Day 3 - ADHD and Fever

I realize it's actually day five, but I missed the last two days (thank you, my thorn in the flesh) and something in my brain just won't let me skip to match the date. Sooooo.....day three it is!
This morning, my amazingly wonderful hubby had to drive KayLynn & Aaron's dad's house to pick up KayLynn. She had texted me several times through the night and early morning to tell me how awful she felt and how sick she was. Now, if this had been EITHER of my other two kids, I would have sympathized but not worried - they both inherited my allergy problems, so congestion, drainage, and even puking are pretty normal for the three of us. KayLynn, however, manged to avoid that gene. I honestly think I could count on one hand the number of times she's been legitimately sick, and since she's 14, that's pretty impressive. When she was little, my best friend Jenn and I used to joke that our ADHD children were the healthiest kids we knew because the germs just couldn't catch them. Seriously. Everyone else in the house could be miserable with the flu, and KayLynn would still be bouncing off the walls, talking, singing, laughing, playing, and getting in to everything. As she's gotten older, that's been VERY helpful, since she can put all that energy to good use helping to take care of the rest of us.

Oddly enough, though, when KayLynn does get sick, it doesn't affect her the same way it would any of us. If she has a fever, she's amazingly normal. Calm, coherent, focused, and she'll even sleep (a little) without medication. The first time she ever had the flu, I knew that she was sick when she remained lying down on the Dr's office waiting room couch for the full ten minutes we waited, then walked calmly back with me. If you have a child with ADHD, you know how remarkable that is! It was such a strange thing to watch - when the ibuprofen/tylenol I gave her brought the fever down, she was just as energetic as ever, despite her body's obvious cues that she needed rest. As the fever rose, she became calmer, more focused, less whiny, and was able to give her body the rest it needed. At that time, her pediatrician told me that fever itself is not bad for her, as long as it's not too high, so he suggested I just keep her well hydrated and resting, and only give her medication to lower the fever if it rose above 101. DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor, nor am I vouching for this advice for everyone. But it did (and still does) work for us. Now that she is older, we let her help set the tone of when to take Tylenol or ibuprofen, and she generally will choose not to take it unless her 'feeling bad' hits a certain threshold. We have learned that she seems to recover from viruses more quickly than the rest of us, as long as she takes a full day or two to actually rest - and sometimes that means letting her remain unmedicated while she's feverish, then ensuring she is properly medicated (with her Concerta and her Clonidine for sleep) after that, to make it possible for us to monitor her activity and make sure she rests. Once the fever is gone, she becomes her usual bouncy self, so the Concerta is vital to allowing us to be successful at getting her to rest. We can get her started on a good book, and anime show, a computer game, or something similar, and then she is more than willing to drink more fluids, eat like she needs to , and REST her body as her brain remains engaged. Sure, one of us needs to stay with her, even though she's old enough to stay alone. If we didn't keep her focused on caring for herself, she'd forget to take medication when she needs it, forget to drink to stay hydrated, forget to eat, and even get distracted and decide to act out a game or start dancing, without remembering that she's sick, until she passes out or suddenly throws up. According to this story in ADDitude magazine, http://www.additudemag.com/adhdblogs/4/5192.html, I am not alone!! And this isn't the only article I found discussing this issue. It seems that fever may, in fact, impact the ADHD brain in a positive way - allowing the ADHD symptoms to subside or decrease while the fever is present. I'm praying for scientific research on this soon - if we can figure out WHY our kids' brains are different when they have a fever, maybe we can find a way to pinpoint a new treatment. How exciting would that be?!?