The Medical Fray!!

After the interview I saw on the news we began to put the pieces together as to OLA's behavior. We also entered the world of learning to advocate for our child. We knew we needed medical help and a diagnosis. But we weren't sure where to start. We finally ask my husband's doctor. He recommended that we start with the pediatrician. So dutifully we made our appointment and went. Now to the doctor's credit she spent a long time with us that day - nearly an hour and a half. The diagnosis was ADHD - which actually didn't come as a surprise- everything I had read up to this point had stated that many children with and FASD are mis-diagnosed with ADHD.  But, we agreed to try OLA on Ritalin. Life did not get better. In fact as the medication was leaving his system in the afternoons he became even more volatile than before. And on top of it all he was bucking bed time even more. Instead of finally nodding off at nine or nine-thirty he was now nodding off at eleven or eleven-thirty (or later). We lasted out the three week trial. Not willing to give up yet she put him Adderall. It was even worse than the Ritalin. Instead of being more volatile in the late afternoons and evenings. The mood swings would come out of no where and they were crazy - sometimes lasting for hours at a time. 
The Wednesday before Christmas OLA went into meltdown mode almost the minute we got out of school. It started with a change in schedule and a "no" to something he wanted to do. The meltdown mode lasted (on again off again) until nearly nine o'clock that night.
At the finale point it ended with me having to pin OLA down on the living room floor, so he couldn't hit, pinch, bite, kick, or head butt  me. He was in tears and so was I. When at last he was finally calm we sat on the sofa and cried. I hugged him and told him I was so sorry that life was so tough for him sometimes. He looked at me and said " Mommy, Mommy, I don't want to be this way!" To this day it still breaks my heart to think about - because I can't bandage it and make it go away.
Luckily we already had an appointment with our pediatrician the next day. And this time I was going armed with information and "Mama Bear" attitude.
During this medication trial period I had contacted the case worker who had helped us with OLA's adoption and ask him if he would do some digging to see if we couldn't find some sort of documentation that OLA's birth mother had drank during her pregnancy.
It took him about a week and it wasn't a lot - but it was enough. He found a medical document filled out by the doctor in the delivery room. On it was a box to list any concerns or problems with the pregnancy and delivery. There were only two sentences in that box. The second sentence stated, "alcohol and cocaine used during this pregnancy".
We had our documentation! When we took OLA to the pediatrician the next day we not only ask to take him off the medication for Christmas break but also firmly stated that we wished to be referred for testing to clinic that dealt with in-uteri chemical exposure!  By the end of Christmas break we decided not to put him back onto any kind of medication until after the evaluation.  But we hadn't yet made it to where we needed to be.