Amantadine

[mama2alex]

Iowadawn, can you send me this website too? Is the Amantadine helping with your ds with ADHD or something else?

 

I am just starting to research possible treatments for ADHD as we are starting to suspect that the school refusal is less about OCD and more about the troubles at school stemming from inability to focus, getting in trouble due to impulsivity and not following directions, trouble keeping up with homework, etc, etc. He is still only getting to school 2 to 3 days a week on average, so this seems worth looking into.

[emst]

I absolutely saw improvement with the attention!

 

The more I am thinking about it though, the more I feel I need to describe my daughter. I really don't think her ADD is true ADD. I think it is probably OCD that causes the ADD. For example, when she is sitting down to start homework, it takes forever to get the right pencil or pen. Then if it is a pencil she finally decides on, she has to peel the outer layer because she doesn't like how it feels. Then we think we have the pencil/pen situation settled and some other issue pops up. At this point, we are 30-45 minutes into trying to start homework. All the while this is going on, her mind is bouncing to a hundred other things. It's just one thing after another and it makes getting work done very hard. Amantadine helps her follow through. Again, it's not perfect. She still has very slow starts. But we get patches of time where she is able to buckle down and accomplish something.

 

I said before that I did not notice a difference with OCD, but when I think about her homework in this light, I guess it is helping OCD if her attention issue is OCD like I think it is.

I would characterize our sons experience the same. To quote his teacher this week, first week of school after starting Amantadine in August he's been on it a month but she has not seen him until this week: "We continue to see nice results from the medication. We think that he is significantly calmer. He is attending better and for longer periods of time. He seems to experience much less frustration. Overall, he is much more available for learning."

I think we're seeing less OCD -= better attention.

He is having sleep problems though, tough to crack. Our DAN said we could put him on as much as 7.5 mg or melatonin, We'd only ever had him on 2.5, then we went to 5.0 but he has only slept through the night once on 5.0 though a couple nights we didn't answer when he called me and he went back to sleep.

He's needing much more exersise - let me re phrase that he's never had the stamina of a typical x year old boy, he's 10 now and seems to need a couple of hours to run around, also more hungry.

Anyone else have Sleep Issues on Amantadine, what works?

Anyone else try Namenda?

[pr40]

how about dependency on Amatandine? is it possible? are sleep problems usual side-effects?

[Iowadawn]

If you want a thorough explanation of how amantadine works go to www.Meridell.com and look under treatment philosophies. Our PANDAS son14 is recently returned from this facility and is on amantadine and BuSpar.