Adderall

It would appear I forgot to write a blog post last night.   Every so often I get in bed with a niggling thought in the back of my mind that I’ve forgotten something.  Usually I don’t have forget the blog post because I have something I want to write about.   But every so often this happens.   And typically it’s on days I have something to write about but eleventy twelve things need to get done and I just forget.

What I was going to write about last night was our recent experience with my son and putting him on medication for some ADHD behaviors he has.   I don’t like to say he, “has ADHD” because I just don’t like labeling him that way.   He has inattentiveness and hyperactivity though.   I had it as a child myself.   He has a hard time staying on task because his processing speed is slower than his brain is moving through information.   He has anxiety as a result, because he’s not able to do the things he knows he’s supposed to be doing (work at school) and is doing things he shouldn’t be (distracting and interrupting other students).

We’ve done just about everything we could to avoid medication.   We’ve worked with a play therapist, an integrative occupational therapist, done Theraplay, had him do neural feedback sessions, brought in a nutritionist who specializes the connection of ADHD and food.   We’ve had him formally evaluated by a psychiatrist to get a full IQ rating and all aspects of his ability to learn (which is where we got the ADHD details on him).  We’ve been working with his teachers for two years on how to best prepare him for school and they have done countless things to try and make his learning environment best suited to his needs.

But it wasn’t enough.   And my son was getting dejected by it all.   He said to me one day, “why do I need so much help?”   We didn’t have him in extra curricular activities because he was busy seeing too many specialists.   The day my son said that to me my husband and I realized we needed to think about how all the “help” was really helping him, or if it was hurting his self-image and morale more than it was helping.

Then there was the meeting called with my son’s teachers, special needs teacher and the head of school.  My son had had a very bad day and had said some alarming things because his anger wasn’t in check.  We address that quickly but moved into how we all had tried our best for him but it wasn’t helping enough.

After that meeting my husband and I both drove off in our separate cars and got on the phone.   We both had independently decided we needed to try medication, that we’d put it off for as long as was reasonable, but if it helped him when everything else was failing, we were doing him a disservice by not trying it.

I got in quickly with another psychiatrist and had my son’s evaluations sent over in advance.   He agreed it looked like medication might make a difference—both significantly and immediately.   But there was a catch: not every medication works for every child, even when the diagnosis is similar.   So we’d try the first one and if that didn’t work, go to the second one.

We tried a variant of Ritalin first, with very poor results.  Over the weekend when we gave it to him, my son turned into a more extreme version of himself.   He was both mentally and physically out of control and he couldn’t control his emotions at all, resulting in high levels of anger or sadness.

We next tried Adderall and per instructions, gave him a half pill for the first day.   I was out of  town at the time but my husband said it looked like the same result as the first medicine.  I was with my best friend at the time and one of her daughters takes Adderall and she had some advice: sometime a higher dose is what’s really needed.

When I got home and my husband left to go skiing I gave my son a full dose and was surprised with the result.   My son was interested in doing things for long periods.   He was engaged and enjoyed what he was doing.   Mentally, he was calm.

So I gave him an Adderall and sent him to school on Monday with a message to his teachers about the new medication.  The week was interesting.   There were some things that happened on Monday that put the medication in question, but his teachers and therapist said to keep with it for a few days and the good news is, it’s working.

We’ve been getting a detailed report from his teachers each day on how his day has gone.   My son has completed more work in the past week than he’s ever done before.   And my son suddenly loves school.   He told me school was his favorite thing on Thursday night and he even brought home work one day because he wanted to keep working on something and ran out of time.

There is one catch though: when the Adderall wears off (it’s about six hours and has trailed off mostly by pickup) my son is emotionally on edge and can very easily become highly disregulated.  One afternoon he threw a tantrum for over an hour—a tantrum the likes of which I haven’t seen before.

We’re working on ways to combat that aspect though, because the benefits he’s getting from the medication at school are worth it.   Maddie, my best friend’s daughter, said when she gets home from school and her Adderall has worn off, she is usually very hungry.  Some people have a loss of appetite on the medication but so far, my son has been eating his entire meal and is hungry for more when he gets home.  

So we’ll see how it continues to go, but this was a good week.   And my son is proud of what he’s doing at school.   He’s excited about it even.   As much as my husband and I don’t want to turn to medication to help him, I think it was a good choice at this point.

The Big Boy Update: My son came home with a full backpack.   He had notebooks and papers and book reports he’d completed over the first part of the school year.   He wanted to show it all to me, laying it out on the counter in the kitchen.   He was proud of all the work he’d accomplished this year.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and I made flash cards last night for the braille contractions she knew as well as for the ones I knew.   She was typing out all the “dot five” contractions she could remember.   My favorite was “dot five Lloyd”.  I said, “I think you mean “dot five Lord”.  They use the contraction at school but in a non-religious way so I think she thought it was someone’s name all along instead of meaning the Lord.