This isn't going to be a nice post.
My original plan was to write a wonderful post towards the end of last week, regaling all the fun that we had on holiday in North Wales - caravan, the Rhyl air show, climbing castle walls. But I didn't get any time last week, and haven't stopped to breathe until today.
Thursday - after the first day of term - our son came home and had a meltdown. Not a tantrum, a full-scale meltdown. Screaming, throwing things, scratching himself, banging furniture, banging doors.
Fine you may think - many autistic children do this, even the most placid ones. However this meltdown has lasted from Thursday afternoon until Wednesday morning, even through the nights, and he is still only calming down, not out of it completely. Six days from hell that we never want to go through again.
Was it school? We doubt it, he loves school, has no problem with transitions, and in fact school reported that he wasn't misbehaving terribly. Nothing had changed at home - no food changes, no clothing changes (he still fitted last summer's uniform), no environmental changes.
By Sunday, with no let-up, no sleep, and worried about the self-harm, we took him to the GP. We were hoping that our son had an infection, some reason for being completely out of character. The GP found nothing, but prescribed penicillin in case of an underlying virus; and asked us to monitor for any improvement. There was none. On Tuesday, we took our son into A&E. Now, we're not hypochondriac parents, we hate medical intervention - but something was distressing our son to this extent. We had a fantastic doctor, he ran all the tests under the sun, but ultimately found nothing. It eased our minds to know that various illnesses had been ruled out, but we - and the doctor - were left puzzled.
On Wednesday, we let our son return to school, warning them of his behaviour. (That's not as unfair as it sounds, he attends an ASD school so they are trained in handling challenging behaviour.) And whilst he was at school, we repaired the chest of drawers and spun it round so it faced the wall. We removed all hard toys from his bedroom, and provided only soft toys. We added a foam pad to the back of the door where he was hitting it. The replacement of the curtain rail will have to wait, a blackout blind will suffice.And we started breathing again.
Today, he is calmer. There are still short bursts of distress, but nothing compared to hitting the door 40 times repeatedly with clenched fists whilst screaming unintelligibly. Short bursts we can cope with.Hopefully we are on the other side of this horrific episode. But without knowing the cause, how do we stop it happening again?
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