The Fear of Zombies
I knew this day might come; I just didn’t think it’d come so quickly. Jimmy brings up medication in order to control Payton’s scripting. We both know her scripting gets in the way of her focus. Jimmy is incredibly skeptical though. He’s worried about her becoming a zombie. Yes. He said zombie. He’s worried it might change his little girl into something unrecognizable. We agree to talk with her teaches and therapist at Axis. Everyone is in agreement that her scripting is getting in the way of her education.
Next step is to talk with her Dr at Blank’s Children Hospital. We’ve always liked this Dr for her straight shooting. During the visit, the Dr mentions a drug that is only in her system for 4 hours at a time and works immediately. She also states that she’d only start her on the absolute smallest dose possible. This is music to our ears. I can see how relaxed it made Jimmy. I know he brought the idea up; but he hates the idea of medicating Payton. This will allow us to try a medication without a need for long term exposure to determine effectiveness. It will also wear off after just 4 hours; so, we can compare time on the drug to time off the drug. This puts our fears to bed.
We decide to try out the medication on a Sunday when we’re all home together. While on the medication Payton seems like her sweet self. We didn’t think we were really seeing much of a difference until it wore off; and oh yeah, she’s back to bouncing off the walls and scripting. We’ve decided to give her the medication just before she goes to school in the morning. We’ll have to trust her teachers to give us honest feed back on her focus. This is where we’re glad to have the teachers we have. If we didn’t trust the teachers, this would be much harder. The teachers tell us exactly what we were expecting. They’re noticing a more focus for those first 4 hours; but then once it wears off, she’s noticeably scripting more. Meaning her head is in the clouds once it wears off.
Everyone is telling me the medication is working. I trust everyone; but I still have my need for confirmation beyond peoples’ opinions. At work I rely on data, not opinions. I talk again with Payton’s Dr. Is there an assessment or work that she is doing that we can basically baseline so we can see a difference or not? The doctor gives me a form she uses, and the teachers are in agreement they can fill it out now and fill it out later to see where we are. Payton shows an immediate gain and passes another goal! This little girl is killing it. She makes me so proud.
Payton is now doing so well at school on her new “vitamin”. That’s what we call it. Her vitamin. That we’d like to see her take it after lunch at school. Now I’m a nervous wreck; because it wasn’t easy to get her to take it at home. I’m worried the school nurse won’t have the same touch Jimmy does before school. Jimmy has to take his actual one a day vitamin at the same time to get Payton to follow along. I make sure and let the school nurse know we call it a vitamin.
After the first day of taking her medication at school, I get a report back from her teacher that says when we walked into the nurse’s office, the nurse belts out, “Hi Payton. Are you here for your vitamin?” Payton says “yes”; and proceeds to take the medication like a champ. Later I also hear that Payton was walking around the school informing people that she took her vitamin. I guess she was pretty proud of taking it. She cracks me up.
I was reluctant to share this blog with people. I know people all have their own opinions on medication and children. I was really skeptical at first also. We all hear horror stories about people overmedicating children who probably just need to run off some excess energy; but in the end, it comes down to what is best for your child. I finally decided to share this; because I know there are parents out there struggling to do what they think is best for their child. We can’t allow people’s uninformed opinions to stop us from doing what we know to be best for our children. Everyone’s situation is different; and this may not be what’s best for your child. It just happens to be what was best for ours. It continues to keep Payton’s scripting down to an acceptable level allowing her to focus more on school work, meet goals faster, and be more engaged with her peers. Her personality hasn’t changed. She still our sweet, high energy whirl wind.
