klmno

Active Member
If anyone has experience with tegretol, I hope you'll provide your thoughts. difficult child has really done well- going on day 3 now. I know that's not a lot, but given where we were, I'm happy! :)

Re tegretol: His regular psychiatrist started him on this almost 3 weeks ago. He started on 100mg then was supposed to go to 200mg aafter one week. Instead, he was in the psychiatric hospital at that time and the psychiatrist in there bumped him to 400mg/day right away. That made me leary, given difficult child's high sensitivity to medications and I saw no change in difficult child the first couple of days he was out of the psychiatric hospital- except it did appear that depression and anxiety were taking over again. So, initially, I thought maybe this sent him too far back into depression. This was put in place after taking difficult child off depakote er, but keeping 1200mg/day of lithobid in place.

But, since Wed. night, difficult child has been very congenial and his funny side is coming back. He's shown no depression, raging, aggression, or hypomania. He has gone to bed at better times but sleeps very long hours even so. I'm wondering if the excessive sleep is his body adjusting to tegretol? (His big increase was 1 week ago.)

He has not gone to school and I'm trying to get to the root of what's bugging him about it- if there is anything else on top of the overwhelming feeling about how much work there is to catch up on and the issue with lack of friends. These things, I'm going to talk to principal and cm and we're going to have to come up with a plan.

I've seen NO signs of cycling the past 3 days. He is willing to chew nicorrette gum instead of smoking. I'm fine with this. He's done small, minor chores. I haven't asked him to do anything time-consuming yet or any homework. He won't talk about school hardly at all- he does still say he wants to go to college and become a vet. We watched tv together (animal channel) for a while last night and had some great laughs watching birds of paradise. I actually had trouble sleeping, but when I did go to sleep last night, I was so relaxed and it felt so good to not be so worried about what could happen during the night.

Thoughts?
 
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Jena

New Member
thoughts?? hmm yea!!! That's my thought about this medication and your experience! I cannot believe. You soo needed this and him. You must of loved watching tv. with him and also laughing together. No need to cut either i'm totally guesing with what you are writing. I'm soo soo happy. I"m keeping my fingers crossed this keeps up. Remind me is he in therapy also??? Maybe therapist can pull out school issue? just a thought.

(((hugs))) hope weekend continues to go smoothly you both need it.
 

klmno

Active Member
Thanks! No- no cutting either the past few days! :D

therapist- well, I seriously need to get therapist up to par- he's doing the typical right now- which means ignoring the fact that we have a mood cycling issue at all going on and that all of difficult child's issues are not willful and intentional, learned from Mom behavior.
 

klmno

Active Member
Yep- tdocs by nature see everything as learned behavior. Whenm I try to explain that difficult child does not always do certain things and the therapist rolls his eyes, I know I've got to either drop him or get him on board.
 

Jena

New Member
That's totally insane. Now is this the therapist or the pyschiatrist i'm just curious? That is soo soo wrong, really. That's one thing I like about my job is that no one is judged. It's just a bunch of under paid ppl who want to help
 

klmno

Active Member
It's therapist. He has that impression because we've been living in crisis mode for 2 mos and because at psychiatric hospital, difficult child has no problem. I can see why he assumes that we must always live this and that must be what's causing the problem. But that really isn't true. The guy could really help a lot if we can get past the typical doubts and move on already.
 

Janna

New Member
Well, k, that's wonderful. As long as *you* are seeing the results and he is doing well, doesn't matter what anyone else thinks :)

My fingers are crossed for you. You and he both needed some peace.
 
B

butterflydreams

Guest
This sounds really promising! I am keeping my fingers crossed for you. You and difficult child definitely need a break and maybe Tegretol is the key to that. It is great that he is still talking about college and becoming a vet that to me is promising. I am sure that he is probably feeling overwhelmed with all the makeup work looming ahead of him.

Hugs,

Christy
 

timer lady

Queen of Hearts
I have to say that the change in kt when she was started on tegretol was tremendous. We've recently convinced psychiatrist that wm should have tegretol over depakote given the change in kt (hey they're twins). It shouldn't hurt to give it a try.

Again, we've seen huge progress & changes in wm.

Tegretol is a good medication for some of our difficult children & not so much for others.

Keeping fingers crossed for your difficult child that positive results continue.
 

gcvmom

Here we go again!
That's great to hear! husband may end up on that next since Trileptal was making him sleep all the time.

Hope the stability lasts!
 

klmno

Active Member
I don't know that tegretol will help with that, gcvmom, my son is sleeping 12 hours each night/day, straight.
 

klmno

Active Member
Thanks, SW! All our problems aren't solved, obviously, and I still need county help, but to not be on eggshells and out of crisis mode sure feels good- even if it won't last forever!

Also, re. therapist- if he's been talking to difficult child like he's just ODD, that could be contributing to the problem, even though I know difficult child is ODD when he's unstable, therapy for it mhas always made things worse. I need to find a nice way to let therapist know that if he can't jump on this treatment plan for mood cycling instead of ODD, he needs to move out of the way.
 

Wiped Out

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Klmno,
I loved reading this; I'm glad the Tegretol is helping!! For my difficult child it didn't really help but I don't remember him being on it long so we maybe don't know for sure. He started vomiting a lot on Tegretol. Looking back I'm not sure it was the Tegretol because later that summer we found out he was having stomach migraines so it could have been that.
I love that you are not having to walk on eggshells right now!:)
 

gcvmom

Here we go again!
I don't know that tegretol will help with that, gcvmom, my son is sleeping 12 hours each night/day, straight.

I'd settle for 12 hours from husband. He was sleeping 18 plus on the weekends, 12 on week days with a 2 hour nap at lunchtime. He cut his dose in half and he now gets up after 9 or 10 hours (and so far no increase in seizures). But the downside is that his mood is much less stable. He's slipping into a mild depression again, he's obsessing about sex/hypersexual again, and his fuse is much shorter. He exploded last night at difficult child 1, and none of us has heard him go off like that in over a year when he first started an anti-seizure/MS drug.

Anyhow, 12 is not so bad, even for a teen boy, klmno. Maybe this is the year you get him truly stabilized and headed in the right direction.
 

klmno

Active Member
Now that I think about it, difficult child tried trileptol for a very short time- I'm not sure why, but we stopped it.

I don't mind the 12 hours sleep so much- I just wish he would scoot the times back so he's getting up earlier-
 
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