Just say yes to drugs, kids
I continue to be shocked and amazed by this child of mine. Years ago, when Monkey started orthodontia, his sensory issues were such that he gave up food and drink for about a week because it hurt and he is stubborn. So I was ready—as ready as I could be, anyway—for this weekend to be utter hell.
It almost feels like I shouldn’t say it out loud (lest I jinx it), but so far… so good.
It’s kind of a study in the weirdness of his brain, really. We always say he either feels things way more or way less than a neurotypical person, but then, of course, the last few months of hell were (we assume) a result of him not recognizing that Hey!, he was really quite sick, and instead of laying down and drinking juice and whining like a normal kid, he continued insisting he was fine but periodically, you know, punching people.
So it’s not that I didn’t know he might not process his post-surgical pain quite the way we might expect, but still, I’ve been completely astonished. read more…
Post-op report
The surgery was quick and his initial confusion and anger afterward was mercifully short-lived. He’s talking, drinking, and absolutely loving that he can play as much Nintendo as he wants.
(Puppy says he just LOVES Pokemon Ranger, and also that tonsils and adenoids and tubes are stupid. Now get him some more apple juice!)
We’ll go home in a few hours. I already feel better.
Love gets ready
You may have noticed things are a bit… sparse… around here, lately. Ahem. There’s only so many times and so many ways I can write “My child has LOST HIS FOOL MIND and life is WEARING ME DOWN” before I just back away from the computer and curl up in the corner for a while.
There have been good days and bad days. Rather than building up a thicker skin and greater patience, I find that my ability to deal gracefully with Monkey’s rough periods is eroding. This has been dragging on for months, now, and my reaction when he’s busy morphing into Angry Delusional Hulkboy starts with about a nanosecond of “oh poor baby must be feeling really rotten” and quickly shifts to “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WILL YOU PLEASE JUST CHILL OUT.” I mean, I would love to tell you that I am a steady pinnacle of love and gentle support, but the reality is that sometimes it feels like a good day if I don’t resort to pelting him with Advil and barking through clenched teeth that no one likes being sick, but not everyone has to be a complete jerk when they are.
It’s wearing on the whole family. That’s the truth of it. Not only is that not terribly entertaining, it’s downright depressing most of the time. So. read more…
Tonsils and adenoids and tubes, oh my!
Me, upon hearing that we are finally going to DO SOMETHING to rid Monkey of this insidious plague of yuck: Oh, THANK GOD.
Monkey, upon hearing that he will be relieved of a few extra parts: Great, why don’t you just remove ALL of my organs! Apparently you think I’m not USING THEM or anything!
(Yes, Monkey is furious with me. I can live with that.)
(Friday. Life begins again on Friday, I hope.)
Dessert schmessert
So far my lofty “don’t skip dessert” vow isn’t really bringing all of the balance and joy to my 2011 that I’d pictured. I mean, sure, I’m enjoying the chocolate and everything, but for some reason that nightly square of dark chocolate has yet to fix everything stressful in my life. IMAGINE.
[Aside: Thank you for the birthday wishes for my dad. He enjoyed them very much, and they proved to be the perfect complement to his birthday festivities, which apparently began with my stepmom putting a candle in his cappuccino foam that morning. I wouldn’t have believed such a feat was possible, but I have photographic proof. We know how to party in our family, yes we do.]
Anyway. I was thinking on the dessert thing because coming off the week of the Snowpocalypse left us all blinking in the sunlight and sliding around in the driveway, wondering what to do with our newfound freedom. And I immediately headed to the grocery store and proceeded to shop like a woman recently emerging from a bunker, which I guess I kind of was. read more…
National Delurking Day?
Apparently today is National Delurking Day, and I’m supposed to be encouraging folks who read but don’t comment to come out of hiding and say hello. I’m… actually not going to do that, though. Two things, instead:
1) Allow me to do my own bit of delurking: I am not very good about responding to comments, a lot of the time. I feel badly about that, because I know some people are personally affronted when they don’t get a response. It’s not personal, it’s just that there’s limited time in the day and also I suck. BUT. I read every single comment. I treasure most of them. I am so, so grateful for all of you, especially lately, when things have been hard and 99.99% of you have been so very kind. Some days, writing here, and knowing you’re out there reading, is truly a lifeline. Thank you for caring about my family. It means more to me than I can say.
