Shipwrecked.....

I was going to write Episode Two of "The Soap Opera", but for whatever reason I kept getting back to this feeling of being utterly alone, without bearing, a rudderless ship about to get shipwrecked on the coast of whatever... So I temporarily have given up on Episode Two, and decided to go with my current thoughts. I have no idea where I am going to end up (kinda tends to happen when you get shipwrecked), but I do know that this is not going to be one of my "upbeat, I can handle anything and spit in the eye of fate" kinda posts. Au contraire. So if the more soul searching and baring, "I don't know which end is up" posts are not your thing, this is your cue to exit.....


Shipwrecked... that is how I've been feeling this past week. Here I was, happily sailing along and .. BAM... out of nowhere a wicked Nor'Easter hits, and now I'm here, shipwrecked once again.....

The first sign of the stormier weather ahead I got this past Monday. I had gotten up at 1 am to have a block of quiet and alone time to make some decent progress on a work project. At around 5 am, I started feeling really lousy; stomach ache, bone and muscle aches, chills. I first blamed it on having gotten up so early and having worked quite hard without taking the time to get something to eat or drink, then I blamed it on the fact that the house was so damn cold, and finally settled on it all being a combination of the stress and emotion of the prior day (Salamander's soccer team had made it to the town championships and almost won - a story for another day) and my nervousness and anxiety around having to take Salamander in later that morning for his 3 year neuropsychology re-assessment..
By Monday afternoon however I was running a 102.7 F fever and was hacking my lungs out - a combo of my annual bronchitis attack from hell and having pushed myself into a massive detox by implementing MY genomics based treatment protocol a bit too aggressively (I transitioned Salamander from the DAN protocol to Dr. Yasko's genomics based protocol in August of this year, and started Potatey on a similar program at around the same time - that too is a story for another day; actually this would probably be the latter part of Episode 2 and the beginning part of Episode 3 of The Soap). Yes, stuuupeeed. Amazing how I can be so smart with my kids and such a numbskull when it comes to my own health.

So... BAM... blown off course by the winds of shear stupidity by pushing myself way too hard. And as a result I have had maybe 4 or 5 hours of sleep since that Monday (as it's kinda hard to sleep when your lungs keep vacating your body at the most inopportune times). I can function on very little sleep, but I too have my limits (yes, reeaaalllyyy).

Taking Salamander back to Dr. M for his 3-year re-assessment was harder than I thought it would be. It's been 3 years now since we cajooled the public school system in having Salamander assessed for learning disabilities and other stuff. And in February of next year, it'll be exactly 3 years since Salamander's formal diagnosis (through a full neuropsychology assessment by Dr. M). Though the diagnosis did not come as a surprise at that time, I still keep myself from revisiting that particular time of our lives as much as possible. Salamander was in such a bad place, both physically and emotionally (an ATEC score of 101 will give you a clue..).
But by being back in that exact same office, I was thrown back basically by default. We had gotten there a little early and Salamander was anxious. We had talked about what would happen, and he did vaguely recall Dr. M as being the 'talking doctor', but that was pretty much the extent of his recollection. Salamander continues to have a hard time with situations of which he does not have any prior active memories. He really has made enormous progress, especially over the past 2 months, but it was a little disheartening to see behaviors resurfacing that I hadn't seen for a while. He ran back and forth through the waiting area, and when Dr. M came to get us, Salamander refused to make eye contact and did not attend when Dr. M spoke with him. My heart skipped a few beats right there....
Dr. M walked us to his office, Salamander immediately dove into Dr. M's toy car collection. Dr. M and I talked for a bit, I gave him a brief update on how things had gone with school during the 3-year re-eval IEP meeting of the prior week, and then Dr. M tried to engage Salamander. Salamander perseverated (another behavior I hadn't seen for a while) on Dr. M's toy cars and then discovered Dr. M's miniature basketball hoop. Dr. M immediately cued in and told Salamander that he could throw hoops "three times" and that it would then be time to "say goodbye to mom and get to work". Salamander replied, in true form, that he only needed two throws to hit a basket, which he then promptly did. Mom was sent back to the waiting area, and about 15 minutes later Dr. M poked his head in to let me know that Salamander had settled down beautifully and was hard at work. Phew...

I was then left with a huge stack of questionnaires to complete. Some the same as I had completed almost 3 years prior, some different. While I could clearly see the progress made over these past 3 years in questionnaires related to behavior and anger management, and while it is clear that Salamander has acquired the skills required for functional communication, it also became crystal clear that actual consistent use of these skills, especially in emotional and ambiguous situations, still is an area of great difficulty for him. It is going to take a lot of hard work, not in the least from Salamander himself, to get those functional communication skills firmly established. The will and motivation is certainly there, these new found skills however are very fragile and will need lots of nourishment and encouragement to come to full fruition. And the effects of potentially not solidly acquiring these functional communication skills are just so pervasive and will affect him in so many aspects of life... I remember the very angry and so very sad little boy he was at the age of almost 6, I cannot bear to think of that same amount of anger, frustration and despair balled up inside a teenager, which, unless we can help him become more secure in his ability to communicate his thoughts, wishes and desires under a variety of circumstances, is really not that far out of the realm of possibilities.

So.. BAM... lost my rudder on the Trip Down Memory Lane, and you all know how good I am at repairs in choppy waters... NOT....

We kinda limped through the rest of the week (Salamander is holding his own in the neuropsych evaluation - he is working hard and steadily through the battery of tests Dr. M has planned for him), and then crashed and burned this weekend. I had run out a couple of weeks ago of a particular supplement that I had been using with the boys, and realized earlier this week that both boys really needed this supplement to keep the bloated bellies in check, so I reordered and restarted just before the weekend. Which resulted in another round of die-off of bad gut bugs for Potatey and another layer of detox for Salamander.
So of course Potatey was edgy and cranky this weekend, and Salamander's overall mood, and ability to regulate his responses to what he perceives as purposeful attempts by his family members to annoy and frustrate him, took a sharp nose dive. A lot of behaviors I haven't seen in at least 2 months resurfaced... Intellectually I know that this is all part of detox. And if the trend set over the past 2 months is any predictor, I know he'll get out of this particular bout much better than he went into it. I still absolutely hate for Salamander to have to go through this - having triggered a big bout of detox in myself I now know first hand that detox SUCKS... BIG TIME. I supported both boys as much as I possibly could, nutritionally and emotionally, but unfortunately we'll have to just ride it out.
What makes detox extra hard is that I cannot seem to get through DH's skull that the boys are not acting out because they want to, but because they feel absolutely crappy (it's not that DH is that pleasant to be around when he's not feeling well..). DH seems to expect, especially for Salamander, that because Salamander is able to regulate himself so much better now when he is feeling really, really good, he should then therefore be able to regulate himself too when he's feeling crappy. So of course every time Salamander acts out, DH gets even more curt and snippy with him. Which then of course triggers an emotional meltdown... ..
What Salamander needs when he's going through detox is lots of emotional support and lots of encouragement, not stern lectures.... DH just doesn't get that detox is really, really hard - trying to talk to DH about it and finding a sounding board in trying to decide whether to stick out the current bout of detox or to pull back a little is an effort in futility...

Which leaves me shipwrecked... once again.. on the jagged coast lines of the Island of Hope.

And the only thing that is pushing me tonight to crawl up those shores once again, finding what scrap wood I can to build a raft and to set sail again heading for the Land of Recovery, is that Salamander needs for me to never, ever give up in my quest to heal him.

I also know that I am not the only traveler that gets beached frequently. There are many with me on this journey, and more join us every day. To those fellow travelers that I have come to call my friends, I really need you tonight.....