Overnight (Shadowing 12), Shadowing Day 13, Overnight (Shadowing 14)
My manager has started making overnights count for shadowing so I can hurry up and be a real staff member already.
This weekend was mostly uneventful.
Thursday night I came in for an overnight. I sat down on the couch next to one of the participants who hadn't gone to bed yet. He looked at me and then he
held my hand. It was the sweetest thing in the entire world and I almost wanted to cry because that felt like a huge break through to me. Sometimes I thought these guys didn't even care if I was around or even remembered me, but I was wrong.
Then I went to bed and we didn't have any incidents that night.
I woke up Friday morning, and started waking all of the guys up. Once again, a certain someone refused to get moving and it was very frustrating, because I pretty much had to give him step by step instructions to get dressed. He knows how to do it, he just stinks at waking up in the morning. Then we took the guys to work, and I went back home for a few hours.
A few hours later, I returned to the house and the guys came back from work. We sat around for a while trying to think of something to do with the guys, and then we decided to take them bowling again. In the van, the guy with the bone disorder used his good arm to swing a bowling ball bag at my head. Luckily, he's pretty weak and it didn't hurt that bad, but it still wasn't an experience I'd like to repeat.
At the bowling alley, we had two teams, each consisting of two staff and two participants. We made a bet: whichever team won, their staff didn't have to do showers. Obviously, I was very motivated.
A funny thing about autistic people is that most of them have no sense of competition. Our guys didn't real care if they won or lost. One of them didn't even look to see if his ball knocked over any pins, he would just turn around after he threw the ball.
One of the guys in our team has a peculiar bowling style. He places the ball on the ground and then shoves it, which usually leads to almost all gutter balls. After a little bit of teaching him, however, he was able to learn to release the ball while swinging his arm. He doesn't quite have it down yet, as he would usually throw the ball almost straight up, leading it to crash down with a very long noise, before weakly rolling toward the pins.
In the end, the staff I was paired with defied all expectations and bowled a 160, which is ridiculous because he's never broken 100 before. So, we won and didn't have to do showers. It was the most meaningful win I've ever had in bowling.
After bowling, we went and got some Thai food with the guys for dinner and took it back home. Then the rest of the night was normal. We put the guys to bed and I went to sleep on the couch.
My next day will be my last day of shadowing, and I'll finally be a real staff member. I'm very much looking forward to sleeping in a bed during overnights.
Shadowing Day 10, Overnight, Day 11
Friday, in what may have been the most potentially destructive team up since Japan and Germany in World War II, we decided to have a pizza party in our house and invite another house of autistic men over. Their house included the worst-behaved individual in the entire Organization. Two of members of that household have worn headgear at all times except for while eating, sleeping, and showering for the past year because they consistently bite and attack people. One of them also flips over tables on a regular basis, so he has to eat on the floor.
To say I was nervous about doubling the numbers of problematic autistic men that are bigger than me would be an understatement.
The pizza party didn't have much in the way of earth-shattering descructivity as I had feared, luckily. I met some other staff, including a new guy who was on his first day of work. He asked me how it was dealing with so many guys at once, and I told him that he shouldn't have anything to worry about, becuase he was at least 6'8".
Friday also marked a new high on the Most Ridiculous Thing To Happen To Me At Work meter. One of the guys from the other house, the previously mentioned Worst Behaved Man Ever, ran up to me and stuck his nose in my mouth and said calmly, "I want to smell your gum." I wish I could say I reacted to this calmly, but I jumped back and said "What the hell did he just say?" Later, while outside playing basketball with a few others, he tried again, but this time slightly more politely. He got very close to my face and stated again, "I want to smell your gum." I replied, "No, I'm sorry, I just can't handle that, no." So, to his credit, he upped the politeness and asked, "Excuse me, may I smell your gum please." Althought he was the most well-spoken autistic man I have ever met, I again had to decline his request.
