u/Antique-Owl8155

Bedtime routine starts at 7pm. No more screens, no TV. Brush teeth, pajamas, and then reading to wind down for the night… lights out at 8-8:30pm.

(EDIT: on weekends his bedtime is 10pm, he’s still up by 4am though.)

He falls asleep very well.

He takes 0.1mg of extended release Clonodine, and 0.5mg of Melatonin at bedtime. His last focalin for the day was all the way back at 12:00pm. He has had a sleep study this year and they found no signs of sleep apnea or anything.

He wakes up at 4am, hyper. Wired. Running around (literally.)

He wakes up his little brother (their rooms are next to each other) because he’s running in/out of his room, down the stairs, etc. and the noises wake up little brother.

By 3:00-4:00pm, he has dark bags under his eyes, and he’s extremely exhausted and irritated/moody.

He also has pathological demand avoidance, so any suggestions we try and give him at 4am, he argues with us.

He’ll come into our room and say “I can’t go back to sleep can I get my iPad?” (Edited to add: we do not give him his iPad at 4am. Ever. But he’ll stand there and argue for it.)

I try to suggest he use some calm down/meditation techniques and he’ll argue with me. I’m disoriented at 4am and I can’t handle negotiating and arguing that early.

He goes to therapy. He agrees to things in therapy, but as soon as it’s “in the moment,” everything goes out the window.

He was on Guanfacine for 5 years, but it made him tired all day long, with dark bags under his eyes which made him moody and irritable all day long. Then we tried Strattera, and he was super mean on that (we got calls from school about it from his teachers, emotional outbursts and bullying other kids etc).

Is this just life now? Is there anything else that can help him?

EDIT: alright, I’m going to try pushing back his weekday bedtime to 9pm, for 3 weeks. I’ll report back on how it goes.

For about a week now, my internet has been dropping maybe up to 5 times a day. Anyone else with Spectrum having issues?

Before I begin: I’ve messaged my GI doctor and my dentist.. the earliest my dentist can see me, is Sept 17th… and my GI hasn’t gotten back to me yet (but I messaged her on a Friday afternoon so I’ll probably hear back maybe tomorrow or Tuesday).

I was on Budesonide for 2 months. My final dose was 3 weeks ago. About two weeks after having stopped the Budesonide, I noticed smooth, red, swollen patches on the inside of both of my cheeks in my mouth. I’ve had this before, (but it was only on one side,) and I had a biopsy about three years ago, and it just came back as “inflamed tissue” and then it went away and it hasn’t reappeared until right now.

And then today, I noticed a white circular patch on one side of my tongue (it kinda looks like leukoplakia if I google it,) and all of my taste buds in the front of my tongue are raise and rough and bright white.

So I’m nervously spiraling on a Sunday. Tomorrow I have my regularly scheduled infusion, and blood work (CBC, and CRP) but I won’t get access to any doctors… it’s just the infusion nurse.

Has this anyone ever had this before? Anyone?

(I do not smoke or use tobacco products, I don’t vape, I don’t smoke w33d, and I do not drink alcohol.)

Anyone here going to be at the Raleigh show next Wednesday? It looks like it’s going to rain/thunderstorm all week. I really hope our show doesn’t get cancelled :(

Have you guys heard about the 145 cases of cyclospora in NC, (most of them coming out of wake county)?

The loose theory is cilantro/bagged salads/green onions/berries. A lot of ppl pointing toward grocery stores like Aldi, fast food places like Taco Bell, anywhere lettuces are sold….

I wanted to start getting produce from the farmers market, but someone warned me that *some* vendors ship their produce in from Sysco and then upcharge for the farmers market vibes.

Anyhoo… does the Raleigh farmers market produce actually come from farmers in NC?

From 07-02 to 07-05 I was positive in my account. Nothing was pending. I was tracking my spending.

Then, on 07-06, a charge went through I wasn’t expecting, which made me go negative.

But then on 07-07, I got an email saying “hey, you didn’t have enough in your account to cover all of these charges from 07-02 to 07-05. So we’re going to charge you up to 3 $35 fees if you don’t fix this by tomorrow.”

What the…?? I’ve been banking with WF since 2008. This has NEVER happened. I’ve heard of banks doing this before so they can charge the max amount of fees possible but WF has never done this to me. Is it worth calling them??

I’m currently seeing a GI at Duke, and found out today (via the GI nurse) “Dr (Name) told me that it’s an uphill battle to deal with insurance, and it’s not worth it (dealing with them).”

