at a major seizure and had to be rushed to the hospital. We didn’t know if he was going to make it. Oh my, I was floored! Chuck said he would call me later with more news.

I had a 9am appointment with my psychiatrist. We mostly talked about CJ. I told him of CJ’s weird symptoms and he read off the symptoms of “General Anxiety Disorder” and I said yes to all of them as I know of about CJ and Dr. P. said CJ only had to have 3 of them and he had them all. So, he has some kind of anxiety problem. After my session, I talked to CJ’s psychiatrists nurse about what is going on with CJ to let him know and then I went across the street to see about setting up therapy sessions with Tricia.

After all this I went to Walmart and Chuck called me and said Zack is okay, that they are running tests and that he’ll probably sleep most of the day. They think he may be having seizures at night and they want to find out why. But, Thank God, he’s okay now!

Chuck and I got home about the same time and we weren’t home an hour when the school called! YOU’RE KIDDING!!! AGAIN!?!?!? ARG!!!! Okay, today was SO stressful and now this! Chuck and I both had ENOUGH!!! We want to get to the bottom of what is going on. Why is CJ NOT okay at school but FINE at home?!?!? We got to the school and we said NO MORE! We pulled him out for the rest of the week. We can’t take any more phone calls!

We told them that we are NOT taking him to the hospital and that we want CJ’s psychiatrist to do a FULL psych evaluation, not some random doctor at a hospital that we don’t know. So, Curtis called Suzie, Dr. Choure’s nurse to try and get an emergency appointment. He had to leave a message. We had CJ get all his stuff and we took him home. And guess what!?! He was FINE!! He was laughing and talking on the way home and was just fine at home! ARG!!!!

So, Chuck had to do some business with his parents so he was with him when I got the phone call. Curtis called and said that his supervisor is insisting that we take CJ to the hospital or they will press charges against us for Child Endangerment! YOU’RE KIDDING?!?!?! We are doing everything we can for CJ and going to the hospital is NOT what he needs! ARG!!!!!

So, I called Chuck to let him know the news. He said he would take care of it when he got home. I asked CJ, do you feel like hurting yourself? He said, “No, I feel much better now”. So, Chuck got home around 4pm and called the supervisor and convinced her that we would watch him closely and we would take him to the ER if anything changed. Curtis called and said that CJ had an appointment with Dr. Choure the next day, Wednesday, at 1:30.

I went and got Joe from football practice and told him what was going on with CJ. That we pulled him from school and everything. I told him to NOT worry about CJ’s work and that is wasn’t his job to help CJ with any of his school work. He was happy about that, LOL!

Chuck and I got to talking later that night and we realized something. CJ has never been right, ever since he was born. There have been weird issues with CJ since day one. We decided to write it all down and something was glaring at us. Does CJ have OCD? Oh no! So, here are some things we could remember about CJ.

From the moment he was born he refused to sleep more than 5 hours a day, no kidding! Here is a baby that is a week old and won’t go to sleep until 11pm or midnight and then wake up at 5am and be up ALL DAY LONG!!

He cried almost non-stop till he was 1 years old. Nothing made him calm down except music.

By the time he was 16 months we gave up trying to get him to take a nap.

When he was 9 months old, he would drink those Capri Sun juices and demand on keeping the empty container. We could NOT throw them away or he would completely lose it and have a meltdown like you’ve never seen!

When he was 2, and we would eat at Burger King, he would insist on keeping our shiny burger wrappers or he would have a meltdown.

Around 2 he started making me sweep the floor every time there was anything on it, even just fuzz. He would cry and scream, “Mom, sweep the floor!”.

Same age, he would follow us around the house shutting doors and turning out all the lights. If someone wasn’t in a room then the lights had to be off or he’d lose it.

If his stuffed cat, Carmichael, had any dirt on him, CJ would throw a fit and have a huge meltdown until I could get it cleaned. I remember being at Kitty’s house one day for dinner and she pointed out that Carmichael’s nose was dirty and Chuck and I said, “Shhhhh, don’t tell him!!!” I mean really, who does that?

By 3 years old, he had this weird nightly ritual. He would tell me everything he likes and everyone and it got to be about 15 minutes long and after a few months I had had enough and told him he had to shorten it or I refused to do it anymore. So, from the age of 3 till the beginning of 7th grade, every night when I tucked him in he had to say, “Goodnight, I love you and Goodbye” or he wouldn’t be able to sleep and he’d be VERY irritated. (This ended when he felt to old to be tucked in and we now realized he changed it to having to call his friends before bed or he has a meltdown.)

So, I am sure there were others but after we talked about these, we were like, oh my, he’s been this way since he was born! He does these weird things to relieve his anxiety! He has hoarding tendencies too! I wanted to see if he still did so this morning I gave him a test. I took puppy, that he’s had since he was 2 and picked it up and showed it to him and told him that I wanted him to throw him away. He went from smiling and fine, to crying, shaking and filled with fear and anxiety in about 3 seconds. I told him fine we don’t have to get rid of puppy, he can keep puppy but get rid of all the other stuffies he has. Same thing, same reaction. So, I said how about we get rid of those empty monster cans you have over there, same thing, same reaction! I told him, CJ, I am not getting rid of anything, I am just testing you to see how you would react to getting rid of some of your things.

So, we got to really talking to him and explained to him why we didn’t just send him off to the hospital. We explained that we think more than just being depressed is going on and we want to know exactly what is going on so we can fix the REAL problem. We told him we thought he had an anxiety disorder and maybe some OCD tendencies but we don’t know for sure since we aren’t doctors. But, if we could relieve his anxiety then his depression would fix itself.

