questions about adhd and more

[bulldog24]

Finally saw dr. B yesterday. I feel like someone is finally taking a look at the whole picture. I feel relief, but still worry.

 

He said he wants my son to get more ivig since he is back sliding a bit. He said kids rarely get better with just 2. He did tons of labs and added zith to the augmentin.

 

If that doesnt help, steroid burst is next.

 

My son saw his psychologist today. He says he thinks my son has adhd unrelated to pandas. I agree but do think pandas makes it worse. But he said thats why my son doesnt like school. He has a hard time being told how to think. He suggested a non stimulantlike straterra. Any

Opinions? The doc is pandas friendly, and was.the only person who believed me in the beginning. I think it might really help. Adhd runs in our family too.

 

 

And my odd dx with mild pandas

[MomWithOCDSon]

Is your DS's PANDAS behavior predominantly OCD? I ask because my DS's was, and many times, what's really OCD can look a lot like ADD or ADHD. My DS would sometimes be "distracted" from a task, less because his attention was drawn outside himself to something else going on or some other thing he liked thinking about, but more because he had a thought ritual he needed to undertake before he could focus on the task at hand, or because it just didn't "feel right" to him to do whatever it was he was being asked to do, so he would purposefully distract himself in order to avoid doing it.

 

We've found that with treatment and the diminishing of the OCD (what I'll call the "primary behavior profile"), his ADD-type tendencies have been reduced significantly, as well. We've also found that, in those times still when he's feeling especially distractable (again, typically from a task he's trying to avoid anyway), some extra zinc can help him get down to business. It was a connection we found by mistake when we were giving him some Zicam soft chews because we thought he might be coming down with a cold. Then I asked around and found that other families have found a similar zinc-focus connection, and if you Google it, you'll find some studies reflecting zinc as a helpful supplement for attention issues, also.

 

As for non-stimulant meds, we tried Intuniv for a while ourselves, before we realized that it was more likely OCD behind the attention deficit. At first we thought it was helping a bit, but the effect seemed to diminish over time, and we weren't comfortable increasing the meds to chase after it. On top of which, it might've been a placebo effect and/or maybe it never really would've worked that well since most of it seemed to be OCD based. The only side-effect of it (and I'm not sure if Straterra has the same side-effect profile) is that it tended to lower his blood pressure, and he would run out of steam by mid-afternoon. We found we had to keep some healthy snacks on hand so that he didn' get too fatigued.