The Po Show

Evidently All that Worrying Paid Off

Thanks for asking Leila! :) Tessa's trip went perfectly. They learned all about the fish and other fauna that inhabit the river, about all the efforts that go into keeping the river and shore clean, and they caught some lovely specimens to take back to school. Then they walked along the "beach" (it's hard for me to think of the water's edge of a river as a beach :)) and gathered treasures. Tessa was thrilled with her huge catch of shells, rocks, and "sea glass." She was particularly entranced by the smooth glass, talking about how the green and amber pieces were especially rare. I really didn't have the heart to tell her they were fragments of old beer bottles.

And YES!, the rain didn't start till they had just gotten on the bus. Absolutely perfect timing, and I'm sure it was completely due to my influence.

Where my worrying has not made a dent is with Matthew's sleeping. He started the Abilify on Monday and has not slept since. Every night from Monday to Wednesday he was up at 2:00 or 2:30 in the morning and could not go back to sleep. Needless to say this did not do good things for his days at school. On Thursday I called his psychiatrist and she said to go ahead and give it to him in the morning. She said he might be hyper, but that effect should wear off in a couple of weeks. Hyper seemed better than angry zombie, so he skipped his Thursday night dose. He'd also increased his Topamax, so he slept all the way till 5:00 that night. Yay, I thought. But during the two nights since then he's gotten up in the middle of the night again. Last night was the worst: he got up at midnight, went back to sleep when I gave him a melatonin, but then was up again at 2:45 and never went back to sleep. And this was with a Benadryl on board too!

He also ended up in the nurse's office on Friday because he kept having to pee. He went to the bathroom 5 times in less than an hour. I called his psychiatrist, who said that urinary frequency isn't a known side effect for any of the drugs he's on. She suggested cutting down on the Topamax, just to see if it helps. My concern was that the activation caused by the Abilify was turning him into a ball of anxiety and it was manifesting into feeling like he had to pee. It happened again this afternoon when he was practicing clarinet (which makes him very anxious). So I'll keep him home tomorrow and take him to the pediatrician, just to rule out a UTI. In any event, he needs to rest another day after so many days of no sleep.

I guess my worrying doesn't solve everything.