If there's one thing that you should know about my family, it's that we are in survival mode. For those of you unfamiliar with survival mode, it's essentially when you are so far gone, overwhelmed, stressed out or overburdened, that all you can physically do, is struggle to meet your family's most basic needs. This often means that everything else, including laundry, dishes, housework, bills, yard work and social functions, are put on a back burner. Food, clothing and shelter become the only needs that you can manage to meet.  The truth is that this can even be challenging. So any families like mine, exist in a constant state of survival mode. Survival mode can easily be mistaken for laziness and even bad parenting or irresponsibility.  However, nothing could be…

I thought I would let you know what's going on with Gavin and how our appointment with Dr. Pattie went. I'm going to keep this short and sweet. Lizze and I met with Dr. Pattie tonight.  The E's went to Lizze's parents house and got tubbies.  We weren't sure if we were going to have a talk with Gavin or not.  Essentially, we discussed how much worse Gavin was getting and how we are having an issue getting his meds refilled. We also spoke about the impact all of this was having on the rest of the house. The long and short of it is that we still don't know what we are doing and how we are going to do it.  We did discuss how we are in survival…

Gavin informed me today that he has a hole in his sheet.  He doesn't know how it got there but he says that he did accidentally make it bigger. You can't tell from this picture but this is a very thick, flannel sheet.  The sheet is fine everywhere else. He claims to have no idea what happened to it and I'm not saying that he's being untruthful, I just wonder what happened. Truth be told, we don't have a surplus of sheets to keep replacing the ones that meet their untimely demise. Gavin is a very rough kid.  He goes through his clothes quite frequently.  Usually pants are the worst because he rips the knees open almost immediately. I suppose it just goes with being Gavin. :-) Do any of…

Why can't we move past the friggin vaccine debate? We have bigger issues, like simply getting through the day. The truth is, even if vaccines were linked to #Autism, it would one of many causes. Vaccine injury is something different.  It's rare but very, very real and absolutely tragic.   I trust my children's doctors a whole hell of a lot more than a celebrity, with no medical background.  I understand that the Gluten free diet helped her son but it doesn't help everyone. Encouraging people to do something and providing false hope is reckless and irresponsible.Please take the things that people like Jenny McCarthy say with a grain of salt.  I view her as very dangerous because she speaks nonsense and people believe her. It's one thing to share…

Today is Therapy Tuesday.  The bulk of my kids therapy, takes place today. Tonight we have Dr. Pattie and because of Gavin's state of being, we've made arrangements for the two E's and will take Gavin tonight to see Dr. Pattie alone. We need to figure out some type of plan.  The meds aren't working, we know that. So what can we do, outside of medication to keep him firmly ground in reality? Do we force him to engage with others? Do we allow him to spend his time with his visibly challenged friends? I would imagine that we need to find a place in the middle somewhere. We need to somehow find a balance, but how? Hopefully, we'll find some of those answers tonight.  This site is managed almost…

Gavin's getting so lost right now.  He's been hanging out with Sonic all day today and we've barely seen him.  He did come down to use a calculator to figure out how to divide the deck of cards by four, so he and his visibly challenged friends, have the same amount. Truth is, he's not the only one that's lost. I'm completely lost and have no idea what to do.  I'm scared, overwhelmed, broken and sad.  Stressed out beyond all imagination is something that makes the list as well. It's so hard to focus on anything right now.  We are being pulled under by the enormity of our situation. I need to catch a break and catch it soon. This site is managed almost exclusively via WordPress for Android. Please forgive…

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So I called Dr. Reynolds office yesterday and requested an appointment because Gavin isn't getting better.  I explained that he was spending less and less time in reality and more and more time in fantasy. A few hours later, we get a call from Walgreens, informing us that Gavin could no longer take Clozapine. Apparently, we had a small miscommunication because when I said Gavin was getting worse, Dr. Reynolds office took that as Gavin was having adverse effects and immediately pulled him off the prescription. Gavin's not having an adverse reaction, it's just simply not working at the current dose. However, now we can't get his prescription filled, until the office corrects everything.  Why does this worry me and warrant a post? For starters, I'm frustrated.  Secondly, Clozapine is…