Rye has been on Depakote now for 2 weeks and we are definitely starting to see some changes for the positive. What are we seeing?
Well, he is able to do his school work every day. All of it. Yes, he still doesn’t want to do it. No change there. But he does it anyway. And he seems to be able to actually process the information and think things through. Not like a normal kid would, but enough. And that’s major progress from the previous few weeks.
His muscles don’t get nearly as tense as they used to. One of his biggest complaints used to be that when he got really wound up the muscles in his whole body would really tense up and this made him want to hit things, throw things, scream, etc. to release that energy. And it really, really bothered him. He says this doesn’t happen much anymore – at least not to the extent it did before. He says his muscles feel much more calm and relaxed. Not always, but the majority of the time. And he says it feels much better. He seems very relieved with this change.
He switches gears easier. One big problem we have with Rye is that he seems to get ’stuck’ on things. Not to a huge degree but to a degree that it often makes it hard for him to switch gears and/or change activities or ideas. And this often leads to oppositional behavior. This seems to be calming as well. I notice that I can ask him to do something different or change gears mentally and he can do it with more ease than he was able to before. And without nearly the opposition. He doesn’t get as ’stuck’.
Bedtime is much easier. In fact, we have not had to give him Benadryl the past few nights to go to sleep. At 9:30pm he is ready to go to sleep. He is relaxed and willingly goes to bed and falls asleep within about 3 mintues of laying down. He just seems able to relax so much more.
And no rages. Yes, he still gets mad and frustrated but nothing extreme.
And I guess that’s about it for now. We are going slowly increasing his dose as his doctor says otherwise he will experience side effects. But I’d say 2 weeks in we are a long way from where we were 2 weeks ago. And we are all starting to relax a bit more. Even Rye sees the difference now. He happily takes the medicine as he says this is the first medicine he has taken that has done what he needed it to do.
5 Comments
That’s great news! It does sound like it is working as it should
Hooray! I’m SO happy for Rye and for all of you. Just amazing.
Hey, have you read any of the research implicating long-term use of anticholinergics like Benadryl in the development of Alzheimer’s? Carter has a paradoxical reaction to Benadryl so we don’t use it, but I thought I’d mention it in case you weren’t aware.
I was not aware of that regarding Benadryl. I am hoping to be done with the Benadryl though as we get the dose of Depakote right. When Rye was little he used to often get very hyped up by Benadryl so I didn’t use it much (in fact, coming to mind is a horrific flight to Hawaii where we used Benadryl when he was 2 years old. Sheer hell. But I digress) but as he got older he outgrew that reaction and we have now used it more often. Don uses it a lot to sleep though. Maybe I should let him know.
Meg, I am glad the Depakote is working for Rye. However, I am confused about your comment that the doctor says you need to increase the med or he will experience side effects.
That makes no sense as usually, higher doses are what leads to problems. But perhaps I am misinterpreting something.
Regarding Benadryl, as an fyi, it has ototoxic properties. So if you have had a reaction to a med such as tinnitus, you want to be very careful with Benadryl.
This definitely applies to me since a bunch of psych meds caused tinnitus and another one caused a hearing loss.
AA: He said it’s increasing the dose too fast that causes side effects. We started at a very low dose and only increase it once a week until we get to where we need to be.
Post a Comment