My son has made the last step of his medication

i think texting him and expressing concern was the right thing to do. also not being too intrusive was the right thing to do too.

keep an eye on things from afar. but keep an eye things is the key word here. his friend doesnt seem like a great influence no but hes hanging with him nonetheless. :/

my parents dont check on me much. i wish they did. but then again i live with one already. i dont the other and i call my mom regularly so that might be why.

My sister hasn't heard from him, but then she wouldn't unless there was a problem with his house.

Thanks, newtus. Actually I think I'd rather he hang out with a bad influence than no one. Of course, a positive friend would be best.

This friend is a good influence in the sense that he's struggling with his problems and trying to do better.

i see. well hopefully something turns around for that friend. for right now things dont seem too hot. but at least hes TRYING to do better. and your son is on a good track too. your son did all this stuff with his work and living situation and then had a bump and look he got through that too! i feel positive for him costello! i feel positive hes gonna get through whats going on now too!

Thanks.

I wonder if they're a bad influence on each other. I mean maybe they get together when they're feeling like going off the rails a bit.

I stopped by and saw my son today. About 3:00 I felt compelled to leave work and go to his house. He said it was good I arrived at that moment; I could help him get rid of the knot in his head.

He seems good (not paranoid or delusional), but he's isolating. He seemed overwhelmed by two small information requests. He needs a letter from his pdoc saying he's fit to go back to work and a pay stub showing his income for the last 30 days for Medicaid. That was the knot. Sorting that out.

I'm speculating it's because he's now taking 5 mg of olanzapine and he had been on .625 mg before he went off it altogether. That's eight times his former dose; it may be muddying his thinking a bit. I suggested he talk to his pdoc tomorrow about lowering it to, say, 3.75 mg.

What do you think?

thats a jump in dosage.
a big jump.

why did it go so high?

Idk when I went back on I was actively psychotic so I did a full 10mg abilify for a couple months until I felt stable....it could be either too much med or too little although 5 mg of zyprexa is pretty low.

Because he was becoming ill and needed to be stabilized. Keep in mine he went off the meds altogether for three months. He needed a higher dose to get him stable again.

ah ok.
makes sense.
yea going back down to 3 doesnt sound so bad.
3.75 is almost 4 which is good. so it sounds great.

Well, I suppose if it's inadvisable, his pdoc will say so. He just seemed so muddled today. And it was like the muddled he was when he was on a higher dose of the medication, not like the kind of thinking he had when he was psychotic.

For example, his employer sent him a letter asking for a note from his pdoc clearing him to work. She made two grammatical errors that most people would understand were just mistakes. They seemed to completely throw him off. At one point, she asked him to bring in a letter "for your provider" instead of "from your provider." I explained what she meant, and he said, "Do you think I should get a pen and correct it?"

Now I'm second guessing myself. Does that sound like illness-type thinking or overmedication-type thinking?

Yes, it's low, but he was completely stable on .625 mg for a long while.

but isnt your son trying to get completely off meds? isnt that his goal?

Yes, that was his goal, but it didn't work. At least not this time. I don't know if he'll want to try again, but I hope he doesn't for a while.

I guess what I'm saying is I doubt 5mg would muddy his thinking that much, it's below the 10mg standard that considered a starter dose. I completely agree that the meds can do that and he may be a slow metabolizer or otherwise medication sensitive but I think there is also the possibility that he was developing some sort of early psychotic symptoms....one of the classics is not understanding certain things by taking them too literally...for example the phrase people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Instead of seeing it as a metaphor people start talking about glass houses.

When I first went back on meds my pdoc tried 5mg of abilify and the dosing is pretty similar.....it was like water, it did nothing after a month I had to go to 10 and it worked much slower than the first time I took it...my doctor was telling me that too many changes in the medication can cause you to become resistant so we're not going to change it anymore (currently at 7.5) I don't know how true that is...I haven't seen studies on it because it would be unethical if it is true....but given the high percentage of people who become treatment resistant it could be true.

Well, hopefully his pdoc will sort it out. I'm not sure now. The olanzapine seemed to snap him out of whatever he was going through. Today he seemed definitely better than he was a couple of weeks ago but confused.

Yeah my old pdoc was telling me they have ways of telling whether something is psychosis or not but he didn't tell me what they did....

I'm glad he's doing better than a few weeks ago and here's wishing for a speedy recovery....sending hugs his way....

costello

costello too.
hope things work out.

he could be confused because of active psychosis too like sp said.

Thanks for the support, guys.

I am sorry to hear about your son's relapse I hope things are improving now. Have you heard any thing more?

Idk about the thinking issues...I know 5mg is a low dose, but it's (if my maths is correct?) still 8x the size of his last dose - maybe he's very sensitive to meds (assuming he wasn't having a placebo effect on the tiny doses, but he did so well on them for so long that I'm inclined to think he's a slow metaboliser or something)? Has he seen his pdoc? (Idk if he put himself on that dose or if his pdoc did - maybe I missed that bit?)

I hope that you both get through this and he tries again to be med-free when the time is right, if that's still what he wants.

All the best to you both,

*Willow*

He was working with his pdoc to go off the med. It didn't work. He decided to go back on the med at the 5 mg dose. He's much better now but not back to where he was before he quit the med. He's cleared to go back to work and is waiting to be assigned a client. I don't know what he and the pdoc decided about pairing or lowering the dose.