Thursday, February 24, 2011

WOW!!

I have so much to update here on the blog, but first I have to brag about my sweet boy!

He hasn't had a seizure at all this entire month, PRAISE GOD!! However, his behavior was spiraling out of control and he was continuously bringing home bad reports from school and they mentioned that his therapists are not able to get through his behaviors during their sessions with him. He's also been out of control in every single social environment. There is no technique we can use to control him at all. We took him in on Friday of last week for an evaluation with the dev. pediatrician b/c we were told that ADHD symptoms show up at age 4. She immediately noticed that Jayden regressed a bit with his language (he NEVER talks in social interactions, only at home), and that his behavior was simply out of control. He was nice and calm when it was just us in the room, but as soon as the Dr entered, he screamed, banged toys on the floor, slid himself across the floor, and made loud animal sounds the entire time. It was very hard to even talk to the Dr, but it was what she needed to see. He quieted down when she talked to him. In a nutshell, she still agrees (even moreso now) that he is NOT autistic and that it is still too early to say that his behaviors are linked to ADHD. From what she saw, his behaviors are attention seeking and impulsive. She agrees that it may be due to the large amount of seizure meds he's been on, but she can't say for sure b/c she doesn't work with medications and side effects. However, she wants to re evaluate him next month after he weans off more of the meds.

I emailed his neurologist yesterday morning and she gave us the ok to start weaning off Trileptal and sent us a weaning schedule. He went down by 2ml, which is a pretty large amount. Today he went to school and when we picked him up, both his teacher and the teacher's aide came out and said "Wow!! Jayden had a wonderful day today! No screaming fits and no aggression at all!" They send the kids home with a behavior report daily with the following categories:

Attended to tasks.
Attended with (visual) cues.
Difficulty attending.

I actually just had to run downstairs to see what the first one was b/c Jayden has NEVER had that report this entire school year. 90% of the time he'd get difficulty attending and the other times he'd get attended with cues and then notes about bad behaviors. Well, we checked his bag today and his form said "ATTENDED TO TASKS" and the teacher wrote in the remarks section "Jayden was so much calmer today!! :) "

WOW WOW WOW!!! We were SO PROUD OF HIM!!! We made a very big deal out of it and took him for ice cream! We called Nana and she congratulated him over the phone. You could see the pride in his eyes :) I'm not sure what the odds are of his behavior turning around that quickly by simply reducing the amount of a medication, but he was on a very high dose, so it is possible. Today could have been a fluke. It could have been a coincidence. But he did wonderful today and it doesn't matter to us why. What matters is that he CAN do it and he DID do it! So today, we celebrate!

2 comments:

Jess said...

Aw, I'm so glad he did so well! :)

Rebecca said...

YAY!!!!!!