Mutterings Of A Mindless Mommy

Wait, don’t leave - you’re in the right place.  This is mindlessmommy.com.  This post isn’t about autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, anxiety, or Adam Jasinski.  This post is about my dad.  *insert awwww sound clip here*

I’ve posted previously that my dad is a member of Superstition Search and Rescue and has started a new business - Superstition Wilderness Adventures.  Yesterday my dad picked my son up from school and was going to take my daughter out for a little drive in the mountains but he received a call that he needed to go on a rescue in the mountains instead.  Evidently an individual felt like he was having a pretty nasty allergy attack and he didn’t think he was able to walk out on his own.  So I headed over to my parent’s house (three miles away) to pick up my son so my dad could get out to the rescue ASAP.  My daughter was a bit saddened but when I said that poppa had to go rescue someone she was OK with it.

So off my dad goes and we continue on with our Wednesday night which included a lot of dancing fun.  As I get back in the car the phone rings and it is my dad to tell me of his adventurous evening.  I love listening to his rescue stories - whether it is helping to find a boy scout troop lost and stranded in a rare winter storm or searching for a hiker lost for days, my dad always has a great story to tell.  Last night was no exception.

They quickly found the hiker with the allergy attack and escorted him back to the parking lot.  At that point they heard a woman screaming and yelling that someone had fallen.  My dad and other members of the Superstition Search and Rescue quickly scrambled up the mountainside to get to this person.  The challenge was that these two people were rock climbing and not hiking so there was no trail to follow.  In addition, we’ve had a lot of rain lately so there is an increased amount of underbrush.  My dad told me that he was the second person on the scene and the young man (turns out he is 20) looks to be in pretty bad shape and that his head was pretty smashed up.

My dad’s business partner, and Commander of the Superstition Search and Rescue, was next on site and together they worked to assess the situation, stabilize the young man, and offer reassurance to his female companion.  EMTs from the area then followed suit, the Department of Public Safety helicopter flew in a stokes basket, and a life flight helicopter was summoned to the scene.  Once the young man was stabilized and placed in the stokes basket, Cooper (my dad’s partner) attached himself to the basket and the pair were long-lined out by the DPS helicopter.  Upon arriving at base camp the gentleman was rushed to a local hospital.  The news later reported that although he had broken his neck, he was able to move his hands and feet - definitely good news.

The rescue was filmed live by a few local news stations.  The video on the news was a lot more comprehensive but here is a brief video by our local CBS affiliate.  Hiker rescued after fall in superstition mountains.  My dad is in the light-colored hat on the left kind of at the base of the mountain.  The gentleman in the bright yellow shirt and white hard hat is Cooper.  The news broadcast showed the actual long-line evacuation.

I showed my daughter the broadcast this morning (I love my DVR) and she said she wanted to go rescue with poppa! 

So all of this motivated me to get my behind back in the gym this morning.  I would love to be able to join my dad on these rescues.  I love the mountains, I love hiking, and I am cool-headed in stressful situations.  Unfortunately I’m nowhere near athletic enough to qualify.  In time dad, in time!

As of three weeks ago, Wednesday nights are dance class night in the Mindless Mommy house.  Both kids attend a combo (ballet, jazz, tumbling) class at 6pm on Wednesdays - separate classes.  My son just loves them and there is another boy in his class unlike last time we tried dance when he was the only boy.  He’s better at dance than he was at swimming and tee-ball.  So for now it is dance and chess for Alexander.

My daughter is a natural.  She picked up the moves so quickly.  It is great because now that she is day trained and has acquired the skill to imitate, dance is perfect for her.  Tonight when all of the girls were doing the tumbling she was a little uncoordinated but had fun.  Then it came time for the somersaults, okay all four year-olds know how to somersault, right?  Nope!  Ava has not figured out how to do it on her own.  Miss Tina, the instructor, is fantastic and scoots on to the mat with Ava and helps her.  After she was done she went and sat criss-cross applesauce with her back to the mirror.

The rest of the class did their somersaults and then Miss Tina said class was over and called all of the little girls (3 and 4 year-olds) over to Miss Tina and put a hand on their head for stickers.  Ava didn’t move, this girl loves stickers but she just sat there.  She saw the girls putting their hands on their head so she followed suit, but she still sat there.  I decided to hang out and see what she would do.  The little girls all went and got their dance bags and filtered out of the room.  Miss Tina had seen me so didn’t do anything.  Ava didn’t budge and didn’t really appear to notice that she was basically alone in the room.   So I poked in and said “Ava, class is over”; she promptly got up and walked over to me while saying “ohhhh”.  I just giggled and asked her to get her dance bag then off we went.

Dental work, Asperger’s syndrome, and anxiety - those three phrases do not go together!  They are, however, my reality.  Well actually, they are my son’s reality.  He was complaining of a toothache on Friday night and yesterday I managed to get him in with a fabulous pediatric dentist who has experience with children on the spectrum.  The dentist’s niece has Asperger’s Syndrome so he “gets it.”  Alexander did great yesterday - he let the tech take x-rays which involved foreign objects in his mouth.  He also did a great job during the cleaning only gagging a couple of times; he probably only swallowed half of the fluoride this time!  It has been a year since his last cleaning (I know, bad mommy) but the sensory integration therapy and Wilbarger brushing protocol helped tremendously.

So the bad news is that he has a between the teeth infected cavity!  The dentist said no more raisins, gummy worms, fruit roll-ups, etc.  I let the dentist know that Alexander doesn’t like raisins and can’t have the other foods as he’s on the Feingold Diet which eliminates artificial flavors and colors of which gummy candy has.  I then went on to explain that Alexander doesn’t like anything chewy as he has low oral-motor tone and chewing is a chore.  I wish he’d eat raisins, it would help build his muscle strength in his jaw!  The dentist asked about juice - nope, not much in the way of juice either (maybe a few days a month).  So here’s my conundrum of a child with an interesting cavity.

So we’ll go back in two weeks and they will sedate him with Versed, then give him laughing gas, and follow-up with local anesthetic.  They did let me now they’ll wrap him in a Velcro blanket.  My son is tactile defensive and claustrophobic.  Dear God help us on March 11!  I explained it all to my son and practiced rolling him up in a blanket.  Thankfully he’s a smart guy so understood everything I said.  I think we’ll be fine before and during the procedure but afterwards is where I’m concerned.

Alexander is to skip his clonidine the night before and the day of the procedure he will not be able to take his Focalin XR nor his Risperdal.  Alexander is combative under stress and I’ve been told that Versed can make even the most docile child combative as they come out of it.  Woohooo, yay me!  Alexander is a scrawny little guy (a whopping 41 pounds now) but when he’s in the throes of an outburst someone always gets hurt.  My mom is going to try to come with me to the appointment so she can help me afterwards.  I’m going to stay positive and think that Alexander wil just be giddy and loopy coming out of it - I don’t want my butt kicked my a six year old!

If you’ve had experience with Versed - please, please share them with me.  I’ll take the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I woke up from a rather sleepless night (one child with an asthma flare-up and the other with a toothache) to see that Angela from Memoirs of a Chaotic Mommy awarded me with the E for Excellent blog award.  I’ve seen these fun awards floating around many of the autism-themed blogs I subscribe to and today I get to join in on the fun!  Angela found my blog after the EOnline article mentioned mindlessmommy.com.  I’ve since subscribed to her blog and traded a few comments.  She’s a cool momma - from her blog “earth-loving, organic food cooking” - my kind of momma. 

Now it is my turn to award a blog with the E for Excellent Award - Feebeeglee is an amazing momma.  Whether it is patience in the midst of a sensory-seeking binge or knitting the cutest lil bum covers for her new wee one, Phoebe has got it together and is a wonderfully positive person. 

I posted earlier today that I’m not in Chess Mom mode; Chess Dad took Alexander to his second chess tournament.  I received a happy call from Alexander after every game who proudly proclaimed that he lost but had fun.  The final round was supposed to start at 2:00 pm our time; the phone rings at 2:03 - surely the game wasn’t over that quickly!  Chess Dad asks “what does a full-point bye mean?”  I explained that Alexander had a bye for the final round and instead of the typical 1/2 point that is awarded in the event of a bye, Alexander was receiving a full point.

Translation:  Trouble.

For anyone familiar with Asperger’s Syndrome, you know that change is not exactly a welcome event.  Routine is the name of the game and this is most certainly the case with Alexander.  He had an expectation of playing four games.  This expectation is not happening.  What did happen, is a meltdown.  Chess Dad quickly called back and said “you have to talk to him, he’s freaking out” to which I hear Alexander yell “I’m not touching the phone!”  I told Chess Dad to put it into numbers; Alexander likes numbers.  I said to explain to Alexander that there is an odd number of players so every week someone gets to sit out.  If there are 99 children, there are only 49 games.  This week he’s special and gets a point for just showing up.  I then followed up with a joke - “If that doesn’t work, just carry him out of there.”  I guess that is only partially a joke as I’ve had to carry both of the kids (on separate occasions) out of places before.

I feel bad for Dave as he doesn’t have the thick skin that I do with regards to rude comments from onlookers.  Hopefully Alexander takes it easy on him and just has a mini-meltdown.

I somehow managed to talk my husband into taking my son to today’s chess tournament.  My husband does not like crowds and new situations.  We’ve played around with several online autism screening tools and he always scores quite high on the “maybe an Aspie” tests.  I even had him fill out The Ritvo Autism Asperger’s Diagnostic Scale that I picked up from Dr. Ari Ritvo myself.  Yup, scored really high on that one too hehe.  In my house, the apples don’t fall too far from the tree - or their dad in this case!

Anyhow, I digress.  Today I am not a Chess Mom - today my husband is a Chess Dad.  Good for him getting involved with the kids’ extracurricular activities.  Last week while the kids had dance class guess who was there by my side - yup, daddy.  He is a wonderfully involved dad and the kids idolize him.  He works long hours as a planner/engineer type for a local cable company; should he make it home before the kids go to sleep the second that garage door opens, the kids scream and come running.  That’s love!

