psychiatrist follow-up today!

[gcvmom]

Both difficult children are going back this morning for a follow-up with the psychiatrist. For difficult child 1, we are evaluating the Tegretol -- I think it's helping. I want to know if there's wiggle room for more improvements (hope I'm not chasing sunshine... I just want the best possible outcome). I also want to know if we can do something about the skin picking that is still lingering, though not as bad as before. And to find out what other options for treating his IBS are out there that won't mess with his head like Elavil did.

And for difficult child 2, we're looking at whether the Intuniv is helping. I believe it is. He seems much more on-the-ball with his work, remembering to do things, writing assignments down, getting signatures in his planner. Not so zoned out. He's at 2mg now, so not sure if that's maxed out, but it's another question I have: how high can he go and does more mean better symptom control.

Our psychiatrist's office manager (it's just a two-person office) is leaving for good next week. She said she can't make ends meet working in this state and is moving back in with her sister in CT. We've been at this practice for 10 years and she's been a part of it for 8 of those years! I'm really going to miss her. Not sure if they've founda replacement -- psychiatrist's wife has filled in before, but for a variety of reasons she just can't do that full-time. Whomever they hire has some pretty big shoes to fill.

I'll update later with today's outcome.

 

[smallworld]

Good luck!

 

[gcvmom]

So we're back

We're not adding any more Tegretol for difficult child 1. psychiatrist hopes to wean him off Celexa some time in the next 6 weeks. And we have the o.k. to reintroduce Elavil, with the thought that the Tegretol will provide a strong enough buffer to counter any negative psychiatric effects like he had before -- because Elavil really did seem to help his IBS. We didn't address the skin picking issue and I'm wondering if the Elavil will help that again, since it wasn't a problem until we stopped that medication. We'll see. And he talked to difficult child 1 about what his goal for his grades is, and said that difficult child 1 can probably turn things around if he commits to getting his work done. difficult child 1 says his motivation is improved, so we're all hoping it continues and he pulls himself together. He's only been on the Tegretol a bit over a month, so perhaps with more time the improvements will continue.

difficult child 2 is going to wait another 2 weeks and then we're going to go up to 3mg of Intuniv if it seems warranted. psychiatrist agrees that it's helping difficult child 2's working memory and thinks we should give it a bit more time before we decide to increase. He said we need to make sure it isn't activating, because he's seen that happen before in one of his patients.

He wants to see both difficult children again before school gets out, so we'll go back at the end of May. Everything else is status quo, thankfully!

And on the way back to school, difficult child 1 informed me that he missed zero period today! That's because we both forgot what day it was, and I didn't get up at 5:30am like usual on Tuesdays to premedicate him I guess I thought it was Wednesday!

 

[DammitJanet]

Sounds like a good meeting!

Dont feel bad about getting days mixed up...I thought today was Wednesday too!

 

[Wiped Out]

Glad the appointment went well. I was only wishing it was Wednesday already!