The Doctor Is In.
Our month of testing the new medication is finally almost over, so I called the doctor to make our appointment to get OFF the medication and try something new.
“You haven’t made the appointment?!” the receiptionist squealed. “The doctor is booked completely and she’s leaving the country until January!”
“But I called LAST WEEK and she said we had to wait a month!” I squealed back. My voice got very high. “The medication isn’t doing ANYthing to help him and he’s FAILING all his classes and we can’t WAIT until January!”
“Wait,” she said, pausing. “He isn’t with you right now, is he?”
“No,” I said, “but I can have him there in half an hour.”
“Right,” she said, “we’ll see him then.”
So I pulled him right out of Algebra class – which, along with three other classes, he is now failing – and took him to the doctor.
Hearing our woes about the new drug, our neurologist didn’t sound hopeful.
“If the Intuniv didn’t work, we can put him on Strattera,” she said. “Frankly, we have no other option. It was originally an anti-depressant but they found that people who take it can pay attention better.”
So basically, this is our last chance. And after absolutely no success with the other medication, and my poor son now failing everything, I’m not holding out any hope that this will do any good at all.
Of course, he isn’t suicidal anymore, so that’s a plus.
But he will be at the end of the year when he realizes that his dreams of going to college are lost because he’s flunked out of the seventh grade. I guess he doesn’t need to be an engineer and design cars, which is his dream. Perhaps he can be an auto mechanic instead. Same thing, right?
We start the new medication over a holiday weekend. We have to wait another month to see what happens. By then, it will be Christmas – and I’m betting he ends up back on stimulants in January.
This is not a happy cycle. Happy Thanksgiving, ho ho ho.