January was my last blog? Wow, has it been that long really?
I've been so busy trying to make the most of my time during the days.
This type of day where I'm alone during most of the daytime hours, is something I'm just starting to feel comfortable with & see as my new normal.
This has been a better time for son#2 at Camelot since after Christmas. He's making some progress and other areas the progress didn't go as we planned so we cut some goals down to a more manageable size.
We have little update from the bruising investigation. It *is* over. But the day after the lady turned in her report, she resigned.
Lolly doesn't see that as anything too telling, just that it's such a difficult job. It's one thing to hear about things or know what happens or can happen to children. It's an entirely different matter to see it day in and day out.
I'm hoping that the report has now made it's way to the head of Camelot and that we can discuss that in our therapy session this Friday.
Our passes with son#2 have jumped from 2 hrs/4hrs and then 6 hrs one Saturday at the zoo with all the kiddos. Which other than a memorable trip to the women's restroom, went wonderfully! And now we have him for 23--TWENTY-THREE HOURS--this Friday. We have therapy from 1-2pm. Then once we get his meds & check him out, we will have a two hour drive back home. (4hrs total) Then to have him back the next day, it's another 4 hr trip. 8 hrs of driving in 23 hrs for us. With these gas prices, we may need some prayers and to pick up a money tree at Lowes on the way home!
I've known for a couple of weeks now that son#2 was coming for this visit. I'll be honest, I was SO stressed out thinking about it at first.
He's so used to his schedule at "camp". And he does, no lie, a minimum of 35 fit laps a day. What if I mess up his new meds? What if he needs to be put in a hold while he's here?
What if he slips back into his bad habits the minute he walks in the door?
We've adjusted to the house NOT being Fort Knox in the past six months, we can relax & not worry. To return to that...
Maybe this will explain it better, we have lived at a heightened state of alert with son#2 at all times over the past 6 yrs.
We called it Defcon 4. Anything bigger was pretty deep doo-doo. (No pun intended.)
So maybe you can understand, when son#2 was here one day, and gone the next, how strange it was. What an adaption to go from Defcon 4 to zero. Such a loss, like a death. What do you do with yourself when you don't have to focus so much energy on that one person 24/7?
It's rather like gaining weight as you age. You don't gain an extra 40 lbs in one day or one week. Gradually day by day, you add on to your base number, until one day you realize when you look in the mirror it's gotten to a not-so-great place.
The same goes with Autism. Our "normal" and our children, are all we know. I didn't raise anyone's kids but my own. (Thank the kind Lord!) So my life went gradually to a place where most of the time my house is locked down like Fort Knox. You may think that's a cute exaggeration but not two weeks ago, son#2 was having his nightly phone call with us, when someone had left out a bottle of rubbing alcohol in the office and he drank it.
After hours of worry & prayers from my Merry Band of PW's (Prayer Warriors) and a kind ER doctor/husband of a friend, we knew son#2 was okay even before he got home from the ER at 2am.
Now, I'm over the stress of son#2 coming home....we're literally get a chain/padlock for the fridge. Life will go on. It's 23 hrs---we're going to enjoy it, and be that exhausted happy at the end of it. I plan to drink in every second of it.
All the "what-if's" be damned. We'll go to this high, and then when he's gone back to "camp", we'll go to a low for awhile. Unfortunately, that's life. It ebbs and flows, peaks and dips. Ours is NOT the only one. I know parents who are doing heroic things like dealing with physical issues their children daily.
But he's my baby and this Friday by dinner time, all my chickies will be in the nest. I'll survive, he'll live and we'll enjoy as much as we can out of the entire thing. It won't be easy, but no great thing ever is right? Just think about planning a wedding...
