Monday, June 11, 2012

Autism Medication

One of the medications we depend on for my daughter is in short supply. I'm not exactly sure why. The pharmacist and the doctor say it's a problem somewhere in production. Unfortunately, similar to other members of a sub-group of chidren with autism, this is the medication we have used for years to help control the head banging and self injurious behaviors. After a long discussion and much trepidation we have decided to go without it. I have been very worried. It's been a month or maybe six weeks and I am very pleased with the results. Let me explain. We have not had but one or two incidents of any banging. Even during those two incidents all she did was bang her hands on the wall. We have also seen some positive changes to her thinking that I will talk about in my next post. I must say I was really scared. She would bite herself and bang her head on the floor as hard as she could. Granted this had been years ago. She's 23 now and the last period was when she was about 12. So she had been on the medication for 11 years. I suppose I needed to talk about this because it's so important to regularly thinks about what medication our children are taking, why they take them, and how long. I can't say I would have thought of it myself or even been willing to have her take a holiday from this particular medication. I do believe in as little medication as possible though. The positive changes are definitely icing on the cake. Do you have a similar experience with medication? Please see my next post and one of the stories of positive changes.

No comments:

Post a Comment