So today I am not a Chess Mom.  Today I am a stay-in-my-pajamas-and-read-books-to-my-daughter mom.  I like this kind of mom, really quite relaxing.

Autism News Direct is reporting that Lowe’s is the first company to pull advertisements from Big Brother in light of Adam Jasinksi’s foot-in-mouth comment calling the autistic children he works with retards.  In the entry Lowe’s Pulls Advertisements From Big Brother After Jasinski Comment, a press release from Autism United announces that Lowe’s has pulled out and that plans are underway to work on other big name advertisers like Taco Bell, Saturn, and Geico. 

It is nice to see some action on the part of the advertisers, it would certainly be nice for CBS to come out with more than a simple statement about this.  A lot of people are comparing Jasinski’s comment to Don Imus’ “nappy-headed hos” comment that ended with his termination.  It will be interesting to see how the rest of this plays out in the media. 

My daughter has made tremendous growth since she was diagnosed the day before her third birthday.  In the past 18 months or so, she has gone from one word echolalia to 4-5 word spontaneous sentences.  She’s gone from no clue about when bodily functions occur to potty-trained during the day with only a few accidents a week.  She can drink from an open cup now and she can even write her first name.  Her expressive communication has gone through a big jump and her receptive has increased a bit as well.  If, however, you spend a bit of time with her you’ll quickly realize that there is more than meets the eye (no she’s not a Transformer hehe).

Her sentence structure is just all screwy.  Verb tense is off, pronouns are hokey, and sometimes the words she puts together just don’t mean anything.  Her understanding of what we say is also just way off.  She was discharged from occupational therapy in January and the therapist wrote that yes she could follow three-step commands with “minimal prompting.”  Over the last week I’ve probably tried 20 times to get her to follow a three-step command and without massive amounts of prompting, she didn’t get a single three-step command done.  The test example was “clap your hands, go to the door, and sit down”.  She’ll clap her hands and sit down or she’ll clap her hands then go to the door then forget what comes next.

My parents even worked with her on it and out of about six requests she completed zero.  No way does my sweet little girl follow three-step commands with minimal prompting.  She’s also likely to test out of speech therapy as well.  This is where I get concerned - she’s a “fall through the cracks” kind of kid; thankfully she’s in the kind of family that won’t allow that to happen.

She’s going to test out of speech therapy but her speech is still going to be completely wrong.  In my family we have bets as to whether she’ll test back in to speech in kindergarten or 1st grade; I’m guessing 1st grade and my mom has her money on kindergarten.  However in some families if parents were told “hey your kid’s speech is age appropriate and she can follow three-step commands” then they might leave it at that.  Fast forward a few years when the child is failing 1st or 2nd grade the parent might not realize that her child is actually delayed.  I think in education circles these children are called “slow-lows”.  My baby girl will NOT fall between the cracks.

I just received my google alert for “mindlessmommy.com” and noticed that my blog entries on Adam Jasinski were referenced in an article published on EOnline.  In an article called Another Big Brother Brouhaha by Josh Grossberg, he says:

The blog mindlessmommy.com has reported that the Website was only registered last December, just before Jasinski’s stint on Big Brother was about to begin.

The same article is also printed on Yahoo TV.

Woohooo, I R FAMOUS.  *laughs*

Thanks to Carol O. for posting this in response to “More on Adam Jasinski and the United Autism Foundation”

Good afternoon,

This email is an Official Apology for any and all irresponsible, misleading and unprofessional comments made by Adam Jasinski on Big Brother 9, a CBS Reality TV Show, about children and adults who have been diagnosed with Autism.

In the name of the United Autism Foundation, I would like to apologize for all disrespectful comments made by Adam Jasinski on Big Brother 9 to the entire Autism Community as well as all children, adults and families who are affected by Autism.

I am aware that Adam Jasinski hurt many people in our country, but please understand that Adam does not represent the United Autism Foundation with his personal point of views or his personal believes.

Please accept my apologies and please keep in mind that the United Autism Foundation is committed to help special needs children in order to improve our society today. UNIAF is committed to support our community, and we need your support to make a difference.

The United Autism foundation is not about Adam Jasinski - UNIAF is trying to create awareness in order to help and support all those who have been diagnosed with autism.

AGAIN, I AM SORRY AND I DEEPLY APOLOGIZE FOR THOSE COMMENTS MADE BY ADAM JASINSKI ON BIG BROTHER 9.

Respectfully,

Olaf Hampel
President
United Autism Foundation

Carol goes on to ask where the apology from Adam and CBS is plus what are our assurances that Jasinski is no longer associated with the United Autism Foundation.  Very good questions Carol.

 One thing that comes to mind is houseguests are completely sheltered from outside goings-on.  They have no access to any press so Adam Jasinski might not have a clue what is going on out here in the “real world”.

I have to say that I am happy about the amazing amount of traffic and buzz that this has generated.  I’m up to over 1000 visitors over the past two days and it is heartwarming to see the overwhelming support.  Thank you all for taking the time to comment here, write to CBS, etc.  Together, we have one loud voice!