The GI Nurse was ready to do a peer to peer with insurance, but was talked out of it by the GI doctor. Luckily, insurance approved my medication, so no further steps were needed but…wtf?

Is this the attitude of all doctors at Duke?

Does anyone have any suggestions for gastroenterologists who… Yknow… CARE about their patients?

So I saw the GI Nurse today, and after my last colonoscopy/stool test/bloodwork, I had requested that we increase my frequency of my Inflectra to every 4 weeks…

The nurse put in the request to insurance, but today when I was meeting with her, she told me “Dr O told me that it’s an uphill battle to deal with insurance, and it’s not worth it, because while your serum levels are low, they’re technically within normal limits.”

After hearing this, I was really taken aback. So basically my doctor doesn’t think making an effort for me is worth it?

The GI Nurse was ready to do a “peer to peer” with insurance, but was talked out of it, by the GI doctor. Luckily, insurance approved it, so no further steps were needed but wtf.

Is this normal behavior for GI doctors??? Should I seek care elsewhere? I don’t feel like she has my best interests at heart.

We live in a 3 bedroom townhome. My 2 kids each have their own room (sharing is impossible both because older kid is an ADHD nightmare, and the rooms are tiny,) and my husband and my desks are in our bedroom. I am a SAHM.

My husband works from home, so he’s upstairs all day. He’s done at 5. I can’t use my desk in our bedroom when he’s working, because he said it makes him uncomfortable when he’s in meetings and I’m in there. Ok then…

Then at 5, when he comes downstairs, he handles the kids while I cook dinner… then we do something together as a family, like a board game or a family walk or something, and then it’s kid’s bedtime.

By now it’s 8/830. We collapse on the couch and will either browse YouTube, watch a movie, maybe have sex, or play video games online with our friends.

I’ve owned my desk for 4 months, and haven’t been able to use it. I sat down at it once to organize my supplies… that’s it.

I love to draw, write, journal, work on spells, read (I can’t read when there’s noise around, I need it quiet,)… I never get to do any of it.

By 11pm, husband wants to go to bed. I stay up because I’m not tired. But I can’t use my desk. Because it’s in our bedroom and it’ll wake him up.

Move the desk? I hear you. There’s no where to move the desk. Our living room has just enough room for our 1 couch, and TV, and 2 bookcases. The hallway upstairs where the bedrooms are, are as narrow as legally possible just for people passing through. There’s nowhere to move the desk. The garage? The garage only fits our Toyota Corolla and trash cans.

I don’t know how to solve this.

In the past, I’ve carried all of my stuff in bags downstairs to the kitchen table and done stuff that way… but god dammit I just want to be able to use my desk :(

My 9 year old has requested a bowling birthday party this year.

We’ve never gone bowling.

Does anyone here have a favorite bowling alley that does kids birthday parties?

My 10 year old son has ADHD, and pathological demand avoidance, and has been seeing his therapist for about five years, once every-other week. (Sometimes every week, depending on insurance).

Things have gotten a bit worse lately, and his therapist thinks he needs “intensive therapy” twice a week with *someone else,* …but she said that they could also continue their sessions together as well.

She brought this up during a parent-only check-in session. I asked her “can’t he just see you twice a week instead?” …because he’s already built trust and history, also, I feel like if he goes and sees somebody else wouldn’t he get conflicting signals or messages with having two different therapists?

I wish she just said what was really on her mind …like if this was no longer something she could help him with, or if this was outside her expertise, and he needs to go see somebody else, I wish she just would’ve said that (he wasn’t even in the room, so she could’ve easily been honest).

He’s going to be crushed if he finds out that she wants him to see somebody else because he’s going to feel like he did something wrong.

I just don’t know how to manage any of this, or what questions to ask her. I kinda tried asking, but she was just like “let me ask my colleagues if they have any leads on some more intensive therapy options for him.”

2015 Toyota Corolla.

On my invoice it says “remove and replace both sides CV Axle assembly” and “PDL PREMIUM OE DESIGN, 100% NEW.”

I had this service completed on Monday.

$1300.

Today I noticed when I put the car into reverse and start backing up, I hear 1 singular knock noise. Coming from the middle/front of the car.

If I put the car back in park, wait 10 seconds, put it in reverse again and start to roll back, it happens again. 1 singular knock.

I have never ever ever had this noise happen before.

What could be causing it? It’s 5pm and the shop is closed, I have to wait until morning… this is the only car I own, and I’m extra stressed because my kid has a neurology appt on Friday.

Is it still safe to drive? What could be causing the noise? Will they make me pay again to fix whatever is wrong with it?

