college, health, organizing, transcription

Thanks, my Facebook Friends!

Since with new wonders of Facebook, my blog now appears in my profile when I update, I just wanted to thank you all for being on my friends list.  Many of you have joined recently and I haven’t been able to personally write you, but I thank you for being in my circle of friends and family.

I do have some prayer requests at this time.

  • Roger continues to heal from his gall bladder surgery, but has hit some difficulty here and there along the way.  He had to have a more complicated surgery than normal due to a cyst he had, and I believe that is why it’s taken longer to heal.  The doctors have also been watching another cyst he had in another area of his pancreas, but it was not prudent to work on that at the same time as the surgery so they were waiting and watching.  He still had it as of last week at his CT scan, so they will be watching it another 6 weeks.  If it is not gone they most likely will have to do another surgery to drain it.  This also may explain why Roger has had a slower recup time and extra nausea and pain.  Lately, however, he has had more good days than bad so we are grateful to God for that.
  • We are in prayer that he can resume work slowly and get back to normal.  Whether he has to have a second surgery will determine how fast that will happen.  We would also like him to get home SOON (he’s at his mom and dad’s house) but with Ryan being rough in his affection for his daddy we were afraid to have him stay at home yet all the time.  Ryan talks to him every day on the phone and gets so excited when he gets to see him sometimes!
  • My paperwork load has been very heavy but I’m trying to get through one project at a time.  It has been harder to keep up on my paid transcription work with the hundreds of pages I’ve recently had to scan and fax and mail and drop off to various agencies lately with different updates the agencies had to do on our kids, etc.  They all came up at once, and multiplied with just trying to keep up on calls in regard to hospital bills and just keeping up the checkbook and filing and all the items one has to do, it has been a little overwhelming!!  I am now trying to get ahead of my transcription a little this week, and am hopeful the largest part of the paperwork elephant is now behind me.  There are still some things left to do though, and I’m trying to keep track of them.
  • Christopher’s placement.  We had a meeting at Christopher’s school Friday about how to help him progress more and learn more and learn to self-regulate with some aggressive behaviors and his not sleeping still, often.  We all agreed that we need to contact the autism school I mentioned in my last post, in Florida, and I will be doing that this weekend.  I pray the Lord’s will will be done in that area, and that we know the best thing to do for Christopher.
Thank you for prayers.  We are all just trying to get through all this the best we can, and still enjoy the spring with the blossoms, and enjoy the family when we can all get together and communicate as much as we can.  Rog and I had our first Facebook chat last night!  That was fun 🙂  And I’m going over there and visiting a few times a week – Friday after my school has become a tradition.
I only have 3 classes left of my first class in 23 years.  I still have 4 papers to write to catch up on my homework, but I will do it.  It’s a good thing I love to write.  Then I have a final paper to do along with a power point that I plan to do on music and religion (it’s a religion class).  Next semester I am taking two online classes, first summer session computer introduction, and second summer session my first remedial algebra class.  So I shall continue to be busy.

 

 

autism

Autism awareness personified —

Watching our children grow up in the world of autism and deafness, it has become harder for me to really be active in the community of autism, as it takes all our energy to just keep our children safe and well in the world.  It is hard to see outside our own lives.  I am grateful, however, that many people in the world, even people who don’t have children or family members with autism, are working so hard to promote awareness and that today instead of being a rare condition it is becoming one of the most discussed and researched conditions.

I am hoping through my life to also work to be an advocate and learned person in the world of autism and deafness, which is the condition that most affects us personally.  That is an area of deficit today – there is little information or services on individuals with autism and deafness.

Here are a few:

 

(2020 – had to delete 3 other dead links.  will try and find more good links.  Now need to also add links about bipolar and pans/pandas (which can look the same)….

I am encouraged that there are way more than when I started these blogs in 2006.  I actually printed the Gallaudet University article (60 pages) and have read through about 30 pages of it.  We also are applying for Chris to go here:  

http://www.nda.com/services/autism.php

 It will be hard to send him all the way to Florida, but it really sounds like they could meet his needs there.

(2020 – we pursued this HARD!  I see the link is dead but left up anyway.  Stopped when we got the I/O waiver in 2011.  Later found out – years later – that there were some big problems with the place, but that does happen, and it doesn’t always mean the whole place is bad, or was always bad, or anything like that.  There are crappy people EVERYWHERE, and GOOD people everywhere.  But it was sad, the things I read about this place later when it was held in such high esteem by his for years…)

Just looked it up — wow it’s CLOSED.  I didn’t realize that  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/national-deaf-academy-hit-abuse-allegations-closing-n497516

 

I am also thrilled that I am back in school and headed for this degree:  

http://www.kent.edu/ehhs/spa/index.cfm

 with 

http://www.kent.edu/ehhs/sped/index.cfm

(2020, of course now those specific degree links are not working – but it is still Kent so I will leave up.I believe it was the pre-speech therapy degree (which I later changed to special ed) and the autism certification.

  

 I also hope to get fluent in ASL either now at Lakeland (where I am currently attending) or at Kent.  I hope in the end I can be of more help to my boys as well as other individuals.

Thank you to everyone in the world working to make a better life for those touched by autism, as well as autism and deafness