3 Months, 1 Post!
It is both hard to believe, and easy to believe that 3 months have passed since my last post! What a roller coaster ride it has been.
In my last post I talked about Autism, anxiety & hospital visits. Well, all of that didn’t stop with just that one child. They do say that things come in threes, and our kids certainly confirmed that theory for us.
Number 3 child got out of the wheelchair and things were good for her. She managed to get the job that she originally had an interview for the day after she broke her leg. We called them and they were happy to give her the interview once she was up and mobile. She did a quick trial, and the job was hers. Awesome!
Number 1 & 2 headed off on a road trip on the 26th December and all went well.
Then January….what a year that was! Yep January felt like a whole year rolled up into one. It started with number 2 child having a fall at work. I received a call from her, saying she had slipped and hit her head and wasn’t feeling great. Jumped in the car and went over to see her. She looked very pale & spacey. Concussions are nothing new to her, she has had several, and I could tell straight away this was another. As she had had the fall at work, I thought it best I take her to the doctors just to get it documented and for them to check her over.
On the drive over there she started holding her neck, saying that it was sore. It didn’t surprise me that we were sent straight to the hospital with a letter from the GP. On reading the letter the triage nurse straight away called for a neckbrace. They already knew my daughter had ASD, but again given that she was a teenager, they didn’t think to explain anything to her. She totally froze, which I was glad to see the triage nurse then noticed (with a little prompting) and she slowed down and started explaining things to her.
From then on thankfully they were very good with her, the put her in the paediatric ward even though she was actually too old to be in there, but given covid restrictions, they knew I wouldn’t be able to be with her if she was in general.
The diagnosis was whiplash & a concussion. It would be a slow recovery, but could have been so much worse!
With number 2 improving greatly and home from hospital my wife set off on a little adventure, she was looking to go back to work so was taking some time out before that.
On the day she left I got a call from Number 1, he was at work and experiencing some pain in his chest. He is a heart patient with 2 open heart surgeries under his belt, so to begin with I wasn’t panicked, I just talked him through the usual questions and asked him to send me a photo of himself so I could check his colour. I noticed from the photo he was upstairs in his office, and his colour wasn’t great. So I asked him to head downstairs, slowly and I jumped in the car (the office is only a few minutes from home).
On my advice he had called the healthline and was on the phone with them when I arrived, I took over the call and they sent an ambulance. He has had things like this before, so I actually remained surprisingly calm, well maybe not surprisingly, maybe I was just running on autopilot who knows.
The ambulance officers who attended didn’t seem overly worried, but took him off to the hospital. Now, unlike number 2, there was no way they were going to put him in a children’s ward he is after all in his late 20’s. However, that doesn’t change the fact he has ASD and Anxiety.
I had no option to go and see him in emergency due to covid restrictions, so I had no option but to stay home and communicate via phone. Then we heard the unexpected news, he had actually suffered a minor heart attack! He was to be admitted for further investigation. I was hoping they would get him on to a ward before visiting hours finished and that I would be able to see him. So I packed up a few things and went to sit in the carpark…sadly the ward wasn’t ready and he didn’t get there until after visiting hours, so I had to head home. I didn’t get in to see him until 28 hours after I had last seen him at the office.
I know many have been in the same position during covid, I understand it, but it doesn’t make it any easier.
He spent several nights in hospital and it will be a long road to recovery, but again it could have been much worse!
I just find it interesting, that again it is like people put an age and expectation limit on the support required for ASD patients. Unless the needs are ‘obvious’ they are assumed to not be there.
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