Mel Evers wonders about it all

I am a strong woman who cries beneath blankets on my bed. Why? Now it’s from joy. Before, it was because my son suffered and I didn’t know it. And because I didn’t listen I made it worse. It’s a lesson I will never forget and a mistake I will never repeat.

This is the first year I could lower my guard, and dance the sly dance with an unseen demon without destroying my son in the process. He suffers from anxiety.

You can’t reason with anxiety. You can only learn to cope until the unwarranted bite from adrenaline is no longer associated with fear or a sense of doom.

From elementary school–until now–eleventh grade, was an uphill battle. A battle to get him to school. A battle to make him eat. A battle to make him smile. He’d lost so much weight one year,  we had to take him to a special hospital. Watching him melt into a gaunt, pale six-foot fourteen year old forced me to bog down into a fire that licked my heart everyday.

In the beginning, I thought like all fourth graders, he hated school. He cried and fought every step to the door. I cried and worried when I got home. This went on until middle school when he complained about his stomach. Soon after that his throat had issues which made it difficult for him to leave the house. I brought him to the pediatrician a few times but received the same response. It was nerves and he had to go to school. So he cried. I cried. And we both got angry. Every morning the stress grew until I decided to take him to a specialist. An ears nose and throat doctor.

Finally one answer. He had acid reflux. (Has)

He was put on medication and it did help his stomach and throat, but he still did not want to go to school. I needed more help. I couldn’t do this on my own.

We tried a therapist. It helped until this therapist fed his anxiety by feeding into his wish of home schooling. That’s when he lost a lot of weight. Fortunately the children’s hospital helped.

Next step, a friend referred a psychiatrist. He saw my son a few times to gauge his symptoms and then he put him on medication. I had always been vehemently against medicating children. I had to decide which was worse, trying to help the symptoms with medication or watch my son fall deeper and deeper into a depression that made him  lash out.

This Dr. is good. He didn’t go crazy or put him on anything that changed my son’s personality. My son is a funny, smart and creative kid. After a couple of months, with the help of this doctor, my son emerged. The happy go lucky kid I remember from kindergarten. It took a little while… a year to get the dosing correct, but now, though he still struggles, with the help of the medication, he can navigate the fog. I am so proud of him. He deals with his anxiety every day and everyday he wins more ground.

My children are my life. To watch any one of them suffer kills me. The greatest lesson I learned is, when any one of them are having a problem, to take myself out of the equation, don’t make it personal and to sit back and listen. They need me on their side, not against them when they are struggling with things they don’t understand.