Can You Imagine?

How many times in your life have you had a cut,scratch,or scrape? A sore throat,ear ache or tooth ache? A hang nail, stubbed toe or pulled muscle? An eye twitch,some type of bruise or a migraine???

Can you imagine waking up every morning with a massive headache and not only be unable to tell someone about it but never have a remedy. Meaning EVERY DAY FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE you would have to live with this condition. Thats the way I imagine in my head that Autism feels like-- the static that goes off in the brain has got to be so overwhelming how could any individual get any peace for their entire life?

Add to that the inability to express pain from every day life and how many of you would be able to tolerate it? I think I would land in the "Loony bin":or worse--I wont say---
Each and everyone of us as human beings have the maladies I mapped out in the beginning of this piece and we run to the medicine cabinet or the doctor to get help and hopefully relief.

BUT my kid has NEVER once expressed pain or discomfort 23 years. I cannot imagine what goes thru his head-- Does he expect me to sense that he is experiencing these pains? All I can conjure in my head is that he just assumes that I know he is not feeling well and I will fix it--- THIS KILLS ME!I cant tell you how many times I have said to him "You dont have a "moving message" board on your forehead to tell me what you are thinking" and if he needs some kind of assistance he has to use his words!

I know that is easy for a typical person to say because of course it is easy for us to do== BUT again how incredibly hard must this be for our kids??? I just CANNOT Imagine! 

The Loss

The Loss of our friend and Dakotas coach /mentor has impacted us in so many ways. I have found myself struggling to write as many things have happened yet I am having a hard time sorting thru what is directly connected to Brad passing and just a round of different behaviors--

My biggest obstacle was telling Dakota about Brad==WOW that was a hard one and it took e almost 2 weeks. I managed to shield him for a while but came to the conclusion that this is a fact of life that just has to be experienced--I contemplated telling Dak that Brad had just gotten a job in a far way town but after a day or so I realized that this would have been even more difficult as Dakota has legitimate abandonment issues and if Dakota thought that Brad just up and moved on him that would be worse. So when the time was right -- not to late in the day so Dakota would not dwell on it at night and after he had eaten at least one meal for the day I sat down and did the best I could. It tore me up. I realize now that even tho I liked Brad and had genuine feelings of friendship with him it was more about how it would effect Dakota-- immediately as well as long term. This was going to turn Dakotas world upside down.

Oh we will survive and I will press onward for Dakotas independence but it was just about the trust and ease with Brad. I knew Dakota was safe and protected when he was with Brad. We have started a few things to try to re-establish some activities but it will be a rebuilding period. Honestly NO ONE  will ever replace Brad. I have started to plan and plot out alternatives and pray that we wont have to go thru this again. I think the lesson is "No matter how well you think you have things figured out there will always be unforeseen obstacles"
further more BackUP BackUp BackUP !!!!!!!! you can never have enough Back Up.