Occupational Monday

Our lady of perpetual lateness shows up in the waiting room at 15 minutes past. Things have not escalated much because we showed up at 5 minutes past ourselves, anticipating her being late. I encouraged him to be the official door opener and we put on our "Superman Vest" (pressure vest) hoping that the energy spent combined with the calmness of pressure will make the wait bearable for the both of us.

I mark it a marginal success that I have only had to pull him out of a conference room twice, he has only set the waiting room phone to page once, and the crumpling to the floor has been minimal. I try to tell myself that the receptionist must see kids behave like this all the time, but as I see a young girl with her Grandparents looking at him like he is nuts, I don't find myself very convincing.

When he sees Her Lateness arrive he is ready to go. He grabs her hand and proceeds down the halls. She comments on his energy level seeming different than last week. When we get to the room that she has stuck us in the last few weeks he can't take it. He throws himself to the floor and cries.

It wasn't just your normal meltdown of "No I don't want to". He seemed terrified and almost to a point of hyperventilation. The bottom lip came out as far as it could and his breathing made him sound like he was saying "whooo" and between whoos I hear "Gym".

As fast as it starts it stops. He sees his speech therapist in the room across from this one, stands to his feet, takes a deep breath and says "OK!"

He then walks into the room with his speech therapist, ignoring that she is already with someone. Luckily she and her client were leaving the room and we got to stay there. There was a tent filled with dried beans and rice, and a drum to keep him happy while we go over whats been effective in regards to heavy work for the last 2 weeks.

OT tells him it will only be a few minutes and then we will go to the gym. He happily keeps himself occupied for the next 45 minutes while we go over the week of throwing toys at my head that prompted me to buy the neoprene covered weights. They are more likely to cause a concussion rather than split my head open I explain.

She starts explaining everything she has explained before, same anecdotes, same procedures, and just everything. She even brings up the brushing protocol even though she plainly has it in her charts that hubby is dead set against it. Connor likes the brushing and joint compressions and after she does one of my arms I can see why. I was immediately relaxed while she brushed my arm. It wasn't what I expected really because the bristles all go flat. Then she did the palm of my hand and when finished the tips of my fingers felt like all the nerves were awake and dancing.

Explanations of surgeons doing this before life threatening surgeries and how much concentration they have and calmness they possess get my critical thinking cap on. I don't know how much pressure they apply to this brush while preparing for surgery. I guess they could be tense and holding the brush down with that amount of pressure. I can't picture it being the pivotal thing for surgeon calmness but I do see it has an effect.

I saw the effect it had on Connor so I call hubby I tell him she brought up the brushing again with a persuasive argument for it. He is ticked off. "The one damn thing I tell them I am against and she keeps pushing!"

It ends my pitch that one statement. I decide we wont talk about it for now. He brings it back up in a much more calm tone "What do you think about it?"

I will post on his argument against tomorrow, because believe me it is another post all in itself. For the time being I just say "If you feel that strongly about then I say no." and under my breath I add "For now."