Back to the drawing board with behavior

We had a fun Friday (insert sarcastic tone here). Hollis was a behavioral nightmare all last week and it came to a big frothy head on Friday. She wouldn't eat. She wouldn't drink. She would hit, scratch and bang her own head. We don't like any of these choices. She also ended up with a low grade fever, so we determined the best course of action was to see if this behavior was related to an illness.

Brought her to the pediatrician, and Hollis beat the living daylights out of me the entire time we waited (a grand total of about 10 minutes). Continued the beatings while I explained to the doctor what was going on. As I was trying to corral the fists of fury, Hollis made her way over to the doc and belted her! Lovely child. The doctor then said she wasn't going to be able to do an examination on her in this state, and sent us to the emergency room where they could sedate her if necessary to get the examination. Oh goody!

Off to the ER we went, fully prepped for an awful time. Daddy joined us shortly after Hollis and I arrived. For entertainment, I ordered up a blood pressure cuff, coincidentally from an old childhood friend who works at the hospital, since I've discovered that Hollis thinks these things are hilarious. The ER doc was fully prepared for a wild child, courtesy of a phoned in warning from the pediatrician, but of course, Hollis decided she was going to be sweetness personified. After her examination determining that Hollis had no fever, no sign of strep throat or ear infection, we came to the conclusion that it was side effects from her seizure meds and the lack of behavior meds that were making her so aggressive, irritable, self-injurious, and generally miserable. A personal consult from her neurologist who came to see what the hullabaloo was all about confirmed our suspicions.

So, the bottom line is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. We went off her original behavior med, Risperdal, which was very effective, but we were searching for something with fewer side effects. What we ended up with was trying a new med, Abilify, which turned her into Godzilla. We all agreed after this failed venture that Risperdal was just dandy, and we'll just stick to what we know.