Changes

   It amazes me how things can change in so many different ways, and how fast those changes can happen. This week's changes have been happily received. Take baby Evan, for example.  Over the last week or so, he has cut his first two teeth, he's drinking juice and learning to use a cup to drink it, he isn't using a baby seat in the bath tub anymore because he loves laying in the tub and splashing with his arms and legs, and today, he held his bottle for himself. So many changes in such a short time, and when you watch an infant as they learn those new skills, it's totally amazing.
   Medication changes are always a difficult thing for us. During the first year that Noah was on medication, and before his diagnosis was Bipolar, we had a really rough time with some meds. Actually, one of the meds he was put on was what helped us discover that he was bipolar. His psychiatrist was thinking he may have had ADHD, and wanted to try putting Noah on Concerta (an extended release form of Ritalin). The weekend we started him on it, we went to Sea World. The kid talked non-stop the whole trip. I'm not kidding! People in the Shamu stadium were staring at us because our kid wouldn't shut up...and that's alot of talking to be irritating people in a huge stadium in an amusement park!  I didn't know that wasn't a normal reaction to the medication...I was new to the world of drugging my child! He did finally stop talking that night, sometime around 1 a.m. I think he finally fell asleep in the middle of a sentence. Sometimes you just gotta laugh or else you cry. So we laughed the next morning, as we went about our day, cleaning up the house, laundry, playing with the boys, and taking pork chops out of the freezer to thaw for dinner.  I sat them on the counter and went back upstairs to do more laundry.  A few hours later, I came downstairs because I heard Noah in the kitchen looking for something to eat.  He was frenzied about it.  It was a weird thing to see. He was trying to eat everything in sight! As I glanced across the island counter, there they were...the package of 6 partially thawed pork chops...with only 5 whole ones and a quarter left of the 6th one.  OMG...my son just ate a raw pork chop! As far as we know, it didn't make him sick.  He's had stomach issues for most of  his life, so it may or may not have upset his tummy, but if it did, it was nothing like salmonella or anything like that.  We saw Noah's psychologist a couple days later, and when I told him about this incident, he linked it to Noah being bipolar. Stimulants (ADHD drugs like Ritalin) will send a bipolar person into a frenzied mania! We thought we had a good psychiatrist, but it turned out our psychologist was better. Needless to say, we quit that drug immediately, and stimulants have never again crossed the threshold of our house!
  About three weeks ago, we changed Noah's antidepressant, which he takes for OCD, from Prozac to Zoloft. This was done because sometimes Prozac can make kids more aggressive, and I thought that might have been the case.  We thought everything was going OK, until Noah started getting sad and extremely obsessive.  It got so bad that Noah wouldn't get out of bed on Tuesday last week. Monday night he had told me that he was feeling so sad that he just wanted to stay in bed and not come out of his room, and when I got home from work on Tuesday, I found out that that was just what he did. I cried that night. I was afraid he was going to try to harm himself. I really hate to say things like "I thought he might try to kill himself." It sounds so harsh and extreme, but I've learned that I'm not overreacting when it comes to stuff like that. He was really down and I was really scared. Luckily we were seeing Dr. D, Noah's new psychologist the next morning. I told her right away, and she agreed that something needed to be done immediately. She called the front office and got Noah in to see his psychiatrist an hour later. Now we're back on the Prozac and we know that Prozac makes Noah a little more aggressive, and Zoloft takes away the aggression, but makes him extremely obsessive and depressed.  Aggression is something we've been dealing with for a long time. I'll take that over the horrible OCD and major depression any day, thanks!
   It's been a week since we made that switch, and what a difference a week makes! OK, so he bonked his brother in the back of the head today, and he's starting to tell stupid jokes again and laughs at himself even though they're really not funny (actually one of them was, and I'll share later), but he got out of bed smiling this morning. He went to the dentist with little resistance; even though he was obsessing last week about being scared to go this week. He had two consequences in the afternoon, but I'd much rather him not watching his favorite cartoon because he lost the privilege, not because he lost the desire.