Heather and I had the pleasure of gracing last weeks Globe and Mail focus section. Actually, it was our families that laid everything on the line of a national newspaper and I am thrilled to have connected with another family that truely understands the hardships that we face. We both also participated in an on-line forum this past Monday of which I enjoyed so much. Neither one of us knew how the other would answer the questions until we saw them on-line. Heather was fantastic at answering all the questions and she is an inspiration. I felt it would be an honour to have her guest blog here and let us know what one of her days looks like. She as well has a website called Sqeeky Wheel . I have added it to my links.

I was captivated by the youtube video that her daughter Erynn had done, and what really captured my heart was Erynn saying, “Don’t listen to Tom Cruise. He says there’s no such thing as mental illness”. Way to go Erynn! Thank you so much Heather for letting us in on a day with Erynn.

Wednesday November 26th, 2008
Darlene and I talked about a “Guest Blog” after our families’ stories appeared in The Globe and Mail together so it’s a pleasure to tell some of our story to Darlene’s regular readers. My daughter Erynn is in grade 7 and has bipolar disorder. She was diagnosed when she was 7 years old and like Darlene and Dave, my husband Sean and I have struggled to find the correct diagnosis and to keep Erynn in school. For three years (grades 4 to 6) she attended school part-time and I worried about that a lot! She’s very smart and I was concerned that she wouldn’t reach her full potential. (Admittedly, I understand how silly that may sound when you’re talking about grade 4 but ……. If it continued – how would she complete the curriculum?) Finally, last year I decided that it wasn’t a big deal – I mean, so it took her longer to graduate from high school – lots of kids take an extra year. Right about the time I decided it was ok, Erynn started lobbying to go back to school full-time – kids are funny that way, huh? Anyway, she went back full-time this year and it has been successful – partly because her school is great and partly because she’s doing well. That being said, she still has her “days” and Wednesday was one of them!

On Tuesday eve, I went to bed worried about the next day and as so often happens – I was worried about the wrong things! Sean had a meeting first thing so that meant Erynn and I would have to take the city bus – which we used to do all the time, but we haven’t had to do this year. Also, since Erynn is back at school full-time, it meant we’d have to leave the house earlier in the morning – 25-30 minutes earlier – which is a big deal in the morning!

Erynn surprised me by getting up early and I was so relieved that I figured my worries of the night before were for naught! Then she asked if she could play Gameboy before we left for school. Naturally, (roll your eyes here) I agreed, since we had oodles of time and she’d been so great about getting up and getting ready. (Right here – warning bells should have been going off!)

To make a long story short, she “lost” one of the characters in her game – an important character. Needless to say, this was beyond devastating and coincidentally, it happened right at the time we needed to be getting our boots on and walking out the door – ack! So, I was trying to be sympathetic, while also urging her to get ready and she was trying not to cry and …. we went back and forth (with a few tears and a slightly raised voice) and finally we get all our stuff on and leave.

On the bus, we ran into the mother of a friend of Erynn’s from her old school. Erynn was excited to share the article in the Globe with her. Coincidentally, I was taking a copy to one of Erynn’s teachers so I had one with me. (Please note: this is the first day since the article ran that I did have one on my person!)

At school I warned Erynn’s Educational Assistant about the loss of her character – I knew it would likely come up and then I headed to work. On the way, I was going over a presentation I was doing in the eve. A colleague at work had asked me to come and talk to her Brownie group about mental illness.

My work day was fairly uneventful but I did call Erynn’s psychiatrist to check in because Erynn has seemed a little unfocussed lately. I wanted to talk to him about potentially adjusting her medication or other strategies we can employ to help her. He wasn’t in but his assistant assured me he’d call tomorrow.

Then Sean picked me up so I could rush home and have dinner before heading back out to the Brownie meeting. Turned out that Erynn had a shaky day at school – between the loss of the character on her Gameboy and losing out to a classmate for the lead in her class’s Holiday presentation ….. it was hard to keep it together. To her credit though, there were no major incidents – just a cranky girl all day.

When we got home, Erynn was working on some Christmas crafts with one of her workers – she was making a wreath for our front door and a smaller version for her hamster cage! When she finally came up to greet me, the first thing she told me was that she didn’t lose her character after all – she’d just made a mistake. What a relief! At school, to help with her grief (because at the time she thought her character was gone) she’d made a beautiful card “In memory of …..” so like her!

Over dinner, Erynn told us about the auditions for their class Holiday presentation. Sounded like that was a fun part of the day – even though she didn’t get the lead (the class voted and she lost to a classmate by 2 votes). Their performance involves elves, cooking and the Jaws theme music – I’m a little scared!

After dinner I rushed off to the Brownie meeting where I was talking to 21 girls ages 7 and 8 about mental illness. I used to be a Brownie leader so this was not as daunting a task as it might have been but I admit that I struggled a little with how to present the information so that these young children could understand. I told them about Erynn and showed them a poster from when she was a “Face of Mental Illness” in 2007 and also the recent Globe article. Then I talked a little about her illness and asked them if they know other kids who are different. All of them wanted to participate and tell me about all kinds of children who had challenges walking and talking and so much more. What was most heartening was how accepting they are of these differences and all of them were very matter-of-fact when they told me. We read a wonderful book called “There’s a Storm in my Brain” about kids with mood disorders and then we played some games to illustrate some of our differences and also to show how when we cooperate and get along we can accomplish a great deal – even if we can’t use all of our limbs for instance.

For a long time now I have suspected that left to their own devices, children can accept other children’s differences and they are willing to befriend and help others without prompting. Some of the greatest challenges parents of “special” children face is overcoming the other parents’ prejudices and fears. I wish I had worked harder to talk to parents at Erynn’s old school and help them understand Erynn’s struggles. Erynn made a couple of presentations to her class and other classes about her illness but I really wish I’d insisted we do them for parents too – I think it would have helped.

At home after the Brownie meeting Erynn and I snuggled together and read. As always we chatted a little about our days and she told me how relieved she was to have found her character. I couldn’t help thinking about a time a year ago or six months ago when the loss of a character would have resulted in a major incident at school and possibly a call to come get Erynn or when not getting the lead in the Holiday presentation might have resulted in a refusal to participate.

Today, despite the challenges, all is right with the world.