Tourette Syndrome; To Medicate or Not to Medicate???

We found a psychiatrist who also was a licensed physician's assistant who was new to our pediatrician's office. We thought we could take Thumper in for an evaluation to see what this doctor thought.  Now, we weren't looking to medicate our son, but we thought it would be nice to see if there were any other options out there to help with his tics rather than all this alternative behavior stuff that really didn't do anything except make Thumper obsess about his tics more.  

Thumper had gone through an awful week of ticking uncontrollably and crying every night and complaining about the pain.  With his nose scrunching so often, he was getting a lot of nose bleeds as well.  

Of course, then comes the waxing and waning of Tourette's yet again, and by the time his doctor's appointment came, he was pretty mild with his tics.  

OK, now don't think I'm a crazy mom or anything, but really I wanted Thumper to be ticking a little more crazily.  No, I wish he didn't have to tic at all, but when you are taking a child to the doctor, you don't want them to think you are one of those hypochondriac moms who are making stuff up about their kids.  How could the doctor believe me or see that it was so bad if Thumper wasn't ticking that day?  Or what if he did what he did the last time we went to the pediatrician and tried to hold his tics in?  I had a talk with Thumper and told him that we were going to the new doctor to help him and that he needed to let his tics go so the doctor could see to help him.  I felt kind of bad saying this though.  It was almost like I was telling him he needed to tic.  So contradicting to what we wanted for him!

Anyway, we met with this new doctor who evaluated Thumper.  We filled out all these tests and paperwork while he met with Thumper and then we were allowed in to see what he had to say.  This time it was interesting.  

While before with the doctors and neurologist, they had said it wasn't a big thing and they insisted on going to this behavioral health specialist to work on brain reversal techniques to help control tics.  Before, all we were doing was being put into therapy sessions to help teach other behaviors instead of the tics, or a lot of the time we were just documenting when and why and how long the ticking was occurring.  

But this time the doctor comes right out and starts telling me different kinds of medication that we can give Thumper.  Just like that.  I was really surprised that a doctor would just say, yep, this is how you can fix him with a bunch of drugs.  He is like, well, you have 3 options, 1-you can give him this drug, but it is for major anxiety.......(and I'm thinking, he's not anxious, he's just anxious when he can't stop ticking), or 2-this other drug that is used for high blood pressure and ADHD, but has some effects on lessoning tics, or 3- there are some more herbal medications.  He goes on to explain the drugs, and one is an as-needed drug, but it is pretty much a sedative, so I don't want to give him that to put him to sleep.  The other one he has to "build up to " a full dose, and would have to take it for so long and if he wanted to stop then he would have to be weened off.  

I told the doctor I wasn't looking for some full time drug.  Wasn't there just something that could help him when his tics became uncontrollable that wouldn't knock him out?  When he went through days of little tics, I didn't think he needed to be drugged up.  But no, the doctor said there really weren't any drugs that had been made specifically for Tourette's and that all the medications were for other things just some of them helped with Tourette's.  I did kind of like the idea of the ADHD drug because maybe that would calm Thumper down a bit, but from what I heard, it made the kids really really tired and I didn't want Thumper walking around like a zombie.  I asked more about the herbal solutions.  He said we could give Thumper melatonin at night to help relax him and help him to sleep better.  He suggested that Thumper's tics were worse if he didn't get enough sleep.  Of course, I knew this wasn't true as his tics were sporadic whether or not he had 10 hours of sleep or 6.  

Well, I didn't know what to do.  Yes, I somewhat went into this doctor with the idea of seeing what kind of medicines were out there, but I didn't expect to just get a "Hi, here's a bunch of drugs, try this" approach.  I think I wanted some other options as well.  OK, maybe I didn't know what I wanted.  The therapy bit was just useless to Thumper, yet I didn't want to just drug him up.  What did we want?  What should we do?  I didn't agree to anything and just made a follow up appointment and decided to go home and talk things over.