David + Adderall = Nightmare

Last night was the worst visitation session ever. As we discussed the previous day with the psychiatrist we added back 10mg of the Adderall XR to see if it would help him focus better.

The afternoon visit was ok, but David was very aggitated and didn't want to play. He tried playing ping pong but got really upset and quit and started pacing around the rec room. We knew something wasn't right but we thought that he might just be having a bad day ( I mean seriously autism or not we are all entitled to having a bad day).

Well, bad went to worse at the evening visit. He asked us to bring his transformers tennis shoes because he didn't want to wear his crocs. He had those hospital grip socks on and they would fit in his transformers shoes correctly and he started getting upset. So I got him to put his crocs back on. He started yelling that the socks were killing his feet and that he had to go up to the unit to get his regular socks. We told him that he had to wait and the meltdown began. He started screaming and ended up running into the group room where we were able to contain him away from the other kids and their visitors. Dave took charge and restrained him. David started kicking, punching and biting. At that point I started crying. We tried to reason with him several time (which really doesn't work when he is in this kind of rage, but we tried anyhow). He said that he would calm down and he seemed to so Dave let him go and the rage increased to the point where he started throwing his crocs so Dave restrained him again. This went on several times. His little eyes were getting all bloodshot from the pressure of his screaming and started having trouble breathing. We got him to a point were we were able to get him up to the unit and away from all of the other visitors. If Dave wasn't there they probably would have injected David with a sedative. He was calmer once we got to his room and sat there for a bit. The nurse brought his risperdal and he took it, thankfully.

We were able to get David into the shower and he was doing a lot better and getting sleepy. We had to leave at snack time but I doubt David got snacks because he was on the verge of falling asleep.

It was a very rough ride home. I cried all the way and took 1mg of Klonopin. Dave had a hard time holding it together as well. By the time we got home my body felt like jello. The evening was crap and I ended up having a stress-induced, non-epileptic seizure (guess I should have explained that one under "How I Cope"). So I had one several weeks ago too but since then it has been over a year since I had non-epileptic seizure. However, there is only so much antidepressants can to and my body just went into overload.

Obviously David will not be released today as planned and I am not sure how long they are going to keep him at this point. We are going in to talk to the psychiatrist today. We were going to do a phone conference but Dave's plan is to go and sit there until she is available to sit and talk with us. We will see how that goes.