Liz/Adele

[Guest guest]

<< Perhaps I should let them know.>>

Hi, Everyone....Liz.....I call Gareth's his *happy pill*. It doesn't

matter if it's Luvox, Lexapro, or Prozac!!!

Adele.....I made a lined chart with 18 behaviors down one side, and across

the top, I would list the med, date started, and dosage. Chart and rank

the initial behaviors to give you some guide line, and then, after one or

two weeks on the med, you can chart again. Beside each behavior I would

right good, bad, OK, nap (not a problem), etc. I also used up or down arrows

if the behaviors were REALLY bad!!! Here's a list of the behaviors for

Gareth: banging Power Rangers; Redirecting/reasoning; growling at

TV/Nintendo, etc; echolalia when angry; constant teeth grinding;

speech/communication; yelling at birds/; compulsiveness - writing (chicken

scribble), table

manners, vocal sounds; church behavior; reaction to sunshine/lights;

school behavior; extreme fears to thunderstorms, flies, bugs. Looking back on

this list, I realize that it needs a lot of explaining, but I think you get

the idea!!! Like MB said, you only want to start one med at a time. From

this chart, I was able to determine that Paxil made behaviors so much

worse. I wrote that it made Gareth *more autistic*. I saw that raising the

Prozac to 20mg increased negative behaviors but 10 mg was OK initially....it

just stopped working, hence the changeover to Lexapro or Luvox every so

often. I also have a sheet of paper with all the meds that have been tried and

wrote their reactions.....Zyprexa, Adderall, Effexor, Clonidine,

Paxil....all bad stuff for Gareth. Zoloft caused asthma but helped with

behaviors.

Cylert did nothing. I know this is long but I think you have a good idea

from all of us how to manage. Best of luck to you. I do want to add that

the best part of starting meds for Gareth was that he started to

talk.....only 2-3 word sentences, but hey, it was talking !!! We got our kid

back

into our world, we could reason with him, and he excelled in school (for the

most part).

Take care, Everyone.

Margaret

Mom to Gareth, 23 y/o, with DS/ASD/OCD