Dan and Autism

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).

posted by Daniel @ 7:40 PM