It has been a while since I have posted other than my song of the day. Things have become very difficult in our house and time has been at a minimum. Avi has been going downhill for weeks now. Last I wrote about this, we were waiting for a Psychiatric evaluation. Avi saw the psychiatrist and the first thing that has changed is his diagnosis. Although we have not been given a definite on this, everyone now believes that Avi is bipolar.
It is a good thing we took him off the ADHD drugs because bipolar kids on stimulants will often get very depressed and that is what was happening to Avi. He began to say things like “I wish I were never born” and “I don’t want to live with anyone and just be by myself all the time.” Well we took him off the Adderall and that all ended. In fact his therapist said that his sessions after we took him off the drugs were much better and she was able to get much more from him.
Avi’s therapist consulted with our family doctor to get Avi on to a bipolar medication called Zyprexa which is an antipsychotic used today in the treatment of Bipolar disorder. We are a few days in and waiting to see if it has any effect.
The psychiatrist recommended to us that we look at a partial hospitalization program. This is basically an inpatient program where Avi comes home every night and is home on the weekends. We have an intake appointment at a good facility on Monday and if we are lucky, he will begin there the next day. This is a 6 to 8 week program and seems to be exactly what we need.
Today, mkm will be at our local school for and IEP meeting. We already know that Avi is going to be placed out of district next year, which means that he will be going to a school for children with sepcial needs. Luckily for us, there happens to be at least two very good schools in our area who specialize in helping children like Avi. Hopefully he will be at one of them.
Its been a long road and every time we seem to move back one space, we do seem to move forward two, so I think that the end of the road is getting closer. Sometimes it is hard to see that, but we just keep reminding ourselves that this is a very long process and that everyone who is involved is in this to get Avi well.
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WOW Phil, lots has been going on for you guys! I’ve been antisocial the past week-or-so and haven’t been keeping up with anyone’s blogs, so I hadn’t really realized you hadn’t posted in a while. I know you have mixed emotions about the diagnosis: glad to finally know what’s “wrong”, but scared about the actual diagnosis. It’ll work out… I’m glad he’s finally started to turn a bit of a corner having been taken off the meds. I look forward to hearing how the inpatient program works out for you. Hopefully it’ll “feel” like school or a summer camp to him and he’ll do great!
~Laura