Against Medical Advice by James Patterson Read Free Book Online Page B

being attacked. But the last time I tried to help in a situation like this, I was told to stay in my seat, and I don’t want to make Mr. Jansen angry at me.
    The fight ends before the teacher gets to them. Danny has satisfied his urge for revenge and is moving back to his seat. Phillip is also tired of the fight — the last push knocked him out of his chair and sent him sprawling to the floor.
    For the first time since I came into the Resource Room today, there’s no noise. The quiet feels good, but it’s already too late for me. I’m more anxious now than I was when I got here.
    The silence lasts about another twenty seconds. Without warning, Phillip leaps out of his desk and heads full force for Danny, waving his arms and offering up an earsplitting scream.
    Mr. Jansen bolts out of his chair again, but before he gets to them, the fight spills over to where two other kids are sitting. One is the only girl in the room, and she starts crying and puts her head down on her desk.
    I put my head down, too, to try to block out what’s going on. I make a few throat-clearing sounds and do a few shoulder lurches that have been building up. Poor Mr. Jansen doesn’t know what to do or who to talk to first, so he ends up standing there, checking the clock on the wall. He still has ten minutes left with us.
    My mom has to come early to pick me up,
but at least she’s first in the car line.

Med Menu

Chapter 20
    WHAT’S SO TERRIBLY WRONG with me that so many smart people can’t help me figure a way out of it? It’s been
more than six years
since my body started jerking, shaking, quivering, twitching, and exploding on its own. I’m more out of control than ever, and I wonder why anyone thinks another drug is going to help after we’ve tried so many. I’m already eleven years old. My so-called childhood is almost gone.
    Lately I’ve heard Dr. Pressler describe some of the things I do as
compulsions.
That’s why she’s prescribed Celexa, the first antidepressant I’ve ever taken. Everyone thinks it could be a breakthrough for me, since antidepressants work on compulsions, but in my case, the medicine seems to make everything worse. Celexa hypes up the need to jerk my body to one side so violently that I hurt a nerve or something, and it takes days for me to stop jerking and hurting myself.
    After Celexa comes Paxil, another antidepressant. My doctor says it’s worth trying because different medicines can do different things, even if they’re in the same general category.
    For a while Paxil really helps my mood. I become much happier than before, and being happy calms my tics down. But then my mood gets so good that it doesn’t feel real. I actually tell my mother, “I don’t want to grow up. I don’t want things to change.”
How weird is that?
    The good time doesn’t last for very long, anyway. By the end of a week of nirvana, I start getting into trouble at school again, falling off chairs and being disruptive. So my mother begins to take me off Paxil right away.
Against medical advice,
I guess. A short while later, the school calls her and says I had a great day, and she thinks that my getting off Paxil is the reason. But I think,
If things are better when I’m
off
Paxil, then why weren’t they better when I wasn’t
on
it to begin with?
Maybe it’s only that I’m still coming off the drug, which is like being on a lower dose. So we go up and down on Paxil a few more times, but we can’t see that it helps, and I finally get off it altogether.
    When I have good and then bad days on the same medicine, it’s hard to know what’s going on. Is the medicine wearing off? Is it the different doses I’m trying? Dr. Pressler says maybe my mind eventually figures out how to beat each medicine so that it can go back to the way it was.
    Fluvoxamine is one of the worst drugs I try because its side effects are so extreme. At first it calms me down quickly. My dose is increased, and I have another great day at school.