Our 15 yr old son has been on Straterra for about a month now. He started at 25 mg & is now up to 80 mg in the morning and 25 mg in the afternoon. He is completely off Paxil now and His Concerta which was at 72 mg daily is at 36 mg. He is still taking 10 mg of Dexdrine with the 36 mg of Concerta in the morning. He is highly tolerant of drugs and truly it seems like Straterra may be the right drug for him. I say that because last nite was report card pick up and for the first time in his academic career we did hear encouraging news. All of his teachers said he is focusing much better. One of his teachers put it this way,
“Now he brings his book to class and even opens it!” He is turning in his assignments which is a tremendous improvement. He used to do his work and then not hand it in. They all noticed that he has improved socially and he is starting to make friends in a socially acceptable manner. They even remarked that he looks better, physically. Now the problem is that he wants to talk in class. He was so starved for friends that we understand that. He, for the most part has been doing his homework. We never expected to hear such positive things last night. But since he has been on meds since 1st grade, we still are cautiously optimistic. We’re still regulating his meds and I believe it will be a while before they are fine tuned.
A lot of the fighting has stopped at home. He is much more reasonable. And we think that when there is arguing it’s about normal teen-age stuff. One last thing- he so did not want to go to the meeting last night and threw a huge temper tantrum. He finally acceded to going ,under threat of losing ALL his privileges. He was really surprised to hear all the positive things. And the teachers he really didn’t want us to see, were positive even though he is doing poorly in their classes. He’s beginning to see that improvement is possible and life can be easier and more fun. And we think it is a result of Straterra.
Re: why is the Dr. mixing Dexadrine and Concerta?
WE took Max off the Concerta and put him on Dexedrine, eventually 25 mg.
But that didn’t seem to be doing the job so it eventually wound up as 10 mg
Dexedrine and 36 mg Concerta. I trust our Doctor implicitly. He’s one of
the few Dr.’s around who is primarily what I would call a pediatric and
adolescent neurological pharmacologist. His practice is primarily with adhd
kids. He’s been doing this for about 15 years, I believe. His own son has
adhd and I believe that’s what led him into this specialty. More
importantly he’s the only Dr. we’ve seen that does blood testing and liver
function testing and some other stuff every three months, along with a
yearly eeg, ekg and some kind of brain scan. When our pediatrician was
dispensing Ritalin I was the one who asked for methylfendate(?)testing for
the amount of Ritalin in his system. We had it done and then there was no
one to interpret the results. I really felt like no one was watching our
son medically.
As I think I said before, we’re in the trying stages, trying to see what
works and what doesn’t. The goal is to get him off stimulants entirely, if
possible. And I do agree, I think the edginess is from the Dexedrine.
where are you
I would love to be able to see a dr. like the one you describe. I feel like our meds have been all trial and error with no testing to provide information. Wht state are you in? How did you find this doc?
where are you
I would love to be able to see a dr. like the one you describe. I feel like our meds have been all trial and error with no testing to provide information. Wht state are you in? How did you find this doc?
Re: where are you
I just kept asking people what Doctor they use. We went thru 2 awful psychiatrists. The only thing I can say now is to trust your gut instincts about your choice of doctors. We went along way too long with one of them. You keep hoping that each new doctor or med is going to be the answer. So when we were told about Straterra all of us were like, “Sure, another miracle drug.
Right” And even though we’ve has some really encouraging results, we’re still ‘cautiously optimistic.’ Just keep asking. The more you talk about it, the more you’ll be surprised to find out that somebody knows someone with a child who is adhd or whatever and they see some Doctor. Ask if they can find out who that doctor is and what he or she does. Just keep asking. We’re in llinois
That doesn’t seem right to me…Unless he wants to give him a jump start in the morning before Concerta kicks in……My kids pediatrician won’t mix Dexadrine and Concerta…together. It is one or the other… Also some of your son’s edginess could be from coming from the Dexadrine. There isn’t so much of that with Concerta…if I were you I would talk to the Dr. about trying to eliminate the dexadrine alltogether..combining 3 meds like that makes me nervous..
However, It is good to hear that your son is doing well on Strattera, hopefuly they can wean him off the Dexadrine and just leave him on one med (Strattera) or just the Concerta and the Strattera
My daughter was just bumped up from 36 mg of Concerta to 54 mg…due to a growth spurt. She has been on Concerta only for about 3 years now and it has been a lifesaver to her…
I found Dexadrine to be helpful with focusing and curbing our son’s distractibility for about 3 years…but the edginess and irritability that occurred when he was coming off it every day was a bear…
We were at the point when we had to either bump up the Dexadrine or try Strattera… We tried Strattera but it didn’t work. Our son is 17 and he decided he didn’t want to take meds and now his old inattentive behaviors are back…
My husband is at his wits end to keep him focused and getting him to do his homework. My husband doesn’t want him on meds but now that our son has been off meds for a month and things are sliding downhill he is starting to realize that perhaps having our son on the medicatiion is a good thing. So we are having a little pow-wow in a few days..this time we are just going to switch to Concerta and not have him on Dexadrine..
It is definitely a challenge to figure out what works with these kids…but it is great to read stories such as yours to see what meds can do to help a kid.