to any parents out there with kids you don't know how to help... do not be afraid to reach out to the best... you will find the one thing I've been looking to find for my daughter. A doctor with a confident and determined attitude.

I finally, after weeks and months of research, got my daughter an appointment to be seen by the best pyschiatrist in Boston. Speaking with him and booking the appointment with his secrtetary has given me, finally, a sense of hope that I am actually in contact with people who can help Nikki find her way through the confusion and torment of her mental illness(es).

And what timing... this morning I was researching plane ticket costs for a one way trip to Nebraska. When you get to that point of frustration, where you just want to run away as far as you can go and never come back... do NOT give up! Contact the people in your area and ask where you should go... and just keep at the phonecalls and reading... you will eventually get a date set, and although the appointment for Nikki isn't until January (lots of people want this guy's help because of his success rate of diagnosis/treatment), I am feeling so incredibly happy and hopeful for my Nikki-chick. :O) I spoke with her today, through her overly-medicated fog, which I hate, hate, hate... but I think she could hear my confidence with this appointment and this doctor. I hope she uses it, as I am, as a goal date, to get through these next few months as scar-free as possible and to utilize whatever resources she can in the meantime to get to January and find out what has been going on, why it has been going on, and to finally get a treatment plan that will lift her out of this torment and confusion.

I am going to see her on Monday with some goodies. :O) I also printed out a bunch of information on this doctor for her to read over... I want her to feel confident and hopeful, too!

In the meantime, Halloween is here, along with the Cape Cod Scrabble tournament... so it will be a fun, go-go-go kinda weekend... and the leaves are so bright, and things feel like they just might turn out ok after all. I was worried for a while that things had gotten to a frightening and downward-spiral level, but now I feel if we put the process of action into place things will go forward and no longer in the circles. Where Nikki will see her own progress and know she is not destined to live the way she's lived inside her mind and heart... where all her moments are in her control again.