Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Language!

Leslie and I took half a day off on Monday to go see Lily's magical autism doctor.  For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a doctor who specializes in autism.  He manages her autism diagnosis/care/therapy, and we have a pediatrician who handles everything else.  Anyway, he's "busy".  I think at one point he indicated in conversation that he has 30,000 patients.  So it's hard to get in.

He talks fast and rattles off about a thousand different studies that he's reading, participating in, evaluating, etc.  Back in December when Leslie and I were dealing with a medical issue of hers, we had to postpone our appointment with him just for sanity's sake.  It got pushed to April.  That was the first available date.

It's a pain in the ass to schedule and a pain in the ass to attend, because we both end up having to take a day, or half day off in order to see him.

So Monday came, and Leslie and I pulled into the parking lot at Lily's school and I let Leslie out to go get Lily.  It was raining softly, and I didn't want to wreck my hair.  It took longer than I thought it should have, and I started clock-watching because I wasn't sure how traffic would be heading back into Pittsburgh.  A minute or two later, they came out hand-in-hand.  Lily looked happy enough.  Leslie helped her up into the mini van and strapped her in.  I turned the music on while Leslie programmed the address into her phone's GPS.


I cranked the steering wheel around and performed an illegal u-turn to head back the way we'd come, off in the general direction that Siri's insistent voice suggested.

Sotto voce, Leslie said to me, "I had a tough time getting her out of there."
I raised an eyebrow, "Why?"
"She didn't want to go."
"Didn't want to go to the doctor?  Or didn't want to leave school?"
"She didn't want to leave school.  She said, 'No, I want to stay at school, dammit!'"
"Huh?  Dammit?"
"Yeah."

There was a pause in the conversation.  Lily was quiet and well-behaved in her seat, staring uncharacteristically out the window.  Echoing nothing.  Scripting nothing.  Tired-seeming.


"I blame you," I finally offered.  Leslie rolled her eyes.  Later I would blame the school for adding "Teach Lily to swear" to her IEP goals in a Facebook post that more than a couple people thought was me seriously believing that the school was teaching her to swear.

We got to the appointment 5 minutes early.  It was perfect timing, honestly.  We parked the car and walked into the building, filling out visitors stickers and smoothing them over our shirts as we distractedly walked to the stairs leading down to the Doctor's office.

Lily and I found some books and sat down while Leslie signed us in.  She joined us.  Lily asked for fruit snacks and Leslie peeled open a plastic bag of them, handing them to her one at a time. 

"Ma'am?" the woman at the reception desk voiced, getting our attention, "Could we speak to you for a moment?"


Leslie handed the bag to me and I finished giving them to Lily.  From the corner of my eye I observed the exchange.  There was a burning sensation in my chest and I felt stress and frustration begin to blossom.

After a few minutes Leslie came back to explain the conversation that I'd guessed.  They didn't have us on the schedule.  They had us a month and a day later, May 29th.  Not April 28th.  



"What?" I asked.  "Dammit!" (this didn't actually happen, but makes the story funnier)

When we eventually got back home Leslie found the note she'd written from the phone call postponing the visit, "Monday, April 28th," it said.  Not April 28th.  MONDAY, April 28th.  May 29th is a Thursday.  They fucked it up.  But what could we do? 

On the way back home Lily fell asleep in the car.  She doesn't do that often, but I'm always amazed at how bendy kids are when they're little, and how their heads can be facing almost 180 degrees from their necks and it's somehow "relaxing" but if I hold my head at a 45 degree angle I'm sore for two weeks.

We got home.  It really wasn't that big a deal.  A wasted day maybe, but it was fine. 

Anyway...possibly time to reinstitute the $1/swear jar that is sitting idle atop the refrigerator.  :)


Random breakfast picture from Sunday when I fed her jelly beans and popsicles.  Because parenting.

12 comments:

  1. I blame youtube instead of the school for my kids' swearing. ;)

    What a pain about the appointment!

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    1. oooh! Or the Wiggles! They're always saying dammit.

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  2. Is this about me? "people on Facebook"

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  3. Thought you were going to say she received wild praise from the doc for expressing her wishes emphatically. ;) (note to self: need to find highly sought after autism dr in KC, for my Zoe. )

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    1. I'll ask my autism doctor for a KC equivalent when we see him on Thursday, May 29th, 2014 at 3:45.

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  4. Blah, sorry about the appointment. How annoying.

    I can have a foul mouth on me. I'm working on it. My daughter tells me I'm not using friendly words if I swear.

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    1. you're not. You're not using friendly words at all.

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  5. My son told me today "I don't want to swear so I say crap instead". Clearly I'm doing awesome in that department.

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  6. I am with Shell - my son watches videos on you tube about Minecraft and the kids are swearing all the time. Constant vigilance!

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