Caged (part 1 of 3)

I found myself wandering around Target last Thursday morning, at a ridiculously early hour.  I was amazed at how many people were there and seemed not only to be awake, but also seemed bright eyed and almost frenzied in their collecting of Tupperware in what felt to me to be the middle of the night.  “No one should ever be up this early in the morning, let alone be out shopping,” I thought to myself as I walked in slow motion, sucking down a fresh cup of Starbucks like my life depended on it, and waiting for the caffeine to get me onto the same planet as everyone else.

This might reveal something about me, since Target doesn’t actually open until 9am.  But I had been awoken prematurely by a sharp knee, bearing the entire weight of a very wiggly almost six year old, standing on my left hip.  “OWW!” I had yelled, as I pushed Cale off of me.

I had just rolled over to go back to sleep when I felt the cold glass of water that had been left on my nightstand the night before, pouring over my entire body.  And that, I’m afraid, was it.

We’ve been without respite care for over six months now.  And it’s summer time, so we’re all at home for most of every day.  And, during the past few weeks in particular, every one of us (Shane, myself, Alden, and Isabel) has become so sick of Cale (and, as a result, irritable with each other as well) that our house should really consider auditioning as one of the levels of Hell for Dante’s Inferno.

You wouldn’t think that a glass of poured water would be that big of a deal.  And, in and of itself, it isn’t.  But it doesn’t stop with one glass of water.  Cale turns on the bathroom sink, or sits in the bathtub at bath time, and fills his cup full of water.  Then he pours it onto the bathroom floor. 

He does it while no one is looking.  And he does it while everyone is looking.  And, if left unattended, he does it over and over again until the floor resembles a swimming pool, and until it actually begins to rain in the basement underneath the bathroom.  I can’t keep enough towels laundered these days because every time I get a stack of clean towels into the linen closet, all of them are used by the end of the same day just to clean up after Cale.

“Then why do you let him into the bathroom, or let him take baths at all?” you might wonder.  And there’s only one, very simple answer to that question.  It’s because when Cale is playing with water, he’s not screaming and/or breaking things and/or hurting people.  And sometimes, especially when the other option is cleaning up shattered glass and/or kissing your daughter’s wounded face, sopping up the swimming pool seems the best choice. 

If you try to actually keep Cale from going to the bathroom sink, then he simply runs to the kitchen sink.  And when you follow and try to keep him from going to the kitchen sink, then he simply runs back to the bathroom sink.  And he could play this game all day long if you didn’t finally lock him in his bedroom to get a little break from it.

If you hide Cale’s cup so that he can’t pour water onto the floor with it, then he simply opens up a bottle of shampoo, or a bottle of body wash, or a bottle of liquid hand soap, or whatever else he can find, and pours it out onto the floor somewhere, so that he can use the empty bottle to pour water from the bathroom sink onto the bathroom floor with.   

He also likes to pour entire bottles of bubbles, and juice, and soda, and entire boxes of cereal, and plates of food, and bags of chips, and bowls of dog food, and bins of Lego's, and baskets of clean laundry, and anything else that he can get his hands on, onto the floor.  And he never stops moving.  Not for one single second.  So he never stops pouring.

Have I ever mentioned that the words, “NO CALE!!” never, EVER, get you anywhere with him, no matter how forcefully these words are delivered?  In fact, if you’re across the room and you see Cale in the process of turning over a box of cereal, there’s a slight chance that he’ll only pour a few pieces onto the floor if you stay quiet.  But saying, “No Cale!” absolutely guarantees that the contents of the entire box will be dumped onto the floor faster than you can get over to it. 

I, of course, have provided a whole variety of consequences after nearly every pouring incident, things that he’s absolutely hated - time outs, hand slapping, spanking, and putting his hands into the cereal, which he can’t stand because of his “sensory issues,” and making him pick up every single piece (I’ve continued this last one because I think it’s a very good, natural consequence) - but these things have never reduced the frequency of these behaviors in the slightest.  And ignoring the behaviors doesