more/less Lamictal?

We've been wrestling with whether to go up or down with John's Lamictal level. On the one hand, we want to make positively sure that we've given this drug a chance, especially since it took us over a year to get up to this level. On the other hand, it doesn't seem like John has gotten any better as we've gone up on this drug. What are the chances that one last increase would be the magic bullet? Every single time I give him a dose, we ask the question of whether I should give more or less. It seems crazy to just stay the same since he's still having seizures. We finally decided to go up one last time to 200mg/day, but we also decided to wait a few days, since Yoshie was first trying a soy and dairy free diet for awhile. Ironically, we forgot to give him his morning dose last Friday. That's the first time we missed a dose since this whole thing started. Wouldn't you know it, he seemed to get somewhat better. So, we took that as a sign that we should go down, and we took the plunge and took out 1 pill tonight. So, now he is on 150mg/day. We'll go down another pill in 2 weeks assuming things stay the same or get better.

We also had another meeting with the county to discuss John's therapy. John will start back at preschool once a week on Thursdays beginning this week. With that comes 15 minutes of speech therapy. Seems unbelievably insufficient to me, but I've given up trying to understand their reasoning. We'll continue on with his private therapist and take what we can get from the county. We have also gone to a couple of parent training nights, where they teach us how to teach John. Those have gone pretty well. Parent "coaching" is also included in that program, and we have had one of those sessions already. The therapists are good, and I think the classes are helpful.

The other big news around here is that John has started to use the toilet. Well, he won't tell us when he wants to go, but if you sit him on there, he will almost always go. I think that is a great first step and came rather unexpectedly. The little milestones are definately appreciated a lot more with the special needs kids. Last week, I would have easily believed that he could never be potty-trained. Now, I think he could figure it out at any time.