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Saturday 22 November 2014

Medicines That Create Monsters

Almost 3 weeks ago our youngest started a new medicine that was supposed to help with his unique behaviors.  The medicine "trial" has been plagued with severe behavioral side effects that gradually snuck up on us since this medicine takes time to get up to full strength.  Which in reality meant after a couple weeks the behaviors got more and more extreme and you could easily be left questioning why, as the medicine started 3 weeks ago and could easily be overlooked as a cause.


We have had non-stop extremely fast talking, going a mile a minute, but, when added to the speech challenges you can not understand a word of what is being said.  Incredible risk taking as he has been climbing on and getting into everything he feels possible, and putting himself at huge risk of injury, not to mention giving me grey hairs.  He has been bouncing from one activity to the next, can't focus and can't slow down.  The moods are off the wall and rapidly bounce from our loving boy to a crazed tantruming monster, with more tantruming monster than loving boy.  All this added to non stop energy that just has him buzzing.

As our children have very complex challenges it is important to document any changes in medications and routines so we can review what has changed when presented with challenging behaviors or health issues.  When giving medicine it is important to know what side effects are possible including the more severe or unique ones as they could explain a lot.  With our children it is a non stop juggling act trying to find solutions for one challenge without setting off another issue so all the information we have available is necessary.

Fortunately after talking to the physician that prescribed this medication we found out that he can come off of it immediately and doesn't need to be weaned off of it.  It will however take about 3 weeks to leave his system before our boy is back.  We were also able to get an emergency appointment to go over the issues and come up with the next plan of attack.

1 comment:

  1. We have had similar experiences with med changes too. I always dreaded med changes. fortunately, we haven't had to make any changes in long while. I hope your son feels better very soon for all your sakes!

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