September updates – some amazing visits

I was hoping to make a real effort to get updates with video, but I’m finding this is a lot more pain than I expected. The amount of video we have is enormous just from the past month, so I’ve had to just throw together a quick “best of” video. But first, some general updates.

We had a really good visit a few weeks back when Alex was driven up to see us. It started a little bit rough, but even at its worst things were pretty decent. After we gave Alex a bit of our latest concoction (hash mixed with coconut oil), he got really calm and happy, and sibbing was minimal.

My wife visited last week when she went down for a doctor visit, and he was really playful with her. Later in the week, we both went down for an IEP meeting with his school, and spent about an hour with him prior to the meeting. He was more cuddly and happy than I had seen him in months, and it was great to have a little truly good time with him. At one point he completely lost it and starting slapping himself really hard, but once we figured out he was hungry (maybe a minute after the behavior started), he was calm and happy again.

But the visit over the weekend was easily the best we’ve had since he left. We kept him at our home for over four hours, and he may have slapped himself twice during that entire time. Not two episodes of slapping, but two actual slaps. He got a little bit annoyed a few other times, but came out of it incredibly fast and without hurting himself. Even when it was time for him to leave, he was was still calm and happy. I don’t even know for sure the last time Alex was in such a great mood for so long, even when he lived with us. His sibbing got to the point of being everyday behavior when he was five or six. It’s certainly been years since we’ve seen so much of the happy side of Alex like this.

We don’t want to hold our breath, but we’re hoping it’s the medication change. Alex’s new psychiatrist has made some major changes to try and better manage his behaviors. Unfortunately, it’s hard to say for sure what’s going on, because he was still beating himself up really badly some of the days we didn’t see him. While our visit was incredible, it’s clear that he’s been through some extremely rough patches recently. If you look at the first snippets of video, you’ll see he’s sporting a black eye. We can only hope he gets through it soon, and visits like this become more common.

So without further ado, some bits of Alex’s happy time with us: