Gavin Archives - Page 16 of 113

Something happened today, and it was heartbreaking

I got the boys off to school and went walking. When I got home, I was sitting in the living room with Lizze and Gavin. After a few minutes, Gavin jumped up out of his chair, picked up an invisible phone, said it was an emergency and ran into the kitchen to take a call. He had a very brief, but loud conversation before coming back into the living room and informing us that Ash (from Pokemon) was in trouble and needed his help. So to recap, he had an emergency call from an invisible, fictional person, on an invisible phone, sending him on a dangerous, imaginary mission. Did you get all that? He was pretty worked up by all this and had a sense of urgency in his voice.…

3 Comments

April 5, 2019

Autism Parenting Insight / Family Pets / Gavin / My thoughts / Ruby

Another Day Another Routine Disruption

The boys got off to school after a rough start to the day. They were at each other's throats before they were even dressed for the day. That said, they made it to school, albeit a bit later than normal but in a good mood. I got my morning walk done and was just settling in to get some writing when Lizze noticed a problem with Ruby. Ruby was fixed about a week ago and has been sedated and living in her kennel, with her cone of shame because she's just too crazy. Unless she's physically in our lap, she's too hyper and she's not allowed to be until next week. It appears that she's popped at least several stiches and there's been some recent bleeding. It also looks like…

0 Comments

April 3, 2019

Gavin / Lizze / Medication Management / My thoughts

Major medication changes and the impact they have on my family

I've got a laundry list of medication related updates for you all tonight. We're going to briefly talk about myself, Lizze and Gavin because we've all had very recent changes to medication. Me It makes sense to begin with me, as I'm pretty straightforward. As I mentioned just prior to my oral surgery a little over a week ago, I've decided that I need more help with my depression than I'm currently getting. This help comes in the form of additional medication. I'm not super excited about starting a new medication but I refuse to allow depression to control my life and influence my ability to be a good husband/father. Just so we're clear, I'm not saying that if you're depressed, you can't be a good parent, spouse or partner…

2 Comments

April 1, 2019

Autism Parenting Struggles / Gavin / My thoughts

Trying to help my adult #Autistic son find independence is challenging

Gavin had a pretty rough afternoon/evening and it culminated into a decent sized meltdown at therapy tonight. The problem is that Gavin either isn't recognizing or is unwilling to admit he's making mistakes. Mistakes are something that Gavin simply doesn't tolerate, especially in himself. When something happens and we try to point it out to him, he very often will either deny it happened or happened the way it did. He can become very, very upset. We had a situation arise at therapy tonight and it led to a decent sized meltdown. It wasn't a big deal but it was a great example for Dr. Pattie to see, so she can help guide us through it. All that happened was Elliott handed Gavin a cup of goldfish crackers and for…

4 Comments

March 27, 2019

Gavin / My thoughts

We had some incredibly violent outbursts

We had some very violent outbursts last night and yesterday. Gavin was making some mistakes and not coping with them well at all. The two main ones were at dinner time and revolved around issues with his food. The first one was in regards to his Ramon Noodles. He made Ramon for dinner, used cold water and realized that when he went to eat it, it was cold. Our water cooler had been out of water over the weekend and when it's empty, we shut it off. We forgot to turn it back on yesterday when we refilled the water jugs and as a result, the water wasn't heating or cooling. He didn't notice that the water coming out was cold, which is weird cause it's pretty obvious due to…

9 Comments

March 19, 2019

Gavin / My thoughts

Gavin had a HORRIBLE night

This will be quick because we've not had a good evening. Gavin has been freaking out all night. He self-injured and hit the wall, quite hard actually. I'm exhausted but I wanted to let you guys know what's going on with his meds. It's been decided that Gavin will stop Clozapine. We're doing this over the next 3 weeks and while we are concerned about what this potentially means, it's clear that it's in his best interest. I'll talk more about the issues we had tonight, later today. For right now, my head is pounding and I'm so fucking stressed out I can't take it. I need to go to bed and try to sleep this off. Stay tuned.

4 Comments

March 18, 2019

Clozapine / Gavin / My thoughts

A very difficult but necessary decision

Lizze and I have come to a very difficult but necessary decision over the weekend. In the morning, Gavin sees his psychiatrist. When we see him, Lizze and I are going to discuss pulling Gavin off of Clozapine. Why in the world would we want to take our Autistic and Schizophrenic 19 year old son off of the only antipsychotic that has ever worked? That's a great question. Put simply, Lizze and I are very concerned about Gavin's ever increasing level of confusion, especially in the first 5 or 6 hours following his morning dose. He's been on Clozapine for a very long time but in recent years, we've had to decrease his dose because his body wasn't handling it as well as it once had. We've run into things…

6 Comments

March 18, 2019

Autism Parenting Heartbreak / Gavin / My thoughts

Writing with tear filled eyes

Gavin's having a very rough day. On a good day, he's not running on all cylinders but anymore, it seems like his engine is barely turning over. He's not problem-solving anything lately. I have a really good example of this and it took place yesterday around lunchtime. While Gavin was making his lunch, he stopped, walked into the living room and asked if he could have a chicken patty for lunch. The answer of course was yes. He came back a minute later to ask how long he should put it in the air fryer for. He wanted it in there for 15 minutes, which is way, way too long. He should know the answer to this because he's done it plenty of times. I asked him why he didn't…

5 Comments

March 11, 2019