Thursday May 31, 2007
I have a cold. A really miserable, nose is red, drippy, coughing, sneezing, itchy eyes, stuffed up ears cold. It stinks. I can’t sleep because I start sounding like I am going to hack up a lung when I lay down. I hate this.
I discovered yesterday at the Autism blastball baseball game that I am being screwed a bit more by the school than I realized and got some advice on how to handle it. I have calls in to the Developmental Disability office, the ARC that is running a day camp this summer (supposed to be for 6-21 year olds, but the person is checking to see if there is some availability since he has been in preschool and is used to the school environment…not every week is open, but maybe there is at least something there), and the Autism Coordinator for the school district. The last person, in particular, is pretty powerful, so I hope I am able to get more accomplished. The DD office is so I can find out if the paperwork has been processed to the point that I can get a case manager which will help me navigate the school stuff better and give me an advocate to bring with me to the IEP meetings who knows the laws. Hopefully I can get this accomplished without a lawyer because I don’t want the school to be on the defensive, I just want to get what he needs and get a team to work together for him instead of tag teaming me with paperwork crap.
I am hoping to find something for him this summer. It is pretty clear that he is not handling no school at all very well. It will help when the social skills class starts up, but I am not sure it will be enough. He seems almost depressed.
I also pulled him off of the Zyrtec. (with the doctor’s approval) because we started having some really bizarre behaviors and I suspect he was hallucinating or something like it because he was all of a sudden scared of his room and kept saying “shoes” over and over when I asked what was wrong. He was waking up in the middle of the night totally wigged out and unable to go back to sleep and saying somebody was in his room. He also keeps disappearing and we search the place to find him in the back of the closet, wedged between stuff and not wanting to come out of the closet. It is sort of freaking us out. I am not quite sure what to think, but the Zyrtec isn’t helping with his allergies and the behaviors started about the time we were supposed to see improvement of his allergy symptoms.
So, now we aren’t sure what to do. I am a little gun shy of giving him ANYTHING right now because his body chemistry is obviously a bit different than typical. The side effects were worst than the allergy symptoms.
And, the depressing part…tomorrow is Zach’s last paycheck and we don’t know where the next one is coming from, so it is a little stressful.
edited to add an update:
The Autism Coordinator for the district called me back and seemed a bit appalled at some of the roadblocks I have been running into. She gave me the name and phone number of the Special Ed Coordinator for my school and when he should be available. There isn’t a way to get him into summer school with the district at this point, but it sounds like I may not have to go through all the evaluations that the people were telling me I had to go through since he has recent evals from all of his therapies and the preschool. They might have to do some, but it shouldn’t be nearly as intensive as they were leading me to believe. She also had some suggestions for where I could go to see if they had summer programs available. She was both helpful and nice, so I finally can say I have had at least ONE person from the district who isn’t a big ‘ole jerk.
Zach FINALLY got the people at the school to give him a password to the job website for summer internships and such. They kept trying to tell him he couldn’t have it because he graduated. Ugh. Well, he did graduate with his Bachelors, but he had access to the service post undergrad degree, so it shouldn’t have been such a royal mess. At least he has a larger job bank to look through now because he isn’t getting very far with the placement agencies in town so far, and there haven’t been any callbacks on the direct resumes yet either. Frustrating.
I hope that Zach’s job search gets better. My husband’s company is closing the location here in town, so he is also looking for a job and has had no luck so far. As far as Zane’s allergies, have you ever tried or considered chiropractic treatments? David used to always have a runny nose, cough and ear infections until we started taking him to the chiropractor. Now, he is rarely ever sick.
It does sound like an allergic reaction. I hope it is the Zyrtec that was the cause of it and not the vaccinations. I remember you did start them at the same time as the MMR. Keep us posted on this!
That is what has us worried too Lynn. I desperately hope it is just the Zyrtek.
Keeping my fingers crossed for a job to come down the pike! I hope you are feeling better soon, and that it’s simply a matter of a med reaction with Zane. And more fingers crossed for Zane getting into a summer program
My older daughter had a bad reaction to Zyrtek as well, and I have heard others say the same thing. With Cat, it was mostly an increased overall sensitivity and anxiety. She would say that the kids in school all hated her, and so forth (to be fair, we had heard some of this before she was on the medicine, but it seemed to come back in full force after she went on it). Her teacher told me she was crying a lot more in school, too. Give it a few days to work itself out of his system–we found that it took three days or so after we took her off it before she was her old self.
Good luck with the job stuff–I’m holding you all in the Light right now.