I received really bad news as Lizze and I were leaving her grandmother's funeral, on our way to the cemetery yesterday.
We're going to be leaving is a little bit to drop Gavin off at my parents house. We've made the choice to not bring him, even to the luncheon and we've done that for a couple of reasons. The biggest reason is that he's Schizophrenic and Autistic. Emotionally charged environments are very destabilizing for him. It doesn't matter if the emotion is joy or sadness. It's not something he can process. He won't get sad or depressed by these event but he will likely experience more hallucinations and that's not good. WebMD For people with schizophrenia, stress can trigger symptoms. Gavin's already struggling with new voices and his medication situation is delicate. Basically, we don't want to take any chances that this will push him over the edge. The second…
Lizze and I are knee deep in the first break we've had in about a month. Gavin and the boys are at their grandparents for the night. What typically happens is that these types of visits are are broken up. The boys (Elliott and Emmett) will go and Gavin stays home. Gavin will go by himself the next time, while the boys stay home. The reason for that is because of problems that tend to arise as a result of Gavin and the boys not getting along. I've talked about this before. Gavin will try to parent the boys and/dictate what they do while they're visiting. The boys don't like it and it just creates problems. Frankly, we see this at home all the time and it's definitely not a…
Despite everything that's currently causing me distress, I feel like I'm actually doing pretty good. All things considered, I'm in a decent mood and that's half the battle sometimes. ☺ Gavin is in a good mood this morning as well. Unfortunately, he's also continuing to struggle at the same time. He's very clearly hearing voices that he doesn't recognize because it seems like every 5 minutes, he's popping his head out of his bedroom and asking if we had just called him. I say it's a voice or voices he doesn't recognize because Gavin always hears voices. Aside from being Autistic, he's also Schizophrenic. He lives in this elaborate world where he's a super hero in charge of a group of superheros. They're always going on missions to save the…
There are so many things that can be frustrating and/or overwhelming when it comes to being an Autism/Special Needs Parent. Most of them are things that I've had to learn to either ignore or cope with in some other way. If I didn't, I'd lose my mind. I have days where I can cope fairly well but there are also days that I seriously struggle. On any given day, one of the hardest things for me to cope with is incessant talking. I'm fully aware that many parents have never heard their child talk and I have some experience in that arena with Emmett. My heart goes out to them. I'm not intending to be insensitive to that and I'm incredibly grateful that my kids are verbal. The reality I…
After some serious searching in every conceivable place, we finally were able to locate most of the missing supplies. We found 4 sets of tubing and 2 needle sets underneath the small couch in our dining room. It was the last place we looked because it didn't occur to us that they could have been crammed through a half inch gap between the couch and the floor. I can barely fit my hand under there. I don't know how or why they were under there and at this point, I honestly don't want to know because it will just make things more frustrating for me. We're still missing a needle set and we'll continue looking for that. The only thing I know for sure is that I'm grateful we found…
We're not off to a good start today. I basically woke up to Elliott and Emmett fighting and it went downhill from there. I could have weathered the fighting but then Gavin entered my morning with news that very much pushed me over the edge. Gavin casually approaches me and tells me that he's only got enough tubing for one last IVIG Infusion. I told him that's not possible because as you can see in the image below, there are supplies for 8 complete IVIG Infusions for the month of October. Maybe you can't see that from the image but I confirmed upon delivery, that he was not shorted anything. Gavin should have enough supplies to do 4 more IVIG Infusions this month and he's basically saying that he's missing…
Gavin had a complete emotional breakdown while at therapy last night, it came out of nowhere and it a big one. He was playing basketball with Emmett and while he wasn't doing anything wrong, he also wasn't recognizing that he was playing with someone half his size. I pulled him aside so Dr. Pattie and I could talk to him about it. All we wanted to do was help him understand why Emmett was getting frustrated. That seemed to be the catalyst that broke the flood gates and had him on the floor in the fetal position, borderline hysterical. It appears that Gavin's been carrying a great deal of pain and regret around with him. For whatever reason, he never told us about this and we only learned about it…