The Second Medication Prescribed for Tourette

 

When we were finally able to meet with our Neurologist ( we had to wait three weeks between the time we made a call to request an appointment and the time that we were able to see the doctor) he took Kendrick off the Clonidine and put him on Risperidone. This is an antipsychotic medication. It worked so much better than the Clonidine (I was pretty upset with our first doctor who prescribed the Clonidine but our Neurologist told us that was industry practice to use Clonidine first). It was a tough decision to accept and put our son on this medication as well. Risperidone is mainly used to treat the symptoms of schizophrenia in adults and teenagers 13 or older.  Scary, isn’t it?  It is impossible to weigh the benefit of tics versus side effects of medication, at least for me. I have no clue what will be Kendrick’s side effects to this medication, and how do you weigh that against a hundred tics a minute and shouts and tears.

We spent many weeks increasing the dose and after a year we have not been able to reduce it. We tried but every time the tics came back. We have found that giving 7/8^th of the dose at night and 1/8th in the morning helped more than giving the whole dose at night. So, with this medication I think we got rid of 75% of the tics. For us it is an acceptable level. Diet has helped another 10 to 15%.

The only side effect we have seen is tiredness.

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