Lithium Archives - The Autism Dad

How we help our kids with #Autism adapt to change

As is the status quo for my family, we have to adjust our plans for today. Originally, the boys were going to be gone tonight but that's been rescheduled for tomorrow. It's not a big deal at all because we're always so grateful for whatever help we get and sometimes things happen that require us to adapt. Having said that, since the boys will be home, we're going to have to feed them. There's some law in Ohio that states you have to feed your kids. 😁 In order to do that, I'll have to go grocery shopping. I wasn't planning on that until tomorrow, specifically when they were not going to be home. Anyway, I'm waiting to pick up the boys from school and I'll explain that the plans…

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March 10, 2017

Major Update: We saw the psychiatrist today

Many things have happened today but in this entry, I want to focus on what is arguably the most pivotal. I spoke previously about Gavin having his Lithium dose cut in half, with the potential of being totally removed in the near future. The near future has arrived and we met with Dr. Reynolds this afternoon about this very subject. The focus of today's appointment was to discuss how things were going on the current (reduced) dosage and then decide where to go for here. Lizze and I both agree that Gavin is or at least appears to be manic. Is this the result of the decreased dose of Lithium? My personal opinion is that it's probably not. The reason I say that is because Gavin's been on 900 mg/day…

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March 9, 2017

Gavin / General Update

Very Important Update About Gavin

It's been a trying day but I've learned one thing that I believe I can say with absolute confidence, Gavin off of Lithium is NOT a good thing. I'm sure Lizze will put her two cents in at some point but having discussed this last night, I know she agrees. I suppose I should clarify that Gavin hasn't stopped taking Lithium completely but his dose has been cut in half and it's very clearly no longer effective. The purpose of doing this was to try and clear up some of his confusion. It's possible that being on the Lithium for ten years, in combination with the Clozapine, created a high level of confusion. Anyway, his dose was cut in half for thirty days in order to see if this was…

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February 18, 2017

Gavin / My thoughts

Update: This kid is driving me effing CRAZY

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…

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February 13, 2017

Emotional Health / Gavin / Psychiatrist

MAJOR change is coming to Gavin’s life

The appointment went pretty well with Gavin's shrink this afternoon. It probably goes without saying that Gavin did a good job while he was there. As I mentioned in the previous post, this was supposed to be a med check and nothing more. I also mentioned that I can never know for sure because it's Gavin and everything about him is fucking complex.. Let me get right to the point. Gavin's rather significant level of confusion might be related to the fact that he has childhood disintegrative disorder. Frankly, that's what I've thought and sorta run with. As it turns out, the confusion may me related to his Lithium or rather the Lithium/Clozapine combination. As a result, we're doing something we never done before and that's begin to wean him…

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February 9, 2017