I also saw the pool being used for the first time. I'm not sure if more than one of the guys can swim, becuase the pool is only three or four feet deep, so they can all stand in it. The most interesting thing by far was watching how one of my residents acted in it. He's normally the most sedated of the group; he spends most of his time playing Solitaire, Gameboy, or word finds. He rarely move around or interacts with anyone socially. In the pool, however, he was like a giddy child. He does this thing where he dips his hands into the water, takes them out, and flaps them around. At first I thought he was waving to me. I talked to another staff member about it. She thought he might see something when he does it, I thought he just liked the stimulation he recieved from shaking his hands and flinging droplets of water. But I've never seen him perform any sort of hand stimulation outside of the pool. He also spent alot of time wading around the pool, while opening and closing his hand on the surface of the water, causing a "gloop" sound to be made. I want to spend more time watching him in the pool, because I'm very curious about this.
Another resident was actually swimming in the water instead of just walking around in it. He's the shortest of the group, so swimming in the shallow water was probably easier for him, but I think his parents got him into sports when he was a kid. He competes in the Special Olympics and has a handful of medals for swimming. Another resident has never gone deeper than the first step into the pool. He's the "fraidy-cat" of the bunch, so this isn't unusual for him. I did catch him taking a cautious step onto the second step, but I think by congradulating him too soon, I scared him out of finishing.
I had a scary moment that night. Earlier in the day, we were talking about CPR and First Aid Training (which I have on Monday, finally), and I asked if Bones had every choked, since he does that thing where he holds his breath all the time. Before we started to puree all of his food, he did have an incident, and they said performing CPR on him was scary, since he had to be treated like an infant, since he's so fragile. Anyway, that night I was giving him something to drink, and after it got in his mouth, he started holding his breath. Then he started making a weird sound, and then he started pulling my hand to his chest fiercely. I got very scared and thought he was joking, so I opened the porch door (we were outside) and shouted for help. Right after that, he started breathing and smiled. I think he was just messing with me, again. What a little jerk.
At around 10, we sent the guys to bed. I wasn't sleepy, so I stayed up for a few hours. I don't know when I fell asleep, but I don't think it was for very long, because when I woke up at 5, I wasn't very happy about it. I heard a weird snapping noise coming from upstairs, so I followed the sound into the room of two residents. I found two staff members in there, strapping down our problematic tenser resident. He was jumping on the bed and generally freaking out, so he had to be put into the soft wedge and strapped down. When I entered the room, his chest was already strapped in, he was blindfolded, his arms were shackled, and they were trying to get his legs down long enough to strap in. The weird snapping sound that woke me up was him tensing his thumb and pointer finger together so hard that they made a snapping sound. I tried holding one of his hands to relax him and to get him to stop hurting himself, but that proved to be a mistake. Instead of tensing on himself, he started doing it on me, and that guy has one hell of a grip. I managed to wriggle my hand out, but it wasn't easy.
Suddenly, he busted out of the chest restraints and sat up to headbutt one of the staff members that were trying to get his feet down. I instintively wrapped my arm around his chest and threw myself down, taking him back with me to the mat. I held him down until they could restrap his chest, then I helped with the feet. Then we stood around as he went from trying to break out, to breathing heavily, then going in to a bizarre countdown. I suppose he knows that he's supposed to be still for a certain amount of time. But his countdown went like, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19," before pausing and restarting at the double 14s. Then he laid silently for a few minutes until we could let him out and told him to go back to bed.
At around 5:30, I heard the snapping again. I went upstairs and the other staff already had him strapped in. I wish they would get me up for this. One has a room next door so she can hear it, and the other has a baby monitor so she can hear when he starts acting out. I'm on the couch in the living room, so I don't hear anything until it's too late. We sat through another one of his countdowns before he was silent enough to be let out and go back to bed. His roomate is a good sport. He just lays in bed during the whole thing. I feel bad for him, but at least he doesn't have to wrestle the guy down.
I went back to bed/couch. Too bad it wouldn't last. At around 6:30, I heard Bones coming out of his room and moaning. I sat him down and gave him something to drink, and then he started making a weird high pitched noise. Then he grabbed some more to drink, and seemed fine, so I brought him back to bed.
