Another Med, Another Failure

It's like dating.  Every time we try a new med on the boys, I think 'Maybe THIS one will help us break through.  Maybe this is THE one.' Not a miracle.  A way to move forward faster.  More communication.  More steadiness of emotional state. 

We've had two med changes recently, one for each of the older boys.

As I've mentioned before, Sam tried a few meds in the past.  None were THE one.  It was just lots of work, time to mature.  He's made so much progress.  But still lots to go.  We do have him on Adderall, to try to help him to pay attention in class.  It works...some.  Really, no big problem behaviors to address so we just keep plugging along.  He's had some more distractability recently, so Dr. Bernie increased his dose when we saw him yesterday.  Sam's grown a lot, time for his dose to grow too. It's hard to tell if it's a summer of too much computer, puberty, meds, or all three.  We've made adjustments to the computer time as well.

Nathan on the other hand, has lots of behaviors to address.  SIB in the form of biting himself on the hands, aggression, irritability.  I blogged our visit with his new doc.  She is TERRIFIC.  We started increasing Lithium and decreasing his Depakote.  All went well.  At first.

Then we went up on the dose.

He started having about an hour a day of irritability.  Crying, whining, screaming.  Then 2 episodes a day.  In the last couple days he's had an hour of irritability, an hour of normalacy, an hour of irritability, then back to baseline.  He was obsessing on the toilet, putting things in All.  The.  Time.  I came downstairs to find him unrolling TP into the bowl.  He's flushed a washcloth.  Other things.  Our snake is wearing out.  Again.

Last weekend his hands started itching, and he asked repeatedly for us to scratch them.  I think that when his attempts didn't work, he thought we could help.  The itching got worse.  Today his face started itching.  And he started asking us to scratch it.  Every time his irritability got worse, the itching worsened.

Over a week of problems, getting steadily worse.

I emailed his doc today.  Three times because I kept thinking of something I wanted to add.

This evening she emailed back and said we have to wean down the Lithium and start up the Depakote.  Or try Trileptal.

It's extremely disappointing, because the Lithium seemed to be working at first.  But he's miserable, and so are we.   So we take three steps back.

And just keep plugging along.  Hoping that time and maturity help things out.

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