Major Gavin Update: Clozapine change

You may remember that we began reducing the amount of Clozapine he's taking to manage the symptoms of Schizophrenia. Due to negative side effects that involve serious issues with his blood, we are reducing the dosage. Before we left for Florida, we worked with Dr. Reynolds to move Gavin from 600 mg/day to 500 mg/day. We didn't notice any Earth cracking changes and so once we returned from our trip, we made the next move. As of Monday morning, Gavin is only taking 400 mg/day. We haven't noticed anything at this point, that would make us want to return to the higher dose. That doesn't mean we aren't seeing concerning regression, because we are. The thing about the regression is that it's not likely tied to the Clozapine or the…

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I’m hopeful this will produce a positive outcome

Beginning today, Gavin will be on a reduced dose of Clozapine. We will be dropping from 600 mg/day, down to 500 mg/day until we return from Gavin's wish being granted by Wishes Can Happen in October. We don't want any medication changes to take place during the trip for a million reasons, one of them being we want Gavin to have fun. There's no way to really predict how Gavin is going to be reacting to this change in medication. We may see an increase of Schizophrenic symptoms, including a return to more dark and concerning behavior. We may also not see a change at all, and that will basically tell us, at the very least, he doesn't need the higher dose. If there's no change, we will continue to…

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The decision has been made

We just got out of Gavin's appointment, and my God it took forever. The two and a half hour wait sucked but I can't really complain because they squeezed us in. This appointment was purposed to discuss Gavin's medication, specifically the Clozapine and it's impact on his health. I'm exhausted after all of this, and I'm going to make this as quick and painless as possible. After discussing the possible options, we opted to go with Lizze's approach because it was the most conservative, and it was also a really good idea. ☺ Basically, we are reasonably sure that the Clozapine is at least one of the contributing factors to Gavin's blood related issues. If fact, it's likely to be the biggest overall factor but there are also other things…

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Bad news about Gavin and the tough decisions ahead 

We met with Dr. Pattie tonight, for Tuesday night family therapy. I'm trying to help you out by specifically mentioning Tuesday because if you're anything like me, after the holiday weekend, you don't even know what day it is. The main topic tonight was Gavin. Even if we had other things to talk about tonight, which we did, it wouldn't matter because Gavin mission debriefed the shit out of us. Gavin wanted to catch Dr. Pattie up on all she's missed over the passed week or so and it took him at least 30 minutes for that download to complete.  It's been hours now and I don't think any one of us has been able to process even a tiny bit of what we heard. Frankly, I don't even know…

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We have a very serious decision to make

I heard back from Gavin's psychiatrist today and we have a very, very difficult decision to make, in regards to Gavin's current psychotic break.  Dr. Reynolds explained that we can increase Gavin's Clozapine dose back up to 800mg a day, if we feel he's that bad or that far gone.  He's currently on 600mg/day right now because when we had to start over the last time, we stopped when we reached 600mg/day.  It seemed to be working at the lower dose and because the danger inherent to this medication, if it worked at the lower dose, we were better off stopping there.  Bumping him up to 800mg/day would put him back where he was before we started over.  We had to get special approval to have him in the 800mg/day…

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