Thank you

I want to say thank you to all of you for all your prayers and thoughts over this past week. I especially want to say thanks to my sister "cat" and to "Brony". Your thoughts and comments have meant so much to me in this crisis of ours. Thank you! Thank you! I truly believe that God has been with us through all of this. Things have turned out much better than I had hoped for and I feel much calmer.

The psychiatrist was very, very helpful to us. He was kind and considerate and very warm with Ian. Most importantly, he had a wonderful calming presence about him. I was very comfortable and truly felt that this guy really knew what he was doing. He gave us a lot of information and gave us a course of action. He is willing to work closely with Ian's developmental and behavioral pediatrician at Children's and he told us that if we wanted to come back in a few months to see him, he would meet with us again.

While Ian does have a lot of the characteristics of a person with Aspergers, he does not believe that Ian has this. Ian also is not bipolar. Ian is highly anxious and that is the driving force behind everything. The psychiatrist believes that what happened on Monday night and on Wednesday is that Ian was having full blown panic attacks. He also said that Ian's nausea and what Ian calls his "green glob in his throat" are just physical manifestations of his anxiety. He also said that Ian is hypersensitive. Do you remember how it feels when a loud bang goes off nearby? Or a dog close by suddenly barks? That is how Ian is feeling all the time. He said the first thing we need to work on is Ian's anxiety and then his hypersensitivity.

The psychiatrist thinks the medicine Ian was on most recently was working, but it wasn't enough of a dose. The reason being is that it was working before. He doesn't believe it stopped, it's just that Ian was becoming more anxious and it appeared that the medicine was the reason. Ian seemed to be doing fine on the medicine until school started, then he started having trouble. School is a major stressor for him and he does not want to go.

So, we are going back on the medicine and are keeping a close eye on Ian. We are keeping in close contact with both of Ian's pediatricians. If everything seems to be going "well", we will start with another medicine that will help with the hypersensitivity. Ian has been on this one medicine before, and it didn't cause any type of reaction. We are keeping the doses very small since Ian is so sensitive to medicine.

This is by no means over with, but it has gotten a little easier. It helps to have some concrete information and help from an expert in this area. We still have a lot of work to do. We are trying to teach Ian some strategies to help deal with his panic attacks, but it's hard for him to understand. He is only eight after all...