Me? Worry????

For over two weeks my son has been acting like there is something wrong.  He’s quiet.  He barely talks, doesn’t eat much.  He’s cooperative.  He even dresses himself in the morning.  He ASKS to go to bed by 7 every night. 

I know.  “Sounds like the ideal child!”  But it’s not MY child!  Is he coming down with something?  Is he hurt?  Is he being bullied?  Is he being molested??  Since he’s autistic, he doesn’t communicate well.  “I’m ok!” is the answer to my thousands of questions.  His answer volume gets progressively louder in response to the number of questions I ask.

 I finally got worried enough that I took him in to the pediatrician.  He’s checking him over going through the normal tests and is starting to tell me that he isn’t seeing anything but if I’m seeing lethargic behavior; I should follow up with our regular pediatrician and have some blood work done.  By now he’s looking at my son’s ears and he stops and does a double take.

He has something that looks like either paper or plastic way down deep in his ear.  Two days later, we are at the hospital to have whatever it is surgically removed.  They have us come about an hour ahead and that’s WAY too much time.  Mr. Man is bored silly.  He doesn’t want to watch tv.  He wants to get into stuff.  Then he wants to go.  I am able to keep him entertained for a short while with my cell phone and then resort to playing catch with a blown up rubber glove. 

The procedure itself takes less than fifteen minutes.  The doctor talks to me first.  The item is some crusty (it had apparently been in there a while) piece of what looks like a string off of my daughter’s pom-pom.  We get to take it home as a souvenir.  A couple of minutes later the recover nurse comes in.  She says that they’ll be bringing my son back in a minute and he’s doing great.  Apparently he sat up the second the anesthesia wore off and said “Hi!  Am I done?”

We finished up there and he was ravenous.  Fed him and now… I have my son back.  He bounces off the walls, doesn’t listen, highly distractible, amazingly happy and cute, little boyJ

Mothers – pay attention to your instincts.  If you think there’s something wrong, you’re probably right!