Well, things have been good here the past few days.  Rye seems to be accepting the fate of the boy from our community and life goes on.

We visited the pdoc yesterday.  We always enjoy seeing him.  We need new blood work but that’s really it.  He also gave Rye a prescription for Klonopin to take on occasions when he gets really anxious so hopefully that will help on the rare occasion like the other day when his anxiety just gets the best of him.

And, in sad news, we are seeing some kids in our community (all boys, of course) find out that they are being held back a year at school due to either not passing the state exam or missing too many days of school.  This breaks my heart as the public school near us, instead of actually helping the kids,  just holds them back until they finally drop out on their own at 16 because they never get the help they need and they just get too frustrated with being too old in too young of a class and want to move on with their lives.   I mean, who wants to be 16 and in the 8th grade?  Or even 16/17 in the 9th?  It’s just ridiculous if they are socially aware at all.   They are better off to drop out and then start back up at community college remediation courses where they are treated in an age appropriate manner and the classes are flexible so they can work too and actually gain some useful skills.

That said, Rye seems really happy he is homeschooling now.  He sees himself in all of these boys and knows that each and every one of them could be him given different life circumstances.

As for us, Rye starts his various summer camps soon.  This will be fun for him and a nice break for me!

Bring on the summer camps!!

A month or two back the psychiatrist gave Rye klonopin (clonazepam) as a PRN (as needed) med for anxiety.

At he time Rye was in public school and we were going through the whole teacher attack incident (the teacher attacked Rye, not visa-versa) and Rye was extremely anxious.  It seemed he really needed something to chill out at times and some days needed something just to make it to school as he would get so anxious it was crippling.

So, we tried klonopin.

Well, for us it was a mixed bag.  The first couple of times he took it it seemed to help and I’ll be honest, I was kind of worried about him liking it too much and wanting to take it all the time (from adults I’ve talked to that have taken it the effects are quite nice and like Valium).  After a few times of taking it though, we both noticed that Rye seemed to have the opposite effect of what it is supposed to do. Instead of getting calmer, he would get very angry.  No, I take that back.  Typically he would get chilled out/calmed down for a while but then as the med wore off he would get very angry (and actually even a few times he very got angry just from taking it).  And I mean very angry.  Like scary angry.  And this kid is really, really strong and is as big as me now and much stronger than me so when he gets angry it’s not pleasant.

Anyway, as a result, we have not used klonopin in a while now.  In fact, I’m going to take it off the list on the front page of medicines and vitamins we use.   And with that removal, this puts us back to no meds again.

From what I have read, getting angry is an allergic reaction to the medicine.  We seem to have this a lot with pharmaceuticals.  Rye is allergic to them or oversensitive to a lot of them.  And this is why we don’t use them.  To date, they have caused us much more bad than good.

I guess in a way we are lucky this happened.  If one gets addicted to klonopin, the withdrawal process can be bad as noted here:

http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2010/04/11/10382/

http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/valium-vs-klonopin/

http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-benzos/

It’s over.  Take the pig head off the stake.  Put the bonfire out.  Wipe the warpaint off your faces.  And before you kill the kid with the glasses, we are out.   Over and out.

The adults are back in charge.  Sanity is restored.

And we all exhale…

Goodbye public school.

Hello new world.

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.