Friday, May 11, 2012

Changing the Risperdal regimen

I spoke with Andy's nurse today about my concerns that the Risperdal given before bed may be giving him insomnia. She responded that it usually helps children sleep better, but one of Risperdal's side effects is "difficulty sleeping". It is very uncharacteristic of Andy to wake in the night, crying and unable to return to sleep. This has happened five nights over the last three and a half weeks.

We are going to switch him to getting a.25ml dose in the morning, instead of before bed. We'll see how this goes, before weaning him off to discontinue the Risperdal. She informed me that in order to wean from Risperdal, we will first have to step down to the lowest dose. He is currently only at .50ml, so we will return to the .25ml this weekend. Then she wants him to receive it for four days at .25ml, then we can stop the meds all together.

I am willing to try the morning doses through the weekend, but if things still seem off for him, we will just discontinue. Not sure if we will try another medication for him or not. I guess it depends on whether he goes back to seriously ridiculous meltdowns and crying or not.

In terms of his mobility, he has made minor improvements. He is standing a little better, and going from sit to stand slightly better. He is scooting around a little bit. He occasionally makes new sounds, but not really. He was saying "wow" a lot when he was excited yesterday at his PT visit. His sister was making him laugh, and he was excited and screeches out "woooooww". He was also shaking his head a lot at the visit, whenever the PT asked him to do something, but I don't know if he was trying to tell her "no" or not.

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