I got about two more hours of sleep before my Saturday began. One of the staff bathed and dressed Bones because his mom was coming to pick him up for breakfast. I stood around and didn't really do anything except for think to myself that I should have just slept until I was needed. Eventually, Bones was picked up, and we woke up the others and fed them breakfast.
Another staff member and I brought three of the guys with us in the van to run some errands. They all behaved surprisingly well. One guy kept falling asleep though, so we had to keep waking him up. After the errands, we took the guys for ice cream. It's pretty difficult to get menu orders from two guys that don't talk and from one that talks his sort of made up language, but I think we purchased what they wanted. On the van ride back, the guy that kept falling asleep decided to do a 180 and start jumping around and making noise the entire ride back.
When we got back home, he was still misbehaving, and bordering tantruming. I told him to relax, because I didn't want to have to put him in time out. He didn't relax, so I had to put him on time out for my first time.
Time out consists of putting a chair in the corner, and telling him to sit there while he gets all of the tantruming out of his system. So, he'll sit there and wriggle his hands and shout noise for as short as a few minutes to as long as an hour. The conditions for letting him out is he has to stop tantruming and make no noise or handplay for a whole minute. This would become frustrating, because he clearly stopped his tantruming, but I don't know if he's rarely ever silent. So even though I knew I should let him go, I couldn't, because it'd be against his program. He also kept getting up by himself when he thought I wasn't looking, so I'd have to bring the chair back and sit him down again, which made him make more noise. The whole thing felt very counterproductive. He started giving his sign for silent, but he did it while making noise, and I kept trying to tell him that saying you'll be silent doesn't work if you make a ton of noise while doing it. Eventually he behaved long enough for me to let him out.
Saturday also marked the first time I've successfully gotten Bones to the bathroom before he had an accident. He was sitting on the couch and give me his signal for "bathroom" and I rushed him to it. I got his pants on, but then he started to make the "I am pooping" noise while standing up. I shouted "No no no no please sit down!" but he wasn't having it. But if I can do anything, it's improvise. I angled him and was able to aim him so everything fell where it was supposed to. I eventually got him to sit down. When he stood up, I pleaded with him to sit down another minute, just so I could be sure. After another minute, I declared the mission a success.
If any of that above paragraph bothered you, then it just goes to show how used to everything I am when it comes to this job by now.
That night, there was a big awards ceremony/dinner for the entire organization, so every house would be there. So, we got all of the guys dressed up. I must say, some of the guys dress up better than I do. We got a little lost finding the venue, but the guys behaved in the van, so it wasn't a big deal.
After the dinner and awards portion, the dance floor was opened up. While the DJ had to be the corniest DJ in existance (The Electric Slide? Still?), the guests enjoyed it. Three of my guys went to go dance. Can you imagine how difficult it is to keep track of three autistic man in a dense dance floor of a hundred other autistic aduts?
I'll give you a hint. It's very difficult.
After the dancing ended, there was a special video montage showing. Unfortunately, our table was in the back corner of the room, so we couldn't see anything. Then there was a raffle. The prizes were pretty great. Unfortunately, no one offered to sell me tickets. One of the guys was acting up, so we finally had a good excuse to get out of there and take them home (It was about 10:15, and I was supposed to be done at 10. After working 31 hours, you may find yourself getting a little antsy when you start going into overtime).
Shadowing Day 8, Overnight, Day 9
This weekend I worked my longest shift yet, going from 3 PM Friday to 10 PM Saturday. That's 31 hours.
When I arrived Friday, nobody seemed to know I was scheduled. But, it ended up working out, because with me as extra help, we decided we would be able to take the residents bowling. So, we loaded up everyone in the van and headed out.
I sat next to one of the residents on the way there. This resident, for some reason, is always asking for something to drink. And if he drinks too much, he has bladder accidents, so we usually have to say no. Well, the entire van ride there, every 60 to 120 seconds, he was tapping me on the shoulder, asking me for something to drink. Throughout the course of the drive that felt like three days long, I probably told him "no" in various ways about fourteen hundred times. I'd tell him, "No, you have to wait." "No, sorry, we don't have anything to drink in the van." "No, we haven't gotten anything to drink in the van in the last 30 seconds." "No. No. No. This conversation is over." "No. Now stop asking, I'm about to get furious." "No. Now I'm officially furious." "Tell you what? If you can beat me in arm wrestling, I'll tell them to pull the van over and buy you a drink. Do you want to arm wrestle me? Remember, I'm furious."
