Well, on the down side I woke up with a really bad cold today so that bites.
On the good side though Don and I were talking last night and we have both noticed that Rye’s nightmares have disappeared. For weeks now. At least since before Christmas and including through the trip to New York. No more night talking. No more night walking. No more night screaming or night half dreaming/half awake times. He now takes children’s benadryl (50mg) before bed every night and sleeps well with no disturbances. We both attribute the disapperance of the nightmares to the Abilify finally be completely out of his system. Abilify is a powerful med. He only took 2mg for about 2 months and then once for about 3 days for a what I call an aftershock mini manic attack. And it has now taken this long (a few months) to completely get this drug out of his system.
I’m so glad the nightmares are gone for now. He has never in his life had them as bad as he did from the Abilify. I hear that Seroquel and other aytpical antipsychotics can cause the same effect so we will be staying away from atypicals unless we are in a true emergency.
2 Comments
that’s interesting. Mateo has stopped having night terrors since starting seroquel. we tried benedryl but it hypes him up. question, do you find that your son gets really “off” when something in the house changes, even if temporarily, and then has a hard time getting back on track a long time after the event. the reason i ask is because mateo has been doing so well on the med regime he’s been on for months. then his baby sister was in the hospital for a few days and he hasn’t been the same since, even though that was more than a week ago. is that common for bipolar kids?
j-momma : Benadryl really hyped up my son when he was younger as well. It wasn’t until he was about 7 yrs old that it actually calmed him down and it wasn’t until just these past couple of years that we have begun giving it to him regularly for sleep. I can’t by any means speak for all bipolar kids but yes my son is thrown off by changes of all kinds. Sometimes he adjusts quickly and with great ease and sometimes the adjustment is rough and goes on and on. I’ve yet to figure out why it’s easy some times and so hard at other times but I think it has to do with the level of fear involved. Really though it’s usually a mystery to me and probably always will be. I hope Mateo gets back to normal soon. When Rye tried Seroquel the lowest dose knocked him out so fast and so deep I had to check on him through the night to make sure he was still breathing. After that the Dr said don’t ever try it again with Rye as that is a really adverse reaction.