It’s been a long couple of weeks. To be completely honest, it’s been a long couple of months. Don’t get me wrong, life is good. Better than it ever has been, but it’s not without challenges. We’re dealing with some new challenges that I’m having to navigate.
With their permission, I’ll touch briefly on the boys before talking in more detail about an interesting, and challenging development with Gavin.
If you’ve followed along over the years, you know that Elliott battles severe anxiety and has for most of his young life. The last few months have been particularly challenging for him as he’s out of school and beginning the transition into his adult life.
So many of our kids diagnosed with autism and/or ADHD struggle with anxiety as well. I’ve struggled with anxiety for most of my life and it sucks. It’s something that’s very difficult for people who don’t struggle with anxiety to understand. Anxiety can be very debilitating.
The teenage years are hard enough for anyone but add things like autism, ADHD, and anxiety to the mix and it seems unfairly challenging. Thankfully, I think we’re definitely on the right path and we will continue moving forward as we work through this together.
Mr. Emmett dislocated his knee on New Year’s Eve. He took a step on our staircase wrong and bam!!! Thankfully he only fell down one single step but he still managed to dislocate his knee cap, tear some ligaments, and crack the bottom part of his femur. We ended up spending New Year’s Eve in the ER at Akron Children’s Hospital. His knee was significantly swollen but thankfully doesn’t require surgery.
There still considerable swelling, even after two weeks and he’s been doing school from home while he recovered. There’s about six more weeks of physical therapy but he’s doing much better and recovery seems to be moving right along. I’m incredibly thankful that this wasn’t any worse than what it was. He’s very lucky.
Part of the problem for him is that he has Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that results in things like loose joints, in his case. It’s much easier for him to hurt himself. This is a relatively common diagnosis amongst kids with autism.
He’s also dealing with thyroid and parathyroid issues that we haven’t figured out yet. We just got new labs back this week and while some numbers are better, others that were good prior are now problematic. We’re gonna be heading back to endocrinology at Akron Children’s soon to follow up and figure out a path forward. It’s a lot for him to be dealing with but he’s a trooper.
It’s been a long time since we’ve had to deal with so much at one time, at least it feels like it’s been a while. We’ve made so much progress over the last few years with relatively few hiccups but here we are.
These are the moments where it can get a bit overwhelming at times for me, especially as a single parent. I’m so grateful that I have Kelly in my corner because she’s always there for me and the boys. Between her and the rest of my family, I have the support I need to navigate through whatever I have to. I know how lucky the boys and I are to have this kind of support and I don’t ever take it for granted.
As for Gavin, I’m going to devote a separate post to him because it’s a bit complicated and needs its own space. I’m going to work on that later today and get that out in the next day or so. 🙂
