I've been doing things all these years to try to alleviate the ADHD with little success. Things are only marginally better with biomed. I haven't tried everything - I'm calling my doc to see if we can try hydergine (he's already on 2 other non-Rx nootropics but I've read that hydergine in combo with other nootropics is like night and day). I've been doing biomed for over 4 years and haven't made any headway with it so I've decided that if I can't take care of it without stimulants then I will try them when he gets to the grade where grades matter which is, I think the 4th grade. I have a couple years still to work on it.
In many ways, I feel like autism masked his ADHD. As he recovered from autism, his ADHD just got worse. Like we had been able to blame the autism for so much until the autism wasn't there to blame anymore.
I admit to sometimes wondering if I'm just doing him a disservice by continuing to wait. If you know anything about ADHD, language issues are quite common and his pragmatics just aren't great - something I used to attribute to autism until I learned how prevalent it is in ADHD and realized that is the last of his autism I needed to get out that is just a toughy. Getting him to speak was easy. Getting him to speak and comprehend at least somewhat close to typical, totally different... I often wonder if these would solve his problem and he wouldn't have to play catch up so hard.
Speaking to others with ADHD and having them tell me that the first time they started their ADHD med they finally felt normal really makes an impact. Hearing them tell me how the world finally righted itself and everything made sense because of their meds does give me great pause.
I dunno what the answer is. Part of me is just too chicken to even give the meds after doing biomed for so long. I don't want to put something like stimulants into him not knowing what the long term effects are. Another part of me feels like I'd just be a huge hypocrite if I gave them, I used to be one of those people that thought stimulants were a crutch of bad parenting. If I just find the right biomed combination, the right key, find the root of what's happening... And then another part of me feels like I could be giving him something right now that could potentially make it all go away and I'm not; and wondering just how bad of a mom that makes me.
It's a daily struggle to know what the right thing is. I do feel like he's just too young to be taking stimulants and that's my main driving force behind doing everything I can before going to meds. I don't have a lot of confidence that I can avoid that, though. From my answers on the Connors test, wow. He's got it bad.
Showing posts with label ADHD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ADHD. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
From autism to ADHD
In so many ways, this is good news (so far). It looks like it means they no longer think he has autism (yay, me! I worked hard to get it that way!) but now they want to assess for ADHD.
To be honest, they could've just asked me and saved us all the time. Yes. There ya go, no need for a questionnaire. In everything I've done, I've managed to deal with the autism but the ADHD is still such a huge problem. I'm not sure what more I can do.
Gryffin had a diagnosis of moderate to severe autism and to see the autism fade has been more than I could've ever dreamed but sometimes I look at the ADHD issues and think it's harder to crack than autism ever thought it could be.
Who knows, maybe we'll have our IEP and instead of saying they don't think he has autism, they'll say they think he has autism and ADHD. That ought to be a riot since the autism diagnosis specifically excludes any other diagnosis as part of the condition.
But I don't think that'll happen. When I see Gryffin, I see ADHD, not autism.
Sheesh. It's hard to even think about it right now.
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