Medications

Jailen is currently on 3 medications. He takes Baclofen which is a muscle relaxer, he takes Phenobarbital for seizures, & he takes Melatonin to help him sleep. My problem is that he doesn't swallow pills/tablets. He's just now starting to eat whole table food. The liquid form of Phenobarbital is so rediculously filled with alcohol that when I tried to give him that, he began throwing up before he even took the whole dose, then he smelled like an alcoholic for about 3 days. No kidding. So, what I used to do was get all of his medications in tablet form, buy some sugar syrup & liquid prescription bottles from the pharmacy, & my sister, who is a senior pharmacy technician at our local Walgreen's, would mix the tablets into liquid for us. This was somewhat of a hassle. It got very aggravating because then I would have to hunt her down & remind her 2, 3, 4 times that we were getting low & needed her to mix us up some more. Sometimes it was the last minute when he was ready for a dose that she'd come mix it. That was too close to call for me because these are some serious medications & he can't miss a dose. Anyway, I found a small independant pharmacy that would mix the medications into liquid at no extra charge as long as we filled the prescriptions there as well. I went for it. I thought how much easier is this!?! Well, it's been three months & last night Jailen took his last dose of Phenobarbital from a prescription that was supposed to last until the 10th of March. This means it was mixed incorrectly & he's been taking a higher dose than what was prescribed. Who is to blame for this? ME. Why? Because I've been unaware of how much liquid total we should have to make the month. Why didn't I think to monitor that?? I feel like such a jacka$$! With Jailen's prescriptions being mixed into liquids for so long, I only know how much liquid he is to take each night. I don't even remember the original prescription dosage in mgs anymore. I find myself to be slacking where it is the most important. I can't believe I've done this. Jailen's ok, thank God, but this could've been bad. At least it's only been about 3 weeks. Wake up call! Time to regroup & start over.

Another EEG. A mom can hope.

Well, Jailen had an EEG this week. He's finished with his 80 sessions of HBOT & we've seen so many improvements that I thought there may be improvements there as well. He takes Phenobarbital every night, & I just hate that he has to take prescription medication. He's only 4!! You know you see how when older people need to start taking prescription medication, it just snowballs. They take one for a while, then they have to take another one for the side effects of the first one, & so on. I don't want that to happen to Jailen. Anytime there's a possibility of reducing medications, I jump on the idea. So anyway, I'm very excited to say that he did NOT require sedation for the test!!! He was a very big boy & enjoyed chit chatting with the nurse while the procedure was taking place. He's getting so big. I'm so proud of my lil buddy. I was watching the computer monitor & the lines were going crazy. The EEG looked the same as it did 2yrs ago. I almost cried. I started to get upset, then I thought to myself. Thank God this one medication controls his seizures as well as it does. I can personally think of 3 children that I know of who are on 2-3 seizure meds, & still have seizures. And Jailen's been making so many awesome improvements lately that right there in the hospital room I decided it doesn't matter how scrambled things look on the inside. He's still his same blossoming self on the outside & he's doing way more now than we ever could've hoped for. So, I didn't let myself get upset. Instead, we continued discussing the girlfriends he has at school (5)! :)