2) If you feel you really want to say something and/or delurk, guess what else today is? It’s my dad’s birthday! Speaking of people who help prop me up… this is the guy who’s waved pompoms for me my entire life. He’s pretty swell, is my point. Also I think many of you appreciate the comments he leaves here. So feel free to show HIM some love today.
No alcohol necessary
We have reached the part of our program—school is closed for the third day in a row, and we are more or less housebound, and the children are crabby and everybody is sick of everybody else—where I am back to my standard coping mechanisms. This means that by the time the kids go to bed at night, I am basically non-verbal and can only handle a bare minimum of human interaction, provided it occurs during the commercial breaks (or fast-forwarding through the recorded commercials) of mindless shows on the television.
In other words: The kids go to bed, I go to the couch. I grunt or mutter in response to whatever Otto says to me, but mostly, the extent of what I can process or react to ends with pointed snickering during CSI: Miami.
I tend to think of this evening couch time as deeply therapeutic. After all, I’m curled up with the dog, I often have a square of good chocolate, I’m decompressing from the day because who can think about anything important while partaking in what passes for entertainment in this country? Sure, I’m probably not very good company, but it beats the evenings when we decide to talk and I just cry all over Otto for an hour or two. read more…
Snowpocalypse, Day 2
Everything is still at a complete standstill, as local authorities puzzle over that odd, frozen substance coating everything. Could it perhaps be resolved with a judicious application of… grits? Alas, it cannot. (The husband and I are enjoying endless jokes about how this storm wouldn’t have even merited a one-hour school delay up in New England, yet here it’s on its way to a week-long shutdown.)
I am weary and overwhelmed and some decisions have been made but the bottom line is that I am perversely grateful for this break from reality for a few days. It’s easier to blame these feelings of isolation on the weather—which has everyone stuck at home—than to acknowledge how many have quietly turned away from us.
How about a break from The Heavy? It turns out that Licorice is not a fan of the white stuff. Otto told her to man up when she kept glaring at him, but after a short movie, he picked her up and carried her back in because it was just too pitiful.
Poor baby keeps falling through the crust. I know just how she feels, but she’s a lot more fun to watch, I suspect.
Making sense of the nonsensical
One of the things I truly struggle with, when it comes to Monkey—still—is that he is pretty much a black belt master in rationalization. He has an answer, a justification, an explanation, for EVERYTHING.
Most of the time his conclusions make no sense whatsoever. They come off as elaborate, implausible lies invented by someone who is the world’s worst liar. I often look at him and wonder HOW someone so smart can think that what he’s saying makes any sense at all. But then I (slowly, and with many internal “DUH!”s) realize that this is what life with Asperger’s is like for him; so many things make no sense to him. What we tell him is “right” sometimes feels ridiculous, so the stuff he invents as explanation seems plausible to him, because what is real-world plausible feels similarly ridiculous. (Did that make your head hurt? It made mine hurt.)
Sometimes the things he says totally delight me, because they’re hilarious. Other times they scare the hell out of me, because the conclusions he draws (particularly before/during/after meltdowns) are dark and dangerous. And other times they give me tiny little priceless insights. read more…
Stormy weather
I meant to come back yesterday and talk a little bit about what the ENT told us; we are reaching the end of the “first line” treatment plan for Monkey’s infection, and while I adore the ENT, I think he was unprepared for Monkey’s reaction when he said, “Well, if this doesn’t work, we go to surgery. Oh, don’t worry, we just drill a little hole in your ear and—” Yeah. Monkey—shockingly!—is not interested in letting the good doctor take a drill to his head! Go figure! He voiced his displeasure with this plan, yes indeed.
Basically, we can’t SEE the infection in the mastoid/sphenoid areas without a head scan, but what we CAN see is that he still has a tremendous amount of fluid in his ears and just looks like crap. So we are “following the protocol” and trying one last antibiotic for two weeks, and then it becomes a surgical matter. My understanding is that they would also get up into the sinuses to see what’s going on there, you know, after they drill a hole in his ear. Though Monkey’s general reaction to even the idea of surgery tells me we may have to drug his milk and toss him in the back of the car, A-Team-style, even to get him to the hospital for it.
I was going to tell you all of this yesterday. But then I got a phone call from school saying that Monkey had been suspended and I needed to come get him. read more…