It’s been a hard day for me because I spent some time with Gavin and I’ve pretty much confirmed that he’s getting worse. I should back up a bit and explain what I’m referring to.

I had mentioned previously that it was going to be a quiet day. I had some things around the house I wanted to do and there were a few errands I needed to run as well. As per the norm, Gavin went with me to help.

We were on our way to the bank, after filling up the water jugs and he began telling about some things he’s been experiencing.

The first thing he divulged was that he’s been having nightmares again. The unsettling part of that is these nightmares involve the house burning down. The creep factor of hearing this was pretty high because when Gavin was younger, and at his darkest times, he became fascinated with our house burning down.

I’m not saying it’s the same situation but it definitely gave me chills.

He further went on to explain that a struck of lightning hit our house can set it on fire.

There’s good and bad in this statement he made. First of all, he’s not the one setting the house on fire and that’s comforting, at least to an extent. That’s a good thing. The other thing I noticed when he said that was he’s injecting words that don’t make sense. He said a struck of lightning. That’s not a real thing. It’s either a bolt of lightning or lightning struck, but not a struck of lightning.

I pointed out to him that I was unsure of what he meant because of the words he was using. I explained that I don’t know what a struck of lightning is and that I think he meant a bolt of lighting.

He defended his word choice and insisted he was correct in how he said it. I told him that I disagree but that it’s okay. It wasn’t a huge deal but we try to help him work through things like this rather than just correct him or let it go. That’s all I was trying to do and as we pulled up to a stop light, he began freaking out in the passenger seat.

It was bad enough that the people in the cars around us were watching him, wondering what the fuck was going on.

We worked through that and made our way to and from the bank. On the way to the grocery store, Gavin informed me that he’s hearing things again. We know he’s Schizophrenic but these are sorta disembodied voices, and they just call his name.

He did well at the grocery store and was a big help, as usual. On the way home, we were listening to the radio I simply asked him if he wanted me to add the song to his playlist. The song was Carry On by Fun. He sorta snapped at me.

I looked at him and asked if he’d rather have the song on the radio or the potty song added to his playlist. He snapped at me again and told me none. I said that wasn’t really answering my question. I was trying to get him to work through the question and make a choice. Nothing was going to actually be added to his playlist, and he knew that. We’ve had discussions like this a thousand times before and I help him to work through it, so he can actually answer the question.

This time however, he lost it. I’m driving down the road and Gavin’s having a massive meltdown in the passenger seat next to me. He was punching himself in the head and smashing his fists into his legs.

When trying to calm him down didn’t work, I had to raise my voice above the his and tell him to stop it. You can’t typically snap someone out of a meltdown. You normally need to let it run its course but sometimes, if I can startle Gavin just a bit, it’s enough that he just stops. It doesn’t always work but we were driving and I didn’t want to pull over because of the area, so I tried it.

Thankfully it worked and we didn’t have any further behavioral outbursts for the rest of the evening. Gavin struggled with memory, words choices and things of that nature, but he didn’t freak out again.

We haven’t seen these behaviors in several years and I’m worried because we’re beginning to see them again. Dr. Reynolds will be getting a heads up on Monday and we’ll see what we should do, if anything.

For now, please keep Gavin in your thoughts and prayers. I’m not sure where this is going to take us but I don’t think it’s somewhere we want to go. He’s such a good kid and is facing so many challenges. Any positive thoughts would be greatly appreciated.