11th September 2007
Hey, Bob!!!:wave: You had been such a great support to me regarding my 18 year old daughter and I thought I would provide you with an update. You were away for a while there and it's great to see you back again.
We decided that it was time to do something aggressive to have our daughter evaluated.....hubby and I came to the realization that we were at a crossroad and before we sent her back to college we had to intervene. The options of keeping her home and hoping that she would cooperate for further evaluation with a pdoc OR send her back to college and hope that she would come to her senses didn't seem to be the way to go. Keeping her home would increase the stress within our home which we couldn't afford now that we had finally found some stability for our younger daughter for her BP.
And so....we decided to take her to one of Dr. Amen's clinics and miraculously when I called and explained our situation they were able to get us in 2 weeks before our daughter needed to be back at college. WE figured that the visual of a SPECT Imaging as well as the in depth testing and evaluation would allow our daughter to see and accept whatever they determined. It was costly but worth every cent to gain some headway...the way we saw it we would have been to pdocs for years before getting to what we did over those 3 days we had at the AMEN clinic.
Turns out that our daughter was diagnosed with Type 6 ADD (also referred to the "Ring of Fire") as well as mood disorder NOS. Our younger daughter has BP NOS/ADD inattentive type....and I was pretty sure that my older daughter had a "soft" version of the BP leaning more towards ADD which is exactly the findings we had after our evaluation.
The experience was awesome.....when we saw the scans our daughter's brain was "on fire" and lit up indicating a significant ADD with the mood centers involved as well!! We were so impressed with the entire way that they handled things and were able to cut to the chase and zero in on the best treatment for the type of ADD that they found with our daughter. Our daughter fought the entire thing but once she saw the scans and heard what the doctor explained we could see the relief on her face at the ability for them to finally explain why she was behaving and feeling the way that she did.
We were told that treatment with an anticonvulsant would be most effective with this type of ADD. She was put on Lamictal since that has worked well for our younger daughter. The anticonvulsant works well as a mood stabilizer. If she continues to "get stuck" and not be able to be reasoned with after getting to a therapeutic level of the Lamictal then the plan would be to add an SSRI such as Lexapro. It was also suggested to add on a Datrana patch once she is on the right dose of Lamictal to see if it helps with her concentration and organization.
We were most impressed by the whole experience and our daughter is back to college and on her second titration up of the Lamictal. She doesn't feel any obvious affects yet but she is only on 50mgs and usually you don't feel it until at 100mgs. My husband & I feel as if a boulder has been lifted from our shoulders. We know that it may still take time for this all to be accepted by our daughter but also know that she will be more inclined to accept it by all that the doctor showed her and when she actually starts to feel better after being on the meds.
I just wanted to thank you and let you know how things were going for us.
I hope that everything is going well in your corner of the world.
((((HUGS))))) ~ Goody:angel: :wave:
We decided that it was time to do something aggressive to have our daughter evaluated.....hubby and I came to the realization that we were at a crossroad and before we sent her back to college we had to intervene. The options of keeping her home and hoping that she would cooperate for further evaluation with a pdoc OR send her back to college and hope that she would come to her senses didn't seem to be the way to go. Keeping her home would increase the stress within our home which we couldn't afford now that we had finally found some stability for our younger daughter for her BP.
And so....we decided to take her to one of Dr. Amen's clinics and miraculously when I called and explained our situation they were able to get us in 2 weeks before our daughter needed to be back at college. WE figured that the visual of a SPECT Imaging as well as the in depth testing and evaluation would allow our daughter to see and accept whatever they determined. It was costly but worth every cent to gain some headway...the way we saw it we would have been to pdocs for years before getting to what we did over those 3 days we had at the AMEN clinic.
Turns out that our daughter was diagnosed with Type 6 ADD (also referred to the "Ring of Fire") as well as mood disorder NOS. Our younger daughter has BP NOS/ADD inattentive type....and I was pretty sure that my older daughter had a "soft" version of the BP leaning more towards ADD which is exactly the findings we had after our evaluation.
The experience was awesome.....when we saw the scans our daughter's brain was "on fire" and lit up indicating a significant ADD with the mood centers involved as well!! We were so impressed with the entire way that they handled things and were able to cut to the chase and zero in on the best treatment for the type of ADD that they found with our daughter. Our daughter fought the entire thing but once she saw the scans and heard what the doctor explained we could see the relief on her face at the ability for them to finally explain why she was behaving and feeling the way that she did.
We were told that treatment with an anticonvulsant would be most effective with this type of ADD. She was put on Lamictal since that has worked well for our younger daughter. The anticonvulsant works well as a mood stabilizer. If she continues to "get stuck" and not be able to be reasoned with after getting to a therapeutic level of the Lamictal then the plan would be to add an SSRI such as Lexapro. It was also suggested to add on a Datrana patch once she is on the right dose of Lamictal to see if it helps with her concentration and organization.
We were most impressed by the whole experience and our daughter is back to college and on her second titration up of the Lamictal. She doesn't feel any obvious affects yet but she is only on 50mgs and usually you don't feel it until at 100mgs. My husband & I feel as if a boulder has been lifted from our shoulders. We know that it may still take time for this all to be accepted by our daughter but also know that she will be more inclined to accept it by all that the doctor showed her and when she actually starts to feel better after being on the meds.
I just wanted to thank you and let you know how things were going for us.
I hope that everything is going well in your corner of the world.
((((HUGS))))) ~ Goody:angel: :wave: