Another medication Change

[Alisonlg]

Well, apparently it was felt accross the board that 5 mg of Zyprexa just wasn't making an impact...there were still consistant problems at school, day hospital, and home (if you saw my post about having to restrain difficult child nightly). So, the SW at the day hospital had a word with the psychiatrist and had the psychiatrist see difficult child while he was at the day hospital yesterday and she decided to drop the 2.5 mg dose of Zyprexa in the morning and swap in a 5 mg dose of Adderall XR instead.

This should be interesting. Just because the red flags *I* see of BiPolar (BP) (again, I never claimed to be a Dr), I'm curious to see if the Adderall INCREASES his rages.

They only gave us a 2 week Rx to trial the medication, saying we should see if it has any effect in that time. How quickly do you think I should or should not see a difference if there will be one?

(I'm a little pieved that they only gave us a 2 wk RX...because it still cost me the same co-pay as a full month...because if he ends up staying on it, I'm going to have to pay a full month co-pay again. PLUS, the Insurance is currently refusing to pay for the Zyprexa, so we just paid $60 for 6 pills out-of-pocket. Ugh)

 

[jal]

My difficult child started 10mg Adderall last Saturday and we saw an immediate change. When he took it on Sunday it was like it didn't even touch him. Preschool has reported this week that his focus and attention has increased and he is now completing projects where he wouldn't before. psychiatrist just increased it to 15mg at last nite's appointment.

 

[oceans]

You can tell pretty quickly if a stimulant is going to work. That being said, I think you will know pretty quickly if it is making things worse. If he is really bipolar there is a good chance that a stimulant will make him worse if his mood is not stable first. At least that is what I noticed when my difficult child was on stimulants and his mood was out of control...

I am wondering what they are thinking....I guess they are thinking that this is from ADD?

I will be thinking of you and crossing my fingers. Let us know what happens.

 

[Alisonlg]

Actually, they DO NOT think he has ADD/ADHD. LOL The only thing the SW has mentioned twice to me, becuase they have been VERY certain not to really give ANY diagnosis, is the suggestion that he may be on the spectrum...which I do not think he is, but which I think more strongly now more than ever that I really want a neuropsychologist exam done...to get SOME kind of answers...but, still nobody will get me a neuropsychologist. If either of my 2 kids are on the spectrum, I would suspect my youngest more so than my oldest. But, again, I'm not the Dr.

Who knows what they're thinking. They're medicating symptoms with no diagnosis. They don't seem to care or don't seem to think they can discover what the underlying diagnosis is.

They're hoping the Adderall will help him think more "clearly." They don't see him as hyperactive (though *I* see all of the other symptoms of ADD...I seem to be the ONLY one who sees them though).

 

[oceans]

It seems to me that it is important to find out why he is not thinking clearly. For instance, my difficult child was not thinking clearly and had problems with concentration. He was diagnosed with ADD when he was 11 or 12. He was put on stimulants, but they never did correct his thinking. He had a partial response and then they stopped working. Increasing the dose or switching to a different one did not help and in many cases made things much, much worse. Move forward a few years. Tests were done at psychiatric hospital for his thinking. They still felt he had a problem with that going on. They thought the biggest problem was his mood, but his thinking was right up there as well.

When he got transferred to the state hospital, they also noticed problems with his thinking. They also noticed that in his history it said the stimulants never helped even though he had ADD symptoms and had been diagnosed as such.

When the new medication lifted his mood and he was doing better, he still had a thining problem but by then he was able to describe it to the psychiatrist. He was never able to do that before. It turned out that the Zyprexa corrected his thinking problems. I know you have tried Zyprexa and it did not help.

We still think difficult child might have add. He still has trouble concentrating, but his mood is stable and his thinking is much better. He tried Risperdal without a mood stabilizer and it helped a little but not for long. It did not correct his thinking to the degree we have right now with both the mood stabilizer and the AP in place. Now that his mood is stable, I am wondering if a stimulant might actually work. I don't know. My difficult child really does not have a diagnoses right now either.

The psychiatrist and therapist were also thinking autistic spectrum with my son, but we went to a place that specializes in autism and they said that he is not on the spectrum, so we ruled that out,

I think that for your difficult child, he would benefit greatly from that neuropsychologist evaluation that you have been trying to get. Can't you call and set one up on your own? I am actually wondering if that is something I should do for my difficult child to get a better understanding of what it wrong, even though he is doing better now.

 

[Wiped Out]

With my difficult child everytime we tried a stimulant including Adderall it would seem to work for a couple of weeks and then things would go bad with the raging increasing-it did still help him with his ADHD issues though.

With easy child who is on Adderall it started working right away and has kept on working.