Bye, bye, Klonopin

Our neuro and the hospital attending have both decided to take Hannah off of Klonopin effective now.   We have been kind of unintentionally weaning her off it this past week with the use of Versed (which is in the same family) and now Ativan, which is another benzodiazipine but has a shorter half-life and doesn’t last as long.

The plan is to keep Hannah on the Ativan to help her minimize the withdrawals and then wean her off the Ativan.   She has grown a tolerance to her current dose of Klonopin to the point it doesn’t really affect her movement disorder anymore but cutting cold turkey could prove dangerous.

Once we wean her off the Ativan, we can see where she is at with her movement disorder and then talk to our movement disorder specialist in Los Angeles about using something like tetrabenazine (which apparently isn’t covered by our insurance…great!).

I’m looking forward to seeing what her movement disorder is like once Klonopin is out of her system and since we have stopped the Keppra ( as of last month ).