medication

I am sure if I searched this blog for the term "medication" I would find a blog post or maybe two that echo what I am going to say here. Since this blog is primarily for me to vent, I need to say it again for myself and maybe for you to hear.

My daughter has begun a new tic. These tics are typically based in her OCD behavior. I have noticed that she typically picks a behavior and gets obsessed with it, then she tends to relax and it fades until another one takes it place. We have gone through hair chewing, a mouth movement, clicking her teeth, hand movements and now the dreaded throat clearing noise. She makes this noise roughly every 6 seconds. Holy Lord it drives me nuts! I have tried not bringing attention to it, but I cannot let it go. It is quite distracting and very annoying. I have even gone so far as to suggest she fidget with her hands if she feels the need to do something over and over again. I cannot imagine how distracting it is in school for her peers.

While I do not think that raising medication is the answer, I an very thankful for medication during times like this. I know that my OCD tends to "rev up" for no expolainable reason and I need to double medicate. The doctor knows that I do this, and has okay'd it. Usually it only takes 3 days or so of this in order to get back on track. I am hoping this will help this time for her.

There are times that I think about taking her off medication and offering some skills that will help her when she is dysregualted. There are times that I feel like maybe she is too young to be on 2 psychotropic drugs and I am taking the easy way out. There are those times where I feel like she has calmed enough to be able to work through her frustrations and rages about things not going as she had planned them (through her OCD) and that she can make it without medication.

Each time I am directed back to being thankful that she is growing up with opportunities that I never had. She is growing up with the ability to feel at peace in her own body due to those very meds. She is growing up will medication that will help her understand that there is better ways of controlling her impulses and that she has been successful in that. She is growing up understanding that she is not "bad" and that she is able to function typically like the other kids in her classroom.

Those are the times that I am thankful for a skilled psychiatrist who does not believe in over medicating and who walks a fine line between the disorder and the medication. It is those times that I remember the change in my life from unmedicated to medicated and the joy and peace that came with it. Perhaps that understanding is the most important.

While I believe there is merit in not medicating children who can learn to deal with their disorders, I think not medicating those who cannot is holding them back from what they truly can be. For me, it was freedom.