Our Week

Well, we've had an interesting week here. On Friday, I started Mandt training, which comprises a part of our safety plan for B to help me deal with her behaviour problems. They focus on preventative and recuperative procedures, but I will also learn proper restraint practices, should restraining her become necessary. It has proved necessary in the past, but it is a scary thing to do if you haven't had training, and I don't want her to get hurt. Or myself. I can't just leave her, she follows me around and is physically aggressive, and she has also left the apartment, which terrifies me. The training will take one full day a week for over a month, and I will need to take refreshers every year.

I like the behaviour consultant who teaches it. I think it would be a hard job, because they need to connect with both kids and adults as clients, all of whom have a wide variety of disabilities, and they can have very offensive personal views. One of his clients now is a teenage Neo-Nazi. I can't even imagine how I would deal with that.

The work with the behaviour consultant will take almost two years, and they work with her school, and all the family and caregivers, focusing on teaching US to deal with B. I like that approach. Quite frankly, I think a lot of this training would be useful for all parents, and it sucks that it is so hard to access.

On Friday, while I had my training, Andrew took B to some appointments I didn't want to reschedule. One of the things we needed done were some blood tests, and so I told him to give her Ativan before the blood tests, as she is needle phobic. Badly, although there has been some improvement lately. Still, holding a screaming kid down for blood tests is not fun. For anyone. However, some of the tests needed to go out with a courier, and so they told him to bring her back later in the day. In the interim, he asked her GP if he could safely give her MORE Ativan later in the day and the GP said yes. Unfortunately, the lab had misinformed him about the later time, so she still didn't have the tests.

And the doctor was wrong, because it was far too much Ativan, and she felt very ill later in the day. I felt bad for her AND Andrew. We'll have to schedule the blood tests properly this time. I had never heard of blood tests that needed immediate couriering.

She hasn't had any noticeable seizures lately. Now that I want them, of course, they go into hiding. The sneaky bastards.