Sleep Disorder

We had a very encouraging visit with Dr Rice, Tucson's only developmental pediatrician, yesterday morning. We thought we were going to have to go see a developmental pediatrician in Phoenix or somewhere out of town as Dr Rice is booked months to a year out. But as a favor to us for being post a post ECMO patient still in contact with the hospital, a UMC doc *to remain anonymous* called in a favor. I am exceedingly grateful to that Doctor. They will never know how much.

We talked for about twenty minutes with Dr Rice and for twenty minutes she played with Tenley. After hearing about Tenley's sleep for the past year she decided any other problems were irrelevant to a diagnosis at this point. She was diagnosed with a sleep disorder, whether its causal or secondary to everything else, we don't know. Grossly irregular sleep and or sleep deprivation can cause all of her other symptoms, so we can't assess her developmental status til she has been well slept for a month.

She prescribed her Trazadone, an antidepressant which is commonly used off label as a sleep aid. She said I can start with as low a dose as a quarter of a 50mg tablet, up to one and a half 50mg tablets. Well, since Tenley is like an elephant and takes a whole lot of tranquilizing...she got three quarters of a tablet tonight. It is supposed to make her too sleepy to fight me in about ten minutes. Quarter of a tablet at 6:55 pm... another quarter at 7:38pm....another quarter at 8:16pm...8:37pm she starts down the hall toward me for more protestation, but stops to rest on the laundry pile and goes to sleep. She would not give up! Even now she keeps half waking up and crying for a minute at a time.

Dr Rice said once she has had a solid sleep schedule down for six months we can start to wean her off of it and see how it goes. I'm crossing my fingers that when that day comes she'll be able to come off of it!

So...that's where we are right now. We will put the "autism" word on the back burner. Which is kind of a relief. I'm an information junkie and I was learning way too much about Autism and becoming discouraged, so I'm happy to pretend its not a possibility right now.

This blog update brought to you, with the time given me, courtesy of....Trazadone :)