I believe that if I ever have kids, I will have excellent patience.
When we got to the bowling alley, I learned that some of the guys are very capable bowlers. Two of them were able to outbowl almost all of the staff. It's fun to watch the guys, because they all bowl very differently. One guy gets really low when he throws the ball; another throws it and won't stand back up until after the pins have been hit, so he sort of wobbles around while bent over, another lightly puts the ball down and pushes it forward; another jumps up and down as his ball goes towards the pins; and the last just drops the ball with so little momentum that it didn't even make it to the end half the time. He was not an enthutiastic bowler.
I was trying to get the one with the bone disorder entertained since he's not physically able to bowl, so I spun him around on a chair. I think it's the first time I've ever made him smile. This guy
loves being spun around. But after a couple of rounds of the game, he got tired of it and started grabbing his chair to stay still if anyone tried to spin him. Well, it was fun while it lasted.
One of the residents always asks for a certain food all the time for dinner. We were going to go out to a restaurant after bowling, so he'd be able to get his favorite food. However, during bowling, he misbehaved, so one of the other employees told him that he wouldn't be allowed to get his favorite food. The resident spent the rest of the time being such a suck up, and it was so funny. Whenever the employee that he angered bowled, the resident would jump up and down and shout "Hooray! Hooray!" and then ask if he could have his food. He later ran up to me and went "HUUUUG" and gave me one. I told him that I had no control over his punishment. He lost interest in me afterwards.
At dinner, we parked and let everyone go inside as myself and another employee tried to get Bones to put his shoes on. He rarely wears shoes, because I think his disorder makes them very uncomfortable. However, when we go outside of the house, he needs to wear them, since we can't have him walking around barefoot outside on gravel and such. In the parking lot, unfortunately, he was being an enormous pain in the ass. We'd get one shoe on, and as we put on the other, he'd kick off the first. This went on for about ten minutes. When we finally got both shoes on, we started walking him, with one of us on each side of him, supporting him by holding his arms. He took advantage of us supporting him by lifting his feet up and kicking off his shoes. This also took about ten minutes to get him inside with his shoes on.
We finally got him inside the restaurant and ordered dinner. One of the perks of this job is that our meals are paid for, so I got myself another crab and shrimp in tortillina with cheese sauce. Most of the guys got burgers, because they aren't much for variety. It's hard to enjoy dinner sometimes, because we have to constantly keep an eye on the guys, because alot of them shove food in their mouth faster than they can chew, and could choke themselves. When this happens, we have to tell them to back away from the table until they're able to behave and eat at a reasonable speed. There were only one or two instances of this that night, luckily. Of course, having a peaceful meal would just be too nice, so Bones knocked over a large glass of water to continue pissing off that other employee.
On the way home, I sat next to Bones. He spent alot of the ride grabbing me very forcefully with his good hand. He likes to be tickled there, but we don't reward him for grabbing. Of course, this just makes him more mad, so he just grabs me more. Not a wonderful ride home.
When we got home, it was time to get the guys showered. I figured that since I wiped someone's butt last week, I was mentally ready to help with the showering. I watched and learned what we have to do. Most of the guys can shower themselves, we just need to remind them what they're doing and keep them on task, otherwise some of them would just stand under the water forever. Also, a few of the guys like to turn the water scalding hot on themselves, so we have to
always watch them to make sure they don't hurt themselves. After the shower, we check their body for any cuts or bruises and fill out the paperwork for the night. At around 11 PM we had them all in bed. I could wait, I was exhausted, and I fell asleep on the couch shortly afterwards.
When I first started, I remember one of the employees told me that the guys behave really strangely during full moons. I sort of dismissed it as superstition. Saturday went a long way to prove me wrong and make me a believer.
