You have asked for positive information on treatments. I had originally written to you when my son was put on Zyprexa. We felt that the results were very good. He was also kept on Risperdal for a while. The first month he was put on 10 mg of Zyprexa and 2 mg of Risperdal. Because of the drowsiness we had decided to take him off of the Risperdal.

The doctor kept telling me to be patient and to work with the dosages and we would be able to accomplish what we wanted. We started by dropping the Risperdal to 1 mg after a month and leaving the Zyprexa at 10 mg. He experienced some problems with confusion so I increased the Risperdal back to 2 mg and increased the Zyprexa to 15 mg. After a few weeks we tried it again--he still had problems so again we went back to the 2 mg of Risperdal and increased the Zyprexa to 20 mg. This is the maximum dosage that the Zyprexa can be effective at. After he was on the Zyprexa 20 mg for a couple of weeks we again tried to reduce the Risperdal to 1 mg and it worked. He is now doing very well with only 1 mg of Risperdal and he takes it a bedtime so by morning the tiredness is gone. He is doing very well. There is no confusion in his thought patterns and he is socializing and functioning very well. We hope to eventually take him completely off the Risperdal. The main thing I've learned here is patience because you need to keep working with the medications to get the right combination for each person.

He has experienced some weight gain and is frustrated with that issue. We are trying to keep low fat foods in the house and lot of fruits and vegetables. He has started exercising again like roller blading. We just keep telling him that each step in a positive direction is a success and to remember that he is going through a recovery period just like he would if he had any other injury. If we had given up on the Zyprexa in the beginning when it didn't work as completely as some patients claimed it did -then we would have lost the progress we've made. Patience and team work paid off. Thanks for your information it helps us realize that there are a lot of us fighting together to find the best answers.