A little bit of everything

[Shirley]

Hello!

Can a young man, age 9 now, have all 3 conditons together? He has a habit of playing with his face alot..Wiggles around - not sitting still. I don't really consider him hyper. He has been the topic of all of his teachers' conversations since Kindergarden. He's carried this ADD/ADHD label with him all along. We've taken him to counselors, put on 3 different meds, (which I was very apprehensive about doing) I've been reading alot about Autism and think maybe he can have "a touch of it", if that makes any since. None of his diagnosis' have labeled him with Autism. I've just recently started trying to take out all the artifical colors, etc. in his diet. He's just a very picky eater as it is and it's pretty tough.

So, I feel like he has 3 different conditions and do they all have the same treatment? I want to help him so bad! He's always stays to himself and I just want him to not be treated different from other kids.....

Any advice would certainly be appreciated...Thanks for taking the time to read this!

[Chemar]

Hi Shirley

I have certainly heard of others who have combined disorders as you describe.

 

There is a lot of good info here at ACN/Latitudes on all three conditions and the autism and AD(H)D forums at BrainTalk are also very active and helpful

You can find them from the main forum index at this link

 

http://neuro-mancer.mgh.harvard.edu/cgi-bi...passCookie=true

[Guest Rona]

Shirley, yes it is possible he has all three types of symptoms. But if it was stnadard autism he would be having more problems it seems like. Have you looked into Aspergers? There's an article on this on the Latitudes site/. I think under autism. Read it and see if it makes sense for you.

 

Does he just seem a little out of sync? The more I read in Latitudes the more i think there is a abig spectrum with all these conditions related even though they have such different symptoms. Diet for sure can affect all the three. and chemicals. it's good you are changing the diet. read that article and see what you think. then if you think that's it (like aspegers) then i can come up with some ideas for you to learn more i think. Did you re ad the Dr Robbins comments under guest section? Hang in there. I think you will help him!! Rona

[Guest Guest_efgh]

Shirley

 

What symptom of autism did you notice now? Wont autistic traits be very obvious at a much earlier age???

 

Goodluck to you!

[sallyanna]

Hi Shirley, My son was diagnosed at the age of 6 with ADHD and was put on Ritalin, it was only when the Ritalin calmed down the Hyperactive symptoms was i then able to see another underlying problem. I also referred to it as a touch of autism but as my son got older, the "touch" became bigger. At the age of 9 my son was diagnosed with ADHD and Aspergere's Syndrome. My son remained on the Ritalin and coped better on the Concerta but now at the age of 13 I am desperate to wean him off the Concerta. Don't get me wrong without its aid in the early years, I may never have discovered the Aspergere's Syndrome. But now I believe the whole medical concept of ADHD itself is wrong. I believe many things can give a child ADHD symptoms and I believe my son has allergy-induced ADHD, affected by Hyperglaecamia caused by eating too little because of the side effects of the Ritalin. Does that make sense to anyone out there????? i didn't cope very well at the double diagnosis but after the initial shock , I just wanted to get him the best help he could. He is in a Special School but in a class of other children with high functioning difficutlies, so they are all similar to him. The new task of weaning him from Ritalin in a massive one, I am not sure of the future but I must try... for his sake.

 

Good luck Hun. oh by the way, on the positive note, I found that the ADHD helped the Aspie side and vice versa, you will see what I mean as time goes on. All the best to you both

 

Sally

[Guest Jennifer Powers]

Hi Shirley

I have certainly heard of others who have combined disorders as you describe.

 

There is a lot of good info here at ACN/Latitudes on all three conditions and the autism and AD(H)D forums at BrainTalk are also very active and helpful

You can find them from the main forum index at this link

 

http://neuro-mancer.mgh.harvard.edu/cgi-bi...passCookie=true

I am so relieved to have found this site. My 9 year old son has ADD and is Bi Polar. We are currently on seroquel, clondodine and lamactil. This has been a struggle since the age of 3. It has been one medicine change after another. At times I feel he would be better off without any medicines but then I worry about getting him through the day at school. School is a really big problem at this point, lack of attention and behavior problems have him a very labeled child and it seems as though they would rather not deal with him. We tried to home school, that was a disaster....Any suggestions???

[tictoc]

I feel compelled [see? already a kodakADD moment...] to respond, having just responded to both the OCD and TS/tics threads, although about PANDAS/GABHS. I've been through BP and schizo boards, too, tracking down ever more input on whatever this is I apparently have. Actually, the "official" [clinical] Dx I have is [Adult] AD[H]D [inattentive] Dx with possible BP [iI], although the latter has been mostly "ruled out" through therapy/experience, despite this kind of behavior and these blasted waxing'n'waning tics, which might indicate TS and OCD if heritable, otherwise probably something like PANDAS, or hunoz, borderline, split, or multiple personality disorder or something. Phhht!

 

I am really not making light of this but just telling you what's going on in my case and saying that, yes, there can be more than one thing going on. In my case, there appears to be, anyway, eg PANDAS (which is close symptomatically to OCD/TS) and ADD (which is close to BP, which is near if not in personality disorder-land, which is near the -lepsies [epi-, narco-, etc.])

 

As I noted in one reply, the Dx for me is significant because one disorder implies heredity and another doesn't. But one could have both! ie I might have PANDAS and ADD or/and TS/OCD! Eek!

 

But there are some objective things that help to differentiate these problems. For example, best as I can tell, PANDAS results in some kind of basal ganglionic pathology (engendering rheumatic fever in a more severe form), which affects one's psyche in various neuron[t]ic ways, eg/esp. tics ephemerally, OCD more monotonously, etc. Now, this area is very close to if not the or in the dopamine "power station" in your mental 'internet', so to speak, and glitches in its "[re-]uptake" through associated neuro-transmission faciloities can cause all kinds of problems, ranging from glitches, to static and distortion, all the way to service disruptions, brownouts and ultimately blackouts. And in ADD there seems to be something wrong in the area of filtering realtime inputs, focusing on a manageable subset, staying on track and recording and playing back programs. And these involve such etiologic, diagnostic, therapeutic, and prognostic complexities, ambiguities, and uncertainties, and they are so hard to verify, that it is all pretty much overwhelming, even to the pdocs.

 

But what seems to be most perplexing and dissatisfying to people is that there don't seem to be many 'smoking guns'', like MRI, Xray, or DNA signatures for sure, although there are some MRI's of ADD and EEGs of epilepsy and some others that seem to be definitive if not precise with respect to diagnosis and therapy. And, in the year 2004, with all its supercalifragilistic biocybertechnology, it seems like there should be more certainty and efficacy in sorting this all out and being able to fix it for everybody who has 'it', right?

 

Like you, I can appreciate this academically, but way much less as a patient/victim or, worse, a parent of one [or more!] And so I empathize with you and wish you the best!