Rule out Cause, Then Move Forward

Oh my Boss

Always move forward.

My dear Theodore… oh what a run we have had past few weeks. Minus the strep infection, we have been very up and down and, unfortunately, more down.

That’s hard for anyone to deal with.

It’s especially hard for your non-verbal son to deal with especially when he can’t say, hey my head hurts, or I’m feeling pressure, or, I really don’t want to go to open swim…

etc.

There is a delicate guessing game in our house, true. And sometimes we have to rule out all possibilities before we can move forward.

And after a rough few weeks, and a very hard weekend (on us both, thanks for biting me) we dragged Theo to the pediatrician and today to his least favorite doctor — the dentist — during a thunderstorm no less, to rule out any reason for increased self-injury.

Oh, and the biting. The GD biting! Which we have seen an increase in.

We did our homework. We ruled out infections of the ear and of his sinus cavities. We’ve been off antibiotics long enough so that wasn’t a problem either. The dentist ruled out teeth problems (in fact, they look great which is good news).

And now we will increase his Respiradone in hopes that we can bring the self-injury back under control. So that we can get Theo back to being his happy self.

In the phone call to his physician I made sure to lay out all the groundwork we had done. And when they called to say we should go ahead and increase his meds, I started to tear up. I got what we asked for, and I cried. (Man, I need to toughen up.)

All that work. I was seriously just hoping for a cause that could be fixed.

But this will be fixed in the next few weeks, and adjusted as needed as we go forward… it may involve more ups and downs,  but we’re looking for more ups. And that is what it is all about…

Progress is progress no matter how slow and how many steps you take to get there.

Until next time…