Leelo Ramblings and Poignant Sighs

We didn't go the B12 injections route this week. I chickened out after talking to my mom the ex-ER nurse--she thought it would be a really good idea to have our doctor demonstrate giving Leelo an injection before we tried it ourselves. So we added Magnesium Glycinate to his routine instead.

This change in his routine hasn't mattered much, as he's been coughing horribly and continuously even with albuterol, is off most food and drink, and is therefore rejecting most of his supplements anyhow.

Fellow soldier MB mentioned that a stranger had expressed empathetic amazement at all the various substances we're trying to get into our kids (MB's managing an even bigger supplement load than I am). Maybe later this week I'll post an annotated image of Leelo's assorted supplements and meds, just for a hoot.

Been mooning a bit about Leelo's development vs. that of typical kids. Iz and Leelo are one year apart by the academic calendar, even though they're 21 months apart by the Gregorian one. During Leelo's first two years I had all these lovely visions of my little terrors at preschool together, specifically of Leelo tottering off to the introductory sessions that should have taken place this past summer. Obviously, that didn't pan out.

Usually I'm fine with it, as I Just Don't Think About That, and also avoid like-aged kids (easy enough, none of our friends have kids his age). But at Iz's school there's this whole phalanx of Leelo-aged younger siblings who just began attending, and all their parents keep asking me when Leelo's going to start too. I generally mutter something about delayed potty training, but that isn't going to hold water much longer. I guess I'll have to tell them at some point--he is getting bigger and his behavior is getting more bizarre and it's not going to be possible to pass him off as a silly little toddler for that much longer.

But the telling, that's the brutal part. People just don't know how to hear this kind of information. I can tell by the number of people who find this blog however and through whatever links, see the title, and run away as discreetly and quickly as possible. I'll bet Chasmyn experiences much of this, too. Maybe I should rename this site The Adventures of Squid, Her Enormous Rack, and Leelo the Wonder Boy. But I can't--I'm still hoping that someone searching for autism information will find this blog helpful.

Leelo's autism is okay to talk about with the day-to-day friends, they're used to it. It's a comfortable tragedy, no more an issue than Iz's compulsive nose-picking. But having to tell other people our boy's autistic--even if they suspect something's up--truly, I am not looking forward to a lifetime of this. I have enough problems with in-person communications regarding mundanities.

In an ideal reality I would communicate strictly via email (as we did when breaking the news about Leelo's autism to our family and friends). Yet as comfy as that approach would be for this social nerd, it's just not going to happen--I've got kids, they're going to want to go outside and play, and in doing so will meet other kids, and their families, and they will want to know why Leelo keeps gibbering at the sky. Guess I'll just have to buck up, or devise a snappy routine.

This is not to say that I've given up hope for recovery, or at least phenomenal improvement. Leelo just turned three, and there is plenty of documentation about autistic kids who recovered completely even after starting ABA therapy at as late as forty months of age. I just hoped we'd get the sort of fast-track improvement that Catherine Maurice and Karyn Seroussi saw in their kids. I'd hoped his condition would be less apparent by now. What I'd really, really hoped is that I'd never get to the stage where I'd be needing to tell strangers and casual acquaintances that my son is autistic.