So, I printed some questions off the net to ask him just to see what issues he was dealing with. Wow, okay, we learned a lot! We learned that when CJ walks down the halls of school, he has to touch the walls and lockers as he walks by and has been doing this since 7th grade! He knows others see him and think it’s weird and he tries NOT to do it but his anxiety goes up if he can’t do it.

We learned that it takes CJ 15 minutes or longer to get ready to go to football practice because he has to make sure his socks are the same height and he has to keep re-adjusting them until he gets them perfect. Others of mentioned it to him like why do you do that? Why must you keep messing with your socks?

We also noticed today that CJ has to do things on the half hour. We wanted him to do his Science notes and it was 11:12am and he said, “I will at 11:30″ and we like, no, you aren’t doing anything right now so you can just start now. He said, “I can’t, I can’t do it till 11:30″ Now, we didn’t think anything of this until later in the day but he does this all the time. He can’t shower until 9:30 or he can’t do anything until the top or bottom of the hour.

So, this was eye opening! We get to Dr. Choures at 1:30 and Chuck, Curtis and I went in to talk to the doctor. We took about 45 minutes of his time. He was shocked to hear all this and wondered why he hadn’t heard any of it earlier. We told him that we just pieced all this together in the past few days and that we felt that going to the hospital was NOT going to help and he agreed! YA!!

After we told him everything he said that he very well may have OCD but wants to do further testing but he has severe anxiety disorder and that if he does have OCD it’s going to take YEARS of Cognitive-Behavior Therapy and medication. Since he’s had it for SO long, that it isn’t just going to go away with a pill. This is MUCH more then just depression.

He explained about why CJ can’t handle school. He explained it like this: say you have a lottery ticket worth millions and they are reading off the numbers. Each number they call off, you have on your ticket! With each number they call your heart rate increases and by the time they get to the last number your sweating, shaking, heart is going crazy, etc. This is what is happening to CJ at school. He is fine at the beginning of the day, but his anxiety mounts and escalates until it’s out of control and he feels like dying because he can no longer cope. And when we remove him from the cause of the anxiety like going home, it all goes away and he is then fine. AH, so this is why he’s fine with us but not fine in school. He can’t handle being around this many people.

We thought maybe he was just saying these things to get attention or to get out of playing football and even Joe thought the same because we don’t see him at school. Chuck talked to his football coach and he said that CJ is fine in the mornings, laughing, talking etc. but by lunch he looks so stressed out that he’s going to explode!

So, it’s finally all making sense! The doctor can’t really go on record and say that he recommends homeschooling but off record he said CJ should NOT be in school! We totally agreed with that! He is SO much better out of school. The doctor said he was VERY nervous about CJ going back to school and I can see why now.

So, he doubled CJ’s medication. Both med’s he’s taking is for OCD but at a much higher dose so those doubled BUT his ADHD medication causes anxiety so that one was lowered. Oh my, so giving him Concerta every morning wasn’t helping either! It peeks at noon and wears off by the time he comes home! All making more sense!

So, he will start Cognitive-Behavior Therapy with Tricia, she does this kind of work, with CJ. Not sure when, I know he sees her tomorrow at 11am. He sees Dr. Choure again on Wed. at 1:30 and we will find out more about what all is going on with CJ. We ALL feel better knowing what is really going on and having a plan of attack.

The thing is, because the OCD is SO ingrained in him, it will take a VERY long time to break. He put it like this, un-learn how to swim. I am going to throw you into the water and I want you to NOT know how to swim. Just let the water go up your nose and sink because you no longer know how to swim. Can you do it? No, we would just start swimming automatically. Same thing with CJ, he can’t just NOT do these things, they are automatic. In fact, until today, CJ had no idea what he was doing or why he was doing it. He knew it wasn’t normal, but he couldn’t stop even when he tried to stop.

CJ is SO happy not to be going back to school. He said he feels like a HUGE weight has been lifted and he feels excited about the new plan of attack. Curtis even said he was amazed at the difference in CJ being out of school for just one day.

I told Joe everything on the way home from football practice. He was like, WOW, everything makes so much sense now! And he’s like, “So that’s why he is always messing with his socks?!?!?!” LOL!!! Joe said he thought CJ was faking the suicide threats for attention too and I explained it all and he was surprised but said wow mom, now it all makes so much sense!

Curtis was shocked about everything he learned about CJ today, but said it all made much more sense to him now too. So, that was about 3 hours ago when Curtis left. CJ and Joe have been in his room playing a new computer game and having fun. CJ is SO happy, much happier than we have seen him in a LONG time!

What he has isn’t just going to go away and I’m sure we have MANY hurdles to climb but I think we caught it in time that CJ won’t be taking his own life because he can’t handle living!

Tomorrow we will figure out what to do with his schooling. We thought about putting him in the school across the street from the high school. It’s an online computer school and you go there from 11:30 to 2:30 for tutoring and help with your classes. But, Curtis brought up a good point. Just seeing the school across the street could send CJ’s anxiety to climb and if he’s in a room where he can see it the whole time, that would NOT be good and just seeing it every day might not be good. So, we might just have him do all his schooling at home until he’s had some serious therapy and then we can try other things as we feel he is ready.

But, we don’t know what all our choices are so we will be discussing that with the school tomorrow. I told CJ to not worry about any of his homework this week as we try to straighten everything out. He was happy to oblige! LOL!!

So, I think that was everything but I may have missed a few things, it’s hard to remember everything that happened this week. I guess we’ll know more as we see the doctor and therapist more often. It’s weird, because when CJ was about 3 we wondered if he had OCD and we just dismissed it and tried to break him of these rituals. What we didn’t realize was he was just replacing them.