Here is what our morning looked like between 7am and 8am:

-He’s body slamming his body on the couch cushions, I’m telling him to stop. This has always been the rule… the couch is old, I have cried and begged him to stop doing this because we can’t afford a new couch right now.

-He’s complaining that he wants the tv on, he’s being rude about it, and I say “not before breakfast” (this has been the rule since ALWAYS,), and he complains about how long little brother takes to eat. Sometimes he makes little brother feel so bad, little brother will pretend not to be hungry, just so older ADHD kid can put the TV on.

-He’s now asked for eggs for breakfast …and I’ve had to tell him to come to the table 4 times, he keeps being rude and saying “FINE.”

-He’s sitting in front of his eggs and making micro arguments (one of them was him saying he wants to eat raw jalapeños and he could do it super easily, and we’re telling him that’s not a good idea, and he’s arguing with us.).

-He’s bringing up the pool party that we said he can’t go to, again… we’ve discussed this 8 times over the past 3 days. I calmly said “I’m not going to discuss with you again,” and he yells back “genuinely what is your problem right now?”

-He still hasn’t touched his eggs. It’s been over 20 minutes. So I took away his eggs and threw them out.

Later that day… he has his 5th grade graduation… we go and celebrate him, and sit front row, and clap and smile and take pictures.

Immediately after his ceremony, he runs up to us and I’m ready to give him a big hug… and instead of receiving a hug and being happy to see us, he comes up to us, DEMANDING he go to the pool party. I stay calm and say no. Then he demands he gets a raise in his allowance, and also demands more YouTube time (right now he gets 1hr a day, parental controlled).

This all happens on a Tuesday.

This happens every single day of every single week.

He’s on 7.5 mg of Focalin twice a day, and he *was* on Strattera with it, (Strattera for 7 weeks,) but that somehow made him worse …so now he’s on Clonodine along with Focalin…. which he’s only been on for 6 days so it’s hard to say what it’s doing.

Just now? It’s bedtime. Gave a 15 min warning. A 5 min warning. Ok bedtime, let’s brush teeth.

His response “nah I’m fine.” No, this isn’t an option. Brush your teeth. Once again, with attitude he goes “nah I’m fine.” My husband, my sweet, calm husband, is about to lose his fcking mind.

So I told my son tomorrow he had to write a 5 paragraph essay on respect, before he’s ever getting his iPad back. He tells me he’s not doing it. I ask him if he’d like a minute to think about his answer. He said “no, I’m not doing it.”

We met with his therapist, who he has been seeing for the past 4 years once a week, and she is suggesting that maybe he needs twice a week therapy somewhere else, and also continue therapy with her.

I’m kind of confused? She said it’s not inpatient or anything intense like that, but she doesn’t seem to elaborate anymore than that.

I asked her “could we do twice a week with you?” And she said “maybe, we’ll see. Let me put out a message to my colleagues and see what we can do.”

What do I do :(

I’m getting him a sleep study because I’m trying to make sure he doesn’t have sleep apnea or anything… his attitude is just so fcking rotten. Nothing is helping.

Ok there’s a room spray I found at Target, by the brand Mrs. Meyers in the scent blueberry, and it’s SO pretty.

It’s not frosting/cake blueberry… but it is a sweet blueberry; exactly what my blueberry muffin doll (strawberry shortcake’s friend) smelled like!

Does anyone know of any perfume that has similar vibes? Not generic berry, specifically blueberry, and no weird cake/bread/cupcake notes in it.

So I have always done the MiraLAX prep for my colonoscopies… and I’ve always gotten the best score for Boston Bowel Preparation Scale (BBPS).

This time, I decided to be cheeky, and instead of stopping food on Monday, I stopped on Sunday, thinking I’d help myself have an easier prep if I had less food in me. I didn’t even drink water on Monday, though.

I did my prep Tuesday night, I drank every last drop, everything was crystal clear green (Gatorade was blue). And I had massive cramping but still, clear green.

Today at my colonoscopy, he said my prep was inadequate… and he saw *most of the important stuff* but can’t sign off on me coming back in 2 yrs and wants me to do a repeat in 6 months (!!!).

He isn’t my GI, he’s just the GI at the colonoscopy center. So I’ll be able to discuss it with my GI when he gets the results.

I feel like such a loser. Has this happened to anyone else?? How could I have clear diarrhea but still failed the prep??

He said next time I have to do Golytely. But I feel like it’s just because I stupidly dehydrated myself before doing prep. Anyway I cried and apologized to him a million times… the doctor was so kind and lovely, I feel like such a failure. :(