I took a large part of the weekend off from writing. Things were getting stagnant for me and I think a break was in the cards. I'm feeling good and my thoughts are stringing together will less effort. Yay for the little victories... ☺
There's one main thing to touch on tonight before I go to sleep and that's about how Gavin's doing as we've cut his Lithium in half.
Gavin's been on 900 mg of Lithium per day for close to a decade. Overall, it's served him well. That's something that we are grateful for because it improved the quality of his life by helping to manage his bipolar disorder.
The problem is that sometimes these improvements come at a cost.
In Gavin's case, it seems that the combination of Lithium and Clozapine (that are largely responsible for him *not* being in a psych unit) might be contributing to his increasing level of confusion. It's also possible that it's just part of Childhood Disintegrative Disorder and is an inevitable part of that journey.
Having said that, his psychiatrist thinks it's best that we lower the dose of Lithium, with the intention of weaning him completely off in the very near future.
He's not been off this medication in a decade and frankly, we don't even know if it's still working. The goal is to see if his level of confusion decreases and if it does, we will consider weaning him completely off.
Fast forward to the present and Gavin has now been on the lower dose since last Thursday, making it about four days.
I love Gavin and have already gone and will always go to the ends of the Earth for him. That said, I'm going to be super honest and very blunt about how it's going so far.
Gavin's driving me fucking bonkers. I know I say that with some frequency but let me qualify this for you. Gavin can drive anyone crazy on a good day. It's not his fault and he really tries but *he will break you down. *
I would say that I noticed a change on Saturday. Gavin was showing signs of being manic, which truthfully isn't uncommon for him. Since Saturday, he's been a super clumsy, excessively impulsive, incessant talking machine.
Many dishes have been broken, countless tales of his video game adventures (on his tablet) have been relentlessly hurled in my direction, as well as a general decrease in functionality.
In fairness, lowering the Lithium may have nothing to do with these changes and they could simply be part of Gavin's ebb and flow but my God, it's been pretty intense.
We're going to be on this *new* *dose of Lithium* journey for at least a month. If things get really bad, say a darker turn in his delusions or something like that, we let Dr. Reynolds know right away.
The reality is, we are living in the land of special needs parenting, super annoying and extremely frustrating doesn't qualify as *really bad. *We actually just call that an average Tuesday. Lol
