Please note that I’ve begun breaking longer posts up into pages, in order to make them a bit more user friendly.  Please be sure to take note of the page links at the end of this post. They will navigate you to the next page.

I’m not having a good night.  I’ve struggled with technical issues in regards to this blog, all day. I’ve given up for now because I have a really challenging day ahead of me and I need to focus my energies elsewhere.

Gavin’s really begun to struggle.  He’s getting frustrated over ridiculous things. They seem ridiculous to me but clearly they aren’t to him.

Here’s an example of something that happened yesterday that set him off.

Gavin wanted to heat up chicken pattie’s for dinner.  That’s no problem and he can do that on his own.  He put them in the toaster oven all by himself.  When the timer went off, he carefully took them out and made his sandwiches.

He asked to eat in his room and we had no issues with that at all.

A few minutes later, he came downstairs upset because his sandwiches were still cold in the middle.  I suggested that he stick them in the microwave for 30 seconds and see if that helped.

He did that and when they came out, they were still a bit cold in the middle.  This caused him to get really upset and start freaking out, which is uncommon for him anymore.

I tried to calm him down and told him to just stick it back in the microwave for another 30 seconds.

I’m not sure if that ever happened because we found Gavin on the floor of the kitchen crying.  I spoke with him about why he was upset and he didn’t want to have to put his dinner back into the microwave a second time.

We eventually resolved the situation but not before Gavin experiencing significant distress.

I suggested that if he wanted to avoid this in the future that he could check to make sure they were warm enough before making them into sandwiches.

Anyway, we got his chicken pattie’s warmed up and he ate his dinner in his room like he had wanted to.

I have no idea where this all came from.

The only thing I can think of is that his current emotional state is beginning to take its toll on him.  Based on previous psychotic breaks, as the situation worsened, he would begin to crack at the seams. I certainly can’t blame him for that.

I can’t imagine the toll of constantly trying to sort out what’s real and what’s not can have on anyone, let alone a kid like Gavin.

A bit later on in the evening, he called me into his room for a mission debriefing and I tried to understand what he was talking about but it was really difficult.

The video is uploading now but probably won’t be ready by the time this post goes live.  I’ll update this post with the video when it’s ready.  These videos are meant to help you understand what this is like for Gavin, as well as the rest of us.  

https://youtu.be/2zNv2oh9-pI

I try to ask him questions to help me better understand what he’s talking about and he’s super patient with me.  It’s not easy to understand his speech anymore and by asking questions, I can make sure that I’m hearing him correctly.

It’s really sad to hear these things from him because while I know they aren’t real, to Gavin these things actually happen and he lives through the experience.  It’s tough to wrap your brain around but it is what it is.

Having said all of this, I’m so grateful for Gavin’s willingness to share his experiences because this would be so much more difficult for us to help him if he wasn’t so forthcoming.

I’m hoping that we will hear back from his psychiatrist today, with some guidance as to what direction we should be taking with this.  Maybe we need to adjust his medication? Maybe we just have to wait this out? Either way, I just wanted to know we’re doing the right thing for him.

This sucks for a million reasons….. 😔