Mutterings Of A Mindless Mommy

Hyperlexia: A Literary Journal Celebrating the Autistic Spectrum is looking for your fiction, poetry, and personal essays. Our inaugural issue is planned for October 2008. Send submissions to submissions@hyperlexiajournal.com and please include the full text of your writing in the email if you send a PDF or a Word file. Deadline for submissions is August 31, 2008.

Hyperlexia is interested in honest, thoughtful, well-written poetry and prose about being autistic, and loving someone with autism. Our journal is a celebration of real life with autism, both the good and the bad. We want genuine and truthful writing about autism. You can be serious, sad, or funny. We believe in respecting the diversity of the human mind and discriminatory writing or hatred of any kind will not be published. Submissions should be 1500 words or less.

This evening while going through some files I came across Alexander’s science journal from 1st grade.  I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before.  The pages were tabbed by subject with weather being at the end.  I decided to look at the weather section first and instead of finding a weather entry, I found a general journal entry.  The entry was from 5/15/2008.

Yesterday I had a Dr. apointment. I had it because I was mad during my sleep. Then we went to get a blood test to find out what was wrong. I had to go see Dr. Cook. He has to decide to go to the hospital so they can tape me to see me do it.

This brought a tear to my eye. Alexander usually draws pictures as a series of events. The first picture is obviously the needle getting ready to go in, the second is the blood and the last is the bandage that was placed on his arm.

Alexander has always articulated himself so much better in the written word than the spoken word. He always writes me notes or letters instead of talking to me. Alexander doesn’t remember the episodes where he gets mad while sleeping as they are a type of complex partial seizure which comes with amnesia of the event.

I remember the day of the blood draw rather well. Our pediatrician referred us to have the blood test to rule out thyroid issues. When Alexander heard that, he immediately hid under the bed in the exam room. I explained to Alexander that the blood test is at another facility (he has had it done before). I had to coax him out of the car and across the walkway.

He sat quietly with me and when the nurse called his name, he started to walk with me. About halfway there he said “uh uh” and turned around and bolted out the door and nearly into the road before I got to him. I carried him in and he was just screaming and screaming. I sat down and placed him on my lap and the two phlebotomists started to talk to him in such a calming voice. He was able to calm down and let us open his arm up for the butterfly needle. He got a little upset but as soon as the needle was in - he said “oh” and that was it.