On the day before she will appear on Dr. Phil's "Is Life Getting to You?" episode, Kris Jenkins must leave work early to take her daughter, who stepped on a nail, to the doctor. While there, the school calls her to pick up her 10-year-old son. He's been suspended - yet again.

Jenkins gives a soulful laugh.

Monday is just another day in the stressful life of Lincoln's Ken and Kris Jenkins.

And it was after a day like this on March 31 that the sleepless Lincoln mother got out of bed and turned on her computer at 11 p.m. It was too late to call her sister. Too late to call friends. Too selfish to wake up Ken.

So she went to Dr. Phil's Web site. Scrolling on the ticker tape across the top of the screen was the come on: "Are you a stressed out working mom? Click here."

She clicked. And started typing her response: "Let me tell you what ..."

"I told them about my whole day," Jenkins said. She talked about how she and Ken adopted their foster children, JR and Lupe, in 2004 - three years after the children came to their home. JR was 2 when he came to live with them; Lupe was 10 months old.

She talked about how JR, who was abused as an infant, was diagnosed in first grade with an alphabet soup of behavioral problems - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Reactive Attachment Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder and most recently as being bipolar.

She talked about how he had been suspended from school that very day. And how his aggressive, angry and physical behavior had gotten him kicked out of three day cares - including the day care where she is the director - how he had been suspended eight times in his fourth-grade school year. She talked about how he has assaulted his teachers, and how he threw a walkie-talkie through a school window during one of his rages.

She talked about her own problems. How her sleep apnea causes her to stop breathing several times a night.

"I just go, go, go, on very little sleep. I don't get good sleep," Jenkins said. "I run on adrenaline."

She told Dr. Phil she was at wits' end.

"What are we going to do next," she asked in her e-mail to the television talk show therapist.

The following afternoon - April 1 - she got a call from "Michael from the Dr. Phil Show."

"I thought it was an April Fool joke," Jenkins recalled. Until he read back her e-mail.

During the next 24 hours she and Ken were interviewed by Dr. Phil's staff. On April 3 a television crew showed up at her home to film "a day in the life."

"Unfortunately for me, but good for them, it worked out to be truly a day in my life," she said, recalling how JR got suspended from school, locked himself in the van and "had a rage at home."

All this in between the normal parent stuff of making dinner, reading bedtime stories, giving baths and kissing good night.

The following week Jenkins and her sister flew to Los Angeles for the show's taping.

Dr. Phil sent her to Dallas, where she met with Dr. Craig Schwimmer, a sleep apnea specialist, and Dr. Frank Lawlis, a children's behavior specialist with the Lawlis Peavey PsychoNeuroPlasticity Center.

Schwimmer performed a new surgery - dubbed pillar procedure - in which five one-inch plastic pillars were placed in her mouth to raise the soft palate.

The next day she met with Lawlis, who offered all sorts of advice and paired JR with a Lincoln therapist.

"It was just an awesome experience," Jenkins said.

While it lasted.

All of the treatment and therapy was free, courtesy of the doctors and therapists.

But then it was done.

The surgery didn't help Jenkins' sleep apnea.

And on Monday - nine days into the new school year - JR was suspended.

"And unfortunately I'm back to square one," Jenkins said.

She's grateful to the show and Dr. Phil for all they have done. She and Ken continue to sing praises about their employers, Speedway Motors and St. Mark's Preschool, and they say they don't know what they would do without the dedicated staff at Randolph Elementary and Behavioral Skills schools.

But she is frustrated.

"As parents, there is nowhere else to turn," she said.

Even more devastating is knowing that it's JR who stands to lose the most, she said.

"Through no fault of his own."

Reach Erin Andersen at 473-7217 or eandersen@journalstar.com.