u/Snaxx9716

I feel like my life just got flipped upside down. I have 50/50 custody of my 14yo, one week at a time. It’s been like that since she was 3. To make a long story short, my daughter despises her stepmom and I don’t blame her. Kiddo is a great kid; never gets in trouble at school and every adult loves her. Except stepmom. There are a lot of factors that underlie that but I won’t get into them. My daughter and I have an excellent relationship… she’s a typical teen who occasionally cops an attitude and argues but 100% of the time she will circle back and apologize to me. I have no issues with her other than the fact that she will not clean her room.

She finally had enough. She put her foot down and said she no longer wants to be at her dad’s. He didn’t fight it, or hasn’t yet. So now she’s with me full-time. I get no child support and there’s no way a court would approve this custody change so it’ll have to remain a verbal agreement with no support.

The one thing making parenting easier for me was that I work from home. On Tuesday, my company announced they’d be sending everyone back to offices. For no real reason. Just because.

So now I have her full-time and I’m going back to an office. All at once with no opportunity to adjust to one change before dealing with the next.

And to top it off… I recently started dating the most wonderful man. We had identical custody schedules so we had every other week to be a couple and spend time together and now I don’t even know when we’ll see each other. It’s too early to introduce my daughter to him and because of certain circumstances it’s going to be a LONG time before that happens. If I have to lose my relationship for the sake of being there for my kid, so be it. But I would be incredibly sad because this man is everything I want. Sigh.

Has anyone here ever been prescribed budesonide for long-term use? I was prescribed it a year ago and am about to switch GI doctors because I’ve never been thrilled with the one I had been seeing. I’m prescribed the foam and admittedly it’s been difficult to keep up with it so my symptoms are returning. I wanted to see if my insurance would cover the pill form instead and if I’d be able to take it given my other health issues. Now I’m seeing that it’s usually only prescribed for up to three months? It’s been an entire year. (And I already failed mesalamine)

For context, I’ve probably had UC for a long time. Undeniable flare-up in November 2024. Couldn’t get a scope for 5 months and by then things had calmed down considerably. They found active inflammation in the first 5cm and then random biopsies showed chronic inflammation further up, but my last doctor kept saying I “only” had inflammation in that first 5cm so the chances of progressing were very low. I kept having to remind him about the chronic inflammation and he’d shrug it off.

My divorce was finalized earlier this year and when I went to update my name with the DMV, I was informed that my name could not be taken off my ex’s car registration/title because he had taken out a title loan in December (names on the title are joined with “or”, but prior to that the car was paid off and I had no knowledge that he took out a loan) and so we would have to do paperwork to have my name removed since there’s a lien. I sent him a text about it and he never answered… I do not know where he is. He was supposed to deploy in February but I’m not sure if he ended up going. I suspect he didn’t.

I know I’m not responsible for the loan. But there’s a registration hold for non-insurance and I’m wondering if there’s a potential for anything related to that car to impact me and if/how I need to go about correcting this when he won’t respond to me and I don’t know where he lives. Is my name being on the documents putting me at risk in any way if he does something dumb with his car? I have assets, he does not.

My divorce was finalized earlier this year and when I went to update my name with the DMV, I was informed that my name could not be taken off my ex’s car registration because he had taken out a title loan in December (names on the title are joined with “or”, but prior to that the car was paid off and I had no knowledge that he took out a loan) and so we would have to do paperwork to have my name removed since there’s a lien. I sent him a text about it and he never answered… I do not know where he is. He was supposed to deploy in February but I’m not sure if he ended up going. I suspect he didn’t.

I know I’m not responsible for the loan. But there’s a registration hold for non-insurance and I’m wondering if there’s a potential for anything related to that car to impact me and if/how I need to go about correcting this when he won’t respond to me and I don’t know where he lives.

My 13yo has very little resilience and poor coping skills… it’s something we’ve been dealing with for years and she has been in counseling but never with a truly good counselor (you all know the drill… the effective ones can be almost impossible to find). So while she’s definitely made some progress, she has a long way to go. I got her into horseback riding which helped more than anything… nothing forces you to cope the way interacting with a 1200 pound animal with opinions does.

She got a concussion last month (difference of opinions with a big horse) and a couple weeks ago she spiraled worse than I’ve ever seen her. She was upset to begin with and then her dad was tired and basically turned his back on her while she was crying instead of being empathetic and trying to help her. That’s her biggest trigger: feeling like someone doesn’t care about her. She was self-harming and threatening worse. I suspect this has a LOT to do with the concussion.

She had a psychiatric eval last week and it was awful. 20min of asking inventory questions, diagnosed with MDD and GAD, offered a choice of two SSRIs. The provider acted annoyed when I asked questions and downplayed side effects. When I asked if there were any alternatives she bluntly said “talk therapy.” Needless to say, we’re getting a second opinion tomorrow.

However, I know the behavioral health system VERY well through my education and work experience. I have little hope that the next provider will do much more than what the other one did.

I was able to create a safety plan with her and she has worked it quite well. She’s trying and I’m supporting her no matter what. And honestly, most days she’s good. She never has issues getting out of bed, appetite is normal, she gets excited about plenty of things, still loves riding horses, and her grades are good. It’s just that once something upsets her, she goes into a downward spiral of negativity and sometimes that spiral goes too deep. I don’t say any of that to minimize what she’s experiencing, rather to just give some context of her day-to-day functioning.

So I’m hoping to hear some perspective and experiences. I don’t want my child to suffer, and I also don’t want to throw her on a medication at such a young age. I’ve tried antidepressants several times and had many bad experiences… I know the side effects aren’t just “a tummy ache that will go away” like the first provider claimed.

Has anyone successfully managed this type of behavior with safety planning and therapy alone? I’m really just looking for anything someone can share that might help me figure out the best path forward, one way or another. I’m hesitant to put her on an SSRI off the bat but not completely unwilling to proceed with medication if it’s necessary to keep her safe.

I posted a while back because I started HRT in December and within a few weeks my hair started falling out in clumps. I wanted to update in case anyone else ends up in the same situation because I really couldn’t find anything on this topic…

Some background: This all started in 2020. Too many things happened all at once (early COVID, stopping traditional hormonal birth control, and starting progestin for endometriosis) to know exactly what caused my shedding but it took years to get it under control. I’ve maintained on topical minox and spiro (I have lean PCOS). I always had dense, fine-textured hair and I had lost so much of it. I finally felt like I had a decent ponytail and then BAM it was all falling out again.

My derm wasn’t sure if the HRT would have caused it that quickly so I followed up with the doctor that prescribed it. She said it was possible but there wasn’t enough literature yet to know what the long-term outcome might be and whether it would stop falling out. I decided to stay the course and see what happened and then realized that I already had baby hairs coming in, although I was still shedding a lot. My shedding stopped about 3 months after it started.

My derm now thinks my body reacted to the sudden fluctuation in my hormones and pushed out all the hair that had grown back in after my chronic TE and is replacing it with new, albeit grey, strands. She was giddy while showing me all the new growth! I’m relieved that I didn’t give up on my HRT and hopeful that in another year I will be back to where I was pre-December.

For what it’s worth, this has been my treatment:

5% topical minoxidil almost daily (sometimes I forget)
100mg spironolactone
Women’s multivitamin
50mcg vitamin D3 (my blood work was on the low end of normal)