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Clonidine

(4ml prozac at 4pm and 1/4 pill of clonidine at 7:30pm)

Today has been an emotional day. Mike and I are trying to figure out if the clonidine is right for Ewen or not. Mike thinks that it isn't because Ewen tried to come home from school today because he was so tired and feeling bad. Then he refused to go to soccer because he said he was too tired to handle the conditioning part of practice. We were very worried and upset and Mike and I talked about taking Ewen off all his medication. Maybe he would be better if we did that?

But tonight while Mike was taking our youngest to gymnastics, I talked to Ewen on the trampoline and he said that the clonidine doesn't make him feel sad like the propranolol and the guanfacine did. He said it just makes him tired, not sad. I told him that he has to tell me if it starts to make him feel sad. It must not be that great though since he wanted to come home from school. Apparently he sat in the office for half an hour then went back to class.

Mike and I observe different things. Mike said that Ewen isn't connecting properly with his friends anymore except when it is over video games, and that he has been feeling bad since he started taking the clonidine. He said that he has been a jerk to him and doesn't want to do anything uncomfortable like when he was anxious all the time. I see that the tics have gone down and that Ewen is finally able to relax a bit and sit without his body going nuts.  I see that the medicine makes him tired because it has brought down his blood pressure and of course he doesn't want to put himself through soccer conditioning right now with competitive running.

Ewen told me on the trampoline that he likes how the clonidine makes him feel and that he wanted to keep taking it. So I guess we will keep giving it to him. He gets the tiniest amounts anyway.  I'm tired of worrying about it. If it makes him feel better then we will give it to him in small and hopefully safe doses. I read that the tiredness resolves itself in a week and a half. The thing I am watching out for is depression. I'm not letting my guard down with that and I made Ewen promise me that he would tell me if the medicine was making him sad.

I still wonder if we should wean him off everything but we are so frightened of him going back to how he was.

On a personal note, I was so worried this morning while he was at school, that I found I could't work or clean or focus on anything productive at all. It was awful. I decided to call my doctor and she called in a prescription for Effexor. So now I will be taking new meds too. The only reason I want to do it, is so that I can be a good parent through the face of all this stress. I'm tired of being paralyzed by fear and worry when I need to get things done. I also know how much better I feel when taking the Buspar and how much better my oldest daughter is doing on the Buspar so not all meds are bad. So I am inclined to keep Ewen on his medications because they are making him feel better. I just hope it is the right thing to do.

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