October 2021 archive

Well, that should have ended predictably for him.

Someone on my governor’s Facebook page said something really ableist about how I needed to teach my disabled children to rely on themselves rather than other people, and through the help of my friends finding out where he worked that got reported to the Human Relations (HR) department of his job. We’ve confirmed that it is his job by virtue of their response to us — they’ve also stated that they will take the appropriate action to it, so I can only imagine that they are not pleased that one of their employees foamed at the mouth about how disabled children of all people “needed to learn to rely on themselves”. It was said in an extremely ableist context, although the fact that it was ableist was clear to most people to begin with off the top, so it should be no wonder that it was actually reported to the Human Relations department of his job. I mean, this sort of thing happens on social media now when people can’t keep their mouths shut about things…

Also, it’s Halloween today. Because we are still in the midst of a global pandemic and the majority of the populace seems to have forgotten about that, the kids will be sharing a two-pound bag of candy amongst themselves in the living room rather than going out Trick-or-Treating. I would have given it to them yesterday since that was when our city “had” Trick-or-Treating to avoid having it fall on a Sunday and a school night (but more so on the fact that it fell on a Sunday this year), but Monster was adamant that they wait to open the bag of candy until it was actually Halloween, and for some reason Bub went along with this rather than open the bag of candy himself and turn it into a fight that I would’ve had to break up. That still surprises me.

So Bub has finally started a new medication!

His developmental pediatrician chose to start him on Risperdal, which is another fun medication that is going to take time for me to learn how to spell… but I am. He will take this one during the day when he wakes up, and he will take the other medication before he goes to bed until further notice (or unless something comes up that causes us to have to retool his medication regimen, which I’m hoping is not the case because I want him to be able to take the medications that he is on without problem for awhile).

Settling on the right medication regimen for Bub.

One day I will properly be able to spell clonidine on the first try. Anyway…

Clonidine wound up not working that well for Bub. Sometimes it was a hit, other times it was a miss, and it tended to be more misses than hits as far as consistently helping him achieve restful sleep went. So he was switched over to Mirtazapine (another medication that I am continuing to learn how to spell), which has actually worked really well helping him restfully sleep almost all of the nights that he takes it. The only problem with that is that his meltdowns have worsened over the last few months, and Bub is beginning to hit, kick, and pinch during these, which in turn is wounding the people that he does it to… and he’s even begun to have these meltdowns during therapy sessions with his therapists, which is particularly problematic since I would not mind as much if it were just me that his frustrations were focused on (“bad cop”). I put in a call to his developmental pediatrician asking if he could be put on something during the day to help him better cope with overwhelming moods, and I’ve been corresponding with them over the last few days to fine-tune what I hope is a helpful change to his medication regimen. We may try trazodone out.

Trazodone is not normally given to children, but it can be in some cases when benefits outweigh risks.

Luckily Bub was just seen by his developmental pediatrician though, so we’ve been able to start to sort this out over the phone rather than commute and bring him in for yet another visit… during a global pandemic.

Well, I’m glad I got my money back on that.

About a month and… some change ago, I decided to order the Yuffie Kisaragi cape (what would you call this, anyway? a cape?) from AUScosplay. I knew that it would take about a month to get here, and I didn’t mind that because of how far out in advance I was intentionally placing the order. I wanted something that would cover me, and my arms and upper body, so that we could record video of us playing MMORPGs and video games without people becoming concerned about errant bruises left on me by accident from Bub’s meltdowns, and I figured that if I were wearing something stylish — something that I liked and wanted to wear anyway, were I to own it — it would cover those marks up without question. And it looked really nice.

So I patiently waited a month, hoping along the way that at some point AUScosplay would send me an e-mail with tracking or… well, actually ship the thing. But I got absolutely nothing from them at any point in the process. I sent several civil, polite e-mails inquiring about the status of my order and not a single e-mail was ever responded to. That rose several serious questions as to whether or not I would even get the item.

When the month mark came and gone and still no cape, I filed a complaint with PayPal since I had gone through them, indicating that I had not gotten what I had ordered and that I would like my money back since it had already been a month. They told me that I would have to wait until early November for a decision, but miraculously decided entirely in my favor three days into that, and I was refunded the full cost. I’m thinking that they might have done this to more than one person because of how quickly PayPal ruled in my favor…

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