Navigating Through the Chaos Part II

Posted January 25th, 2010 by KellBell

Today was appt #3 for Jeremy in terms of his medication. I wish I could say that everything has gone smoothly since we switched to Intuniv, but I have found that my son is actually sad more than he used to be. He used to be a pretty happy, go lucky guy who rarely showed his sadness (although he was probably feeling it). But now there are times where he just looks depressed and other times he’ll just be crying. When you ask him why he is sad he often doesn’t have a reason other than the fact that he feels sad.

Now I should take the moment to note that I am extremely happy that he can verbalize at least that much. He has, and mostly at our insistence, been letting us know when he is sad. Having him feel empowered enough to follow through on this communication front is huge and we make sure he is praised so he continues to communicate with us. So it is a small victory, but we still need to win the war.

Back to the matter at hand. All the sadness aside, however, the medicine seems to be working. In Jeremy’s latest report back from the teacher he has shown HUGE improvement behaviorally. Where the report was originally 95% “bad” (meaning that most of his marks were in the worst column of Very Often), the latest report from his teacher had  only 3 marks in that Very Often column. That’s right, he had moved from 95% bad to about 90% good after two weeks on Intuniv. I know I said this just a few moments ago, but that is a huge improvement. So here we are at the crossroads. His behavior in class is improving, but he is slipping emotionally. It comes down to what is more important, being successful in class, or feeling emotionally whole. Tough question to answer isn’t it? Emotional health is huge and extremely important, but do you throw education out at such a young age? Education is, of course, important for many reasons. Depending upon what you want to do a college education is required. Long gone are the days where just a high school diploma would get you somewhere. Of course there are things you can do that don’t require either, but do you limit yourself to those few things before you have a chance to figure out what you may actually like in life? So perhaps now you understand my dilemma. It tears me apart to see my little boy sad the way he has been the past couple of weeks, but I also know that the improvement he has shown in school is really important for him to have control over his educational future.

In the end we are taking a wait and see approach – at least for one more week. We are going to stick with the current dosage to see if, once his body has a bit more time to adjust, the episodes of sadness will diminish. If they do lessen then we will stay with the current dosage and continue on our way. If, however, there is no improvement or things get worse then we are going to the weaker week 1 dosage and hope that the progress his teacher has seen behaviorally still remains. This wait and see game is difficult for me. I just want my boy to be happy and healthy, and I don’t like seeing him suffer as we try to find the right combination of things that will get him back to that point.