Do we dare take a step to start weaning him off of his Risperdal??......yes.....

January 8Th 2009
You guessed it lunch time again, you would think I would be really skinny since I use my lunchtime to write on this blog huh?? Well no.....unfortunately not!!
Well yesterday was the first day.... we are starting a very slow wean on my sons medication Risperdal, he takes 4 mg total/day =
1.5 mg in the morning
0.5 mg at noon
and 2.0 mg before bedtime.
We decided instead of cutting a little from each dose we will start with eliminating the morning dosage for at least two weeks and document any results noted. So, that started yesterday morning, he had a great day at school no crying...but as we all know it takes a good two weeks to see a true result of weaning down medication as it already is at a peak level in the bloodstream.
Again today he did not get the 1.5 mg this morning and off to school he went, it is near time for school to get out and no phone calls saying he had a major meltdown at school so far. After I get home tonight I will speak with Gary and see how his day went at school and monitor his mood this evening. If we think it is having a negative effect we will give him a dose of 0.5 mg in the morning and see how he does with that. All of you know how badly I want him off of this medication. It has only been almost 4 weeks (tomorrow) since his last dose of Adult Stem Cells, that is only 28 days ago, I can not believe it is only 28 days since I returned from Costa Rica it seems like two to three months ago, I find myself really missing it there, it was such a nice time and we saw some gorgeous countryside!
As you all know it takes a very long time for stem cells and I think it is to soon to even speculate about changes for him, but we do make comments on certain things. I just think the Risperdal needs to go away and this is our first attempt after Stem Cell Therapy, if I were not a Medical Practitioner I would not feel comfortable to do this but since I have been in the medical field for 16 years I feel safe in doing a slow wean. A medication like that can not be good for the fresh stem cells either, I would love to have him off of it by the time we go down to Carlsbad next month so that all the testing results will not be tainted by medication.
I have one more day to go of work, and I will finally have 2 in a row off.......I am dying here since,
January 30Th I have only had 2 days off and they were separate! I am not trying to be a whiner I am just tired that's all. I am grateful to be able to work two PT jobs I just wish they could just be 5 days in a row with 2 off then back for 5 and 2 off, but no way not when you have to work with other people and scheduling, you have to work around their schedule and it is hard. If I did not have children this would be no problem, but when you are away so much from them it is sad, it hurts my heart whether we have a bad day with Joshua or a good day I miss my boys, I get to see them in the morning and then I spend time with them at night but it is not the same, and on my days off I will probably have to clean my whole bathroom and my room, etc...so that takes time away from them to. :{
(not happy Bob, ha ha Joshua used to say that all of the time when he wasn't happy, I use it now for certain things)
We are waiting to hear when we will have to leave our home (it is being foreclosed on) we figure probably in February we will have to move, it makes me so sad I wish they would just renegotiate the loan and let us pay what we can instead of them taking it back, and it sitting for a year or so empty, they will never get what is owing on it, it has depreciated about $100,000.00 since we bought it a year ago. Had I not lost my job and so on we could have probably made it through this but at the time it is like OK we have some money do we make up two of the 4 months we are behind on the house (and still not be able to make the payments or get caught up) or do we go ahead and take Joshua to Costa Rica and give him a shot?? Well you already know that answer.......... we have stopped paying our credit cards to....I feel like a lousy bum it is only about $5,000.00 worth but we can not make those payments and still pay the electric, food, car payments (and we need a car to go to work) and car ins. I want them to close the accounts and one at a time I will pay them off, and such plus we are paying my mom back for all the money she helped us get for Joshua and for all of the brand new carpeting we had to put in the house when we moved in.....man I just want to rip up all that carpet and take it back to the store and say please give me a refund!! That is almost $5,000.00 down the drain and I got the cheapest carpet Home Depot had! It was a lot of carpet as the house is 2300 sq.ft and lots of labor costs involved in that, my bathroom still just has backer board down (we were putting in tile) when we knew we were losing the house, we ended up selling the tile we had bought it cost us about $1,200.00 that is also on the Home Depot Bill too OUCH!! We only got $700.00 for the tile. The tile we bought was a close out so it could not be returned, we had bought all of the extras needed to install it ourselves to, but we sold it and paid bills...I would have loved to put it towards the home depot bill but it wasn't an option.
OK enough of me crying the blues............... I really have nothing to be upset about we are able to eat and work and have some wonderful opportunities for our son thanks to some people who have helped us out!! Thanks to Health Walk who will be seeing our son next month too, they are very generous in their support for Joshua!
Well Gary just called me at work, he just picked Joshua up from school and he had another good day no meltdowns, I hope and pray that will continue so that dreadful Risperdal can be taken out of his life forever!! They are on their way to speech therapy Joshua has been in speech therapy for over 2 years two days a week, I sometime wonder if he was not able to get the therapy how would he be today?? Could we not understand him at all?? Well I do not want to know I am just grateful that the state of Nevada has the Katie Beckett program that allows Joshua to get speech therapy, I am thankful for that everyday because if it were my insurance through work well you know that story..........they do not cover Autism for anything!! Period!
OK well off to work my lunch is over :{
I will be back soon ~~ and hey why don't some of you drop me a line here or there and tell me what you think of this blog?? I would like to know........ :}
Ta Ta ~~~ Lori