I am not sure if I can share all of my experiences with medication in one post. We have had an interesting journey with meds. To begin, we were convinced we could do it without. Remember the story I shared in "A personal experience"? We did attempt meds at age 9 from some quack in Ohio. He gave me 5 minutes and put my son on an anti-depressant. Well here is what I have learned since. You can't give a bi-polar kid anti-depressants, it makes them manic! It took about 2 months of this and we gave up medication again.
When my son was 12 years of age, reality set in that our son had no quality of life, whatsoever. I woke up about 2 or 3 times a week to my son sleep walking or night terrors. He could not go outside at all because of fears or paranoia. He rarely laughed. My precious pastor's wife at the time had twins with PDD, (an low functioning autism) and suggested a developmental pediatrician in Chattanooga. We finally had an appointment to see him and filled out the all the "paperwork". (Oh for a nickel for all of the questionnaires you have to fill out through out their life time. ) Our first visit, the doctor brought up meds. It didn't take long before he met with my resistance and experiences. I shared what had happened and he explained why those meds wouldn't work for my son. The doctor then proceeded to tell me the long journey to find what worked for my son's body and that not everyone responds to the drugs the same way. He also explained that it usually took 3 medications together to make a difference. I was swimming by then in grief, thinking that I had failed. He must have seen the look in my eye, because he took more time to talk about why it was important for my son's brain chemicals to be balanced so it didn't affect his future. He also assured me that we start slowly with one medication at a time. I have to be honest. I cried all the way home. My husband cried when I told him. I think we cried for about 3 days straight. Honestly, it was just fear of the unknown and grief over having to medicate him to provide quality of life. We felt like we failed in some way as parents.
So if you are new to medication, here some important things to remember. You start with one at a time. If you don't, there is no way to tell which one it working or not working! When you change you do the same thing, one at a time. When we started, we had many failed attempts at drugs. Some didn't work at all on the "therapeutic dose". One made him crazy and he started throwing himself up against a wall and using curse words I didn't even know he knew! Each time something didn't work, we had to usually stop it slowly, over a course of a week or two to get it out of his system. Then start all over again. We went through almost a year and a half of this before we found something that worked and could add another drug.
All during this time, his quality of life was still so low. The effects of the drugs were discouraging, but we knew we had to plow through it to help our son. Slowly but surely, I mean SLOWLY but surely, we started to see improvement.
If you are on the medication journey, be encouraged. It does eventually end. You do eventually find the right combination of drugs for your child. Their life will improve. Expect some trials, expect needing to call the doctor, that is why finding one who actually calls you is important. Document each medication, dose, and response for your own records. I needed this so many times in future years.
Remember just because you say yes to the medications, you are not a failure. If you son or daughter had a heart condition or diabetes, you would give them the medication they needed to survive. This is no different. Ask questions about side effects. Be aware of what to watch for. Be knowledgeable about how your doctor is going to keep a check on how their bodies are reacting to the meds, i e bloodwork. Read the information they and the pharmacist give you. Be sure if you give them ANY over the counter drugs, you check with either the pharmacist or the doctor. You would be amazed at the simple over the counter drugs that can cause problems.
Okay, that is part one. Then there is puberty... Part II : )
Thanks for stopping by,
Lynne
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