I had three options: suffer with the consequences of an unmedicated seriously AHDH child (ummm...NO..I don't have the energy for that), drive to Target with the six littles in tow and beg our pharmacist for an extra day (harder than usual because she is on a tightly controlled substance), break into our safe box of extra RX's and try her on the higher dose that I have been toying with moving her up to.
Medication management is sort of arbitrary - according to our doctors and the manufacturer she is on too low a dose to have any effect. Except that it totally changes her world and makes life easier for everyone involved. I went with option C, increased her medication to what is considered the lowest therapeutic dose and was happy with the results. Today she is more settled, more controlled and as I watch her weave in and out of the little kids on a two wheeled bike so much less impulse driven than she has been lately. It's not that we haven't tried this before - the last time (6 months ago) it was WAY too much for her. This dose caused her to drool and spend her day in a total fog.
I am glad I packed her meds and sent them away for the weekend - after spending years playing the 'lets try this, or this, or this' game I am tired of experiments and tend to wait too long before I am willing to try something new. It's battle fatigue, exhaustion or simply a self defense mechanism that stops us from the eternal battle to find 'the perfect answer' (sort of like the perfect home school curriculum) to the challenges we are facing.
2 comments:
I want you to know that you and your beautiful family were just the catalysts for a beautiful, albeit difficult, conversation between me and my husband. We were watching a Dateline program on inner city violence and I told him that I understand the truth of what the program is portraying, but they are leaving out part of the story. So, I told him about your family and how you ended up alone and desolate in Colorado, so you returned to the inner city to regain your support system. To be with family and people that accept you.
I continued by explaining what I have read on many adoption blogs, about churches not being willing to truly stand up and support adoptive families and traumatized kiddos. Now, we understood that from what we experienced with my stepson with RAD, but we only had one child that had those issues. It seems to me that it is even worse for families with many children whether they are difficult children or not, but then if you add in trauma, differences, etc.. it magnifies the problem.
We had to have a long and frank discussion about whether or not we can truthfully say that we would be willing to love large families in the trenches of trauma. I had to repent for my selfishness. I hate to say that I have extreme social anxiety myself, so I know not one person at our church, so I don't even know if there are large families, adoptive families, or if the person that sits next to me is purple, but I am determined to work harder. Thank you for your honesty.
Oh poor baby! I know how hard it is to a good balance between behaviors and medication.
My youngest little man was 4 and on Ritalin and it gave him psychosis horribly! Then they switched him to Adderall and he was a complete and utter emotional mess. He told me "My brain hurts and I can't think". Precise words for a 4 yr who emotionally was just a big toddler.
We ended up cold turkey taking him off everything (he was removed from his foster home by CPS and plunked down in our home with nothing but his holy underware).
In the end we've been able to successfully stabilize him with a cocktail of Niacin, Fish Oil, Magnesium and Zinc...~HIGH~ doses but it works beautifully for him.
We've had the trauma drama of figuring out just the right cocktail and I do NOT want to repeat that!
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