The resident that was bugging me the entire van ride Friday decided to continue Saturday with added intensity. He wasn't just asking anymore, he was flailing his limbs and getting in my face and barring his teeth at me. Despite alluding to him that I may, in fact, be the Incredible Hulk and letting him know that he wouldn't like me when I'm angry, he persisted. I had to get him with adversives very often for noise making and handplay. I started to question the effectiveness of the punishment, since once I finished, it just seemed to rekindle his behavior and make him jump up and get in my face again immediately.
Another resident, the one who presses on himself, was making me very nervous Saturday. I've managed to avoid working on the days where he's had dangerous episodes and needed to be strapped down. I went through the training for that weeks ago, and I'm not confident that I could get him in confinement myself. I caught him pressing maybe four or five times, but I was able to stop him with just verbal warnings. He was noise frequency increased exponentially for the day. His adversive for that is for me to press to fingers to his mouth and say, "No noise." Halfway through the day, I had done it to him so many times that I could just prompt and say "No..." and he would say, "No noise," and be quiet. By the end of the day, I would just look at him and he'd say. "No noise," and be quiet. He was also rocking back and forth alot. I'd tell him, "Uncross your legs. Hands quiet. Lean back. Relax." By the end of the day, he'd recite most of that without me saying anything. At one point in the day, he was getting so tense that we had to have him sit on the floor in front of another staff member until he calmed down.
At night, I ran the showering programs by myself. In one uncomfortable moment, one resident was washing himself, starting at the head and going down. When he got to his crotch, however, his attention lingered there. I thought, hey, he's a grown man, he's got hormones, this happens. So I told him "Alright, I'm going to turn around for about five seconds, and when I turn back, you better have moved on." When I turned around, he still had one hand in the same place, and another reaching to turn up the heat on the temperature knob. I shouted an unintelligable noise that resembled, "yo yo yo yo" to stop him from turning the knob. Then I instructed him, "Alright, time to find a new body part. Wash your legs."
After they were showered, I was finally able to go home. The only thing I think I really need to do with the guys is learn how to shave them. I'm apprehensive because I can barely shave myself without knicking myself, so I'm very nervous about shaving a group of men that like to jump up and down and squirm if they're required to stand still. Next weekend, we'll find out.
Shadowing Day 7
Friday was my 7th day of shadowing. I'm about halfway through that.
Nothing particularly exciting happened. I learned how to do paper work, and then we had some good barbeque food for dinner with the guys.
I did learn a little, however. I was finally able to change Bones without calling for help, even if it wasn't very graceful. At one point, I was balancing his entire body weight with my head as I tried to pull his pants up. I'm sure I'll get better with practice.
Also, Friday marked the first day I had to wipe another grown man's butt.
Years later, I believe I will refer to this as the day that I lost any sense of discomfort with nudity.
Overnight
Last night I did an overnight just to get some more hours in. I always seem to have the amazing luck of missing out on all insane behavior nights. The resident that has been violent lately was at home with his family, so once again I missed out on a potential freak out. I kind of just want him to do one while I'm still in training so I can experience it.
I slept late that morning, so going to bed at 10:30 along with the residents wasn't happening. I still don't have a room, so I had to crash on the couch again. The other two staff members are understandbly exhausted, so they fall asleep right away. It's interesting what you hear when you stay up, though. One of the guys sounds like he's jumping up and down in his room for hours and keeps making noise. That probably explains why he's so tired in the morning and very difficult to get up and ready for work.
I woke up at 7:45, and my neck hurt. I can't wait until I can have a bed. I started helping with the wake up process. I don't think I'll ever get used to all the guys leaving the bathroom door open when they go. I've walked in on the Jumper half a dozen times by now with his pants down. One of the other guys wet his bed, so we had to get him in the shower. As I type this, I just remembered that I never threw his sheets in the wash, I just left them on the laundry room floor. Whoops, hope someone else got to that. After everyone was finally up and dressed and downstairs, I made breakfast for the guys that hadn't eaten yet. Then we loaded them up in the van and went to work.
