Which is it?? Or is it both??
This is where we are again. Rye had an incident yesterday where out of nowhere he spent about 3 minutes blurting out expletives non-stop. I mean non-stop. It is so weird when he does that. You can’t believe how fast he can rattle them off. We were in the car when it happened (as oddly we often are…I wonder what that’s all about come to think of it) and when we got home he said he needed a pill as his brain was on overload.
Klonopin. This is our new PRN pill. Klonopin is for seizure control and is also used for anxiety. And it helped. The blurting stopped and he calmed down and said he felt much better about an hour later. This morning he said this pill helps much better than the Abilify. This one actually stops his brain from firing too hard and fast whereas the last time he took the Abilify he said it made things worse. Interesting.
I made an appointment with the Neurologist this morning. They take forever to get into. October was the first appointment for the one I really want to see and the end of May is the first appointment with the one we’ve seen before. ughh. I guess if it gets really bad you just go through the ER and get seen quicker. Maybe, I don’t know. I also made an appointment with a new family doctor that is supposed to be really good. Maybe he can move things along faster or at least just order the EEG. There is a real shortage of Neurologists where we live so that is a good part of the problem.
Klonopin is not a long term solution and I won’t use it every day with Rye. It is a benzo and it is addicting and has a terrible withdrawal if you get hooked on it. But, on an as needed basis it looks like it helps and until we get a better long term solution we need it.
So, here we are. Wait, wait, wait….
Luckily our benfits start in April so if we have to go to the ER we can.
4 Comments
to answer your question on my blog post…doctors aren’t sure why taz is attacking other children. one thought is that he is perceiving facial expressions in the wrong way. another thought is that it’s self-preservation – i’m gonna get you before you can get me. they don’t seem so concerned about why he is doing it (like i am) but more about what i’m doing about it when it happens. sometimes he is being protective of his sister (over-protective really). sometimes it seems to be out of nowhere. i wish i knew. but they think i need to put an end to it as quickly as possible. easy for them to say! isn’t it always? is this something you’ve run into before?
That [attacking other children and fixating on other children] is not something I have personally dealt with with Rye but I can’t imagine it’s easy to deal with or to explain to other parents on playgrounds or wherever. I guess my concern for you and for Taz is that if no one knows why it’s happening, how can you prevent it from happening? And how can other people help Taz when you aren’t around (like if he was at a birthday party or sleepover or something without you there)? If his perception is that the other kid is going to hurt him or is trying to hurt him when in fact that is not the reality, that is something that you need to know. It’s probably hard at this age to really know though. I don’t know. Maybe someone else out there has experience with this. If there is a level of delusion to it, you will need to know that though to help him.
I’m glad that’s working as a PN for you. My little girl is on Abilify and Lithium, but I think we still need a PRN. So far, the ones we’ve tried haven’t worked. I hope you don’t mind – I added you to my blogroll so my readers will have access to other info about prediatric bipolar.
My husband and I have both used klonopin on an as-needed basis and it is our favorite benzo. It seems smoother than xanax. It seems to start working fast but still last awhile. Here’s a link to an interesting benzodiazepine chart I’ve referenced in the past. Klonopin is on there under its generic name Clonazepam:
http://meds.queensu.ca/~clpsych/orientation/Benzodiazepine%20comparison%20chart.pdf