Author Archives: carl

>manic episodes

>At least once a day M has a manic episode that causes him to explode in anger. I am trying to teach myself how to defuse these episodes. It starts by not allowing him to push buttons. Walking away or listening to an mp3 helps. The theory being that if I don’t feed the episode he can’t explode. Started just letting him have things that he takes. Will deal with the consequences of his actions later. Far better to avoid the confrontation now then to have the stress of the extreme blow out now. He hates it when I do that, but it also seems to be helping with the problem. Once I am certain that he is past the blow out stage, then we deal with the consequences of taking things that don’t belong to him. M is a master at manipulating the environment to suit his emotional needs.

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>obsessions

>M has a penchant for repeating two or three times everything that he hears. While we fine it annoying, we have to remember that he may need to do that for his compulsion. There are worse things that he could feel compelled to do. Sometimes when he does it, I am not entirely sure that he even knows that he does it. The other thing is that he likes to stare. I hate to admit that hit creeps me out to have him staring at me for 5 minutes or more. most of the time a quick reminder to not stare because it is impolite and he will stop. Redirection helps, but sometimes, we have to really get on him to stop. oh, and the cat is in heat. Can’t wait until we can get her spayed. Tweet #fighting4answrs

EKG and EEG

M did really well with both tests. The EKG results came back normal. Waiting on the EEG results. Got a little frustrated with the Federal Building. Can’t take cell phones into the building. Can’t take knives into the building. (including pocket knives and finger nail clippers) Can’t have any electronic devices, including calculators, digital voice recorders, and the like. Had to take off my belt to get through the scanner. Through it all, M was a trooper. Stopped for lunch at McD’s on the way home. On the plus side we got our application for SSI in. Now we wait for the determination which will likely be a denial, that we can appeal. We may get denied two or three times before we get approved. That is the way the system works, of course, according to the lady at Social Security, we might get lucky. Could take 6 months for

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