TLDR – Roxi took a Modafinil pill and hardly slept, colored a bunch and flipped her tongue around for 2 days.
Jet lag is a real thing with kids. Personally I don’t sleep much and it has never ruined me like it did our kids. Last week we were in GMT-8 timezone, this week we are in GMT timezone; 8 hour difference. The first few nights were rough. The kids woke up in the middle of the night, they did not want to go to sleep, they were tired; it was horrible. When the kids don’t sleep we don’t sleep. Well I some times sleep, ok most of the times I sleep. Michelle is the one who does not sleep.
Tuesday, while I was picking the girls up from the school she was going through some of the things we unpacked that we’d not gone through yet and found a foil pill pack of 10 Modafinil. Roxi ate one pill.
What is Modafinil
I take Modafinil as a nootropic to think clearer and to feel less tired. It was amazing when I worked swing shift and needed to be awake for an hour drive home. When I take one 200mg pill I’m running at full throttle with a clear well-thinking mind lacking feelings of tiredness for a good 14-16 hours; regardless of how much sleep I had the night before. I weigh about 200 pounds, 217 when I made it back from the states and was all bloated from the flight, and eating all of my favorite things and moving less with a car for two weeks. Plus the stress of no job for a month… Home and six days of eating better later down to 204 this morning, can you say water weight and not healthy?
Should be back in the 190’s next week. Anyhow 200 pounds is worth 14-16 hours for me, Roxi weighs about 30 pounds. 200/30~1/7th my size; does this mean 7 times the time? By the time we noticed she took the pill it was already a few hours later and totally absorbed into her system; Nothing we could do. An adult overdose of modafinil needs about 4500mg in a single dose. 200*7=1400mg. Math says we are way under an overdose for Roxi, but biology and math are not one in the same. Research says to watch her heart rate and watch for tremors. If those happen we head to the doctor. Other wise ride it out.
We visually watched for the tremors and I kept putting my apple watch on her to check her heart rate. She never presented tremors and her heart rate never went above 130BPM. She averaged around 110 on most checks, which is not too far off for normal range of a three-year old.
Ridding it out for two days
Ridding it out ultimately meant Roxi hardly slept for two days. The first night she only slept a few hours. Tuesday Michelle and the kids went to bed early and I stayed up with Roxi. She started coloring around 5 or so at the dinning room table and did not stop untill about 10 when I had her come onto the couch and a movie with me. By then Mila and Khaleesi were both up again thinking it was morning or something ready to go. We all snuggled on the couch to watch a movie. Roxi gave up on the movie after a bit and went back to coloring for another hour.
An hour more of coloring I had Roxi come lay on the couch with me again to try to sleep. She was not having any of that sleep stuff, nope. She started screaming which woke up Michelle who came down to stay up with Roxi for the rest of the night. Michelle and Roxi managed to sleep again between 2 and 3. They made it only a few hours and were up before 7. Awake again Roxi was back to coloring. You could tell she was tired because she was all kinds of cranky, but sleep was not possible for her; poor dear. At this point, we figure she is too tired to sleep.
One of the other side effects for Roxi was her Tongue. She kept sticking her tongue out and flipping it around in her mouth. She finally stopped the tongue thing thursday afternoon. Wednesday night was another rough night sleeping. Roxi was up later than the other kids, screamed a lot, squirmed around the bed, would not sleep untill the AM hours of thursday. Thursday she did sleep in a bit indicating she was able to sleep again. Thursday night she slept great. Today is friday and she is napping on the couch with mom like she would normally do on a week day.
Pills have been sufficiently hidden out of reach Roxi, we hope to never go through this again.
