Unbelievable

Jada's current mood stabilizing medication combination:

AM

• Intuniv (ADHD) 2 mg
• Lithium (mood stabilizer) 300 mg
• Tegretal (mood stabilizer) 100 mg
• Prozac (anxiety) 5 mg

PM

• Lithium (mood stabilizer) 300 mg
• Tegretal (mood stabilizer) 100 mg
• Clonodine (for sleep) 0.1 mg

In case you are wondering, yes this is a lot of medication for such a young person. Even her psychiatrist is leery about using such doses of these heavy hitting medicines for Jada. But they are necessary for Jada's ability to function. So we press on doing lab work to check lithium and tegretal levels frequently.

Funny thing, not ha ha but weird.

After Jada's last appointment with Dr. O, we increased her lithium and tegretal dosages because Jada lives in a mostly hypo manic-manic state. Here's that funny not ha ha thing. Since that increase, the lithium level in her system has remained the same. THE SAME. Not increased like it should but remained the same. So we are still not at therapeutic levels (the level where the medication is deemed to most effective). Which means there is room to increase it to attempt to tackle the manic behavior.

Sounds doable right? Well, not so fast. A side effect of the lithium is hypothyroidism. Lab work indicates that Jada now has that on top of everything else. BUT she is showing no signs or symptoms of it. Common signs are fatigue, sluggishness, sensitivity to cold and weight gain. Yeah, well, Jada has none of that. Dr. O was quite surprised when I described Jada's behavior to be quite the opposite. Jada is hyper all day with increased hyperactivity in the evenings. She has to take medication to settle down for sleep otherwise no one would be getting any. She is the opposite of me when it comes to temperature. She hates wearing a coat and is the first one to complain of being hot. She has gained one pound in the past three months. Another reason to see the endocrinologist.

I've never been a fan of the idea of treating the side effects of medication with more medication but I just don't see any other way around it in this case. Without medication, Jada would not be able to function. She would live in a constant state of mania and would easily flip into rages. We've been there. We can't go back.