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Originally Posted by toosaucey
Tourette's affects the serotonin, dopamine, and norepinehrine systems. His rationale was to try and touch the norephinehrine system and a tad of the dopamine system with strattera.
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I thought once school ended and maybe he was more relaxed that his tics would diminish or lessen but of course they didn't.
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Was always the opposite here.
The people in my family tend to tic more at home when in a relaxed environment where they are free to tic without undue attention or scrutiny... unlike at school. I tended to find the school year extremely stressful for that reason. The tics were being suppressed a lot more at school and so would explode the moment the day ended and we got in the car to go home.
What I found helpful for my son especially was that during the school day if his tics became somewhat overwhelming for him, he was allowed to leave the room and go for a walk to the office or take a book to the library or something similar. It enabled him to let out all the built up tics and also helped him concentrate more in the classroom for the lessons that were to come.
Of course, a lot depends on how much your child can suppress their tics. My son had so many tics all over his body, both motor and vocal that it was totally impossible to hold them all in, but as he got older he did begin to suppress more and more in class and that was a bit like a volcano waiting to erupt.
The perfect environment at school would be one where the child didn't need to feel so stressed about their tics. It's an imposed stress adding on to an already stressed little body.
Medications are weird things. Different meds for different heads. Everything can be going along quite nicely then out of the blue everything can change. Some medications don't interact well and some medications tend to hit a wall and lose their effectiveness after some time.
In a condition that is so prone to change such as Tourette's Syndrome, the first thing I always wondered was if something new that happened.. e.g. increased social phobia, or increased generalized anxiety.. was actually a side effect of the medication. My son had extremely good results for about 3 months with a drug called Pimozide/Orap when he was about 10 but it caused the most shocking phobias and anxiety which stopped when that medication was ceased. If I knew then what I know now, I'd never have allowed the doctors to convince me to give my child that medication, but that's hindsight.
Well, I look forward to hearing about the information you gather next week. Please be very careful and cautious.
I meant to ask yesterday but think I forgot... What does your son think about having a procedure like this Botox for his phonic tics?