Half breaths and heart beats

We wake up in the darkness of an unreasonably cold Winter morning. I've gotten a couple of hours of fitful sleep at best. A quick shower, some dark coffee and we're ready. Button is woken up, dressed in loose, warm clothing and reassured that he is going to be done and home in a few hours.

He's getting surgery today. It is an outpatient procedure to help correct his toe walking, but because he is small and likely to wiggle- he has to go under general anesthesia. We've prepped him intensively with visuals, a social story and a trip to the surgery center. We tried our best to not overload him with too much information - toeing a fine line between prepping him and scaring the bejesus out of him. He has his brave face on - sleepy but watchful eyes, trusting us to do the right thing by him. He's earning this rad subway train station toy set as a reward for the procedure and that is keeping him reasonably cheerful.
The surgery center and staff are very nice. They are patient with us and even though they do this everyday, they handle us with kid gloves and assuage our fears and concerns. Button obviously refuses his oral sedative (stuff tastes like Satan's butt), so we talk to him and hold him down for a shot. He's obviously in pain, but he's so brave. His eyes well up, but the tears don't fall because he's already drifting off to dreamland.
Even though he's asleep, we whisper our love and kisses to him. We promise to be there when he wakes up and his eyes flutter under his eyelids. God, I hope he heard us.

Now we wait.

Comments

Hate the struggles, don't hate Autism.

Its 7 pm. Your child is yelling his head off because he does not want to hop in his bath. Tears are running down his face leaving clear trails in all the grime. Bribes have been offered. Voices raised in despair. Visual schedules and timers have failed to move him. He does not want to have a bath and that is it. You're exhausted and stunned by the intensity of his tantrum. Unfortunately you cannot budge and you cannot give in because you're scared that it will set a precedent : Mom's a pushover. But you also know that this tired little boy is soon approaching meltdown junction, where all bets are off and nobody wins. You take deep breaths and tell yourself its not about you right now! How do you help him navigate this ? He loves bath time. He loves water. He'd practically stay at the pool if you'd let him. So why is it suddenly so hard for him? Why does this bright boy who can do math in his head and talk at length about how to build an airplane st...

20 perfect kernels of popcorn.

Button has always been a picky eater. No.... scratch that. How about super-sensitive-and-guaranteed-to-refuse-any-new-foods. That's a much better description. It's not just an autism thing. Part of it is probably the sensory defensiveness that comes under the autism umbrella and part of is it anxiety about new tastes and textures. I mean - this kid hasn't eaten candy in his entire life!! Could care less about ice cream or pizza! I know, I know - he sounds like an ideal 6 year old who only eats healthy stuff, but man, this is way worse than that. He accepts 6 foods and that's the 6 food choices he's been sticking to for the past 4 years. Its a constant cycle of dosa-pasta-rice-pretzels-chips-fries. So no....not healthy by any means. And his dislike of non preferred foods is so strong, that he will actually gag at us eating a meal. Its that bad! Eating at restaurants means taking his meal along with us and he's that one kid at the party that's eating his ...

Phoenix

S he was a hard one to read. Oh you'll know right away if she was mad or getting ready to deliver a snippy comment (always obvious from the way she scrunched up her face). But on the whole, as an entire person....well, it was impossible to just pigeonhole her and say " Oh she's such a sensitive soul/ she's a raging flake/ she just is such a good listener. She wasn't any of those, but a poor amalgamation of all those traits. Just when you thought she was going to head a certain way, she'd turn around and do the complete opposite. The weird thing was, you wouldn't even be surprised, because this inconsistency was exactly consistent with what you'd come to expect of her . She had a temper. No doubt about that. It was explosive and (obviously) unpredictable. The same things didn't trigger her always - she had this armor of sarcasm and apathy to deflect repeated insults. But when something did push her over the edge, it was not pr...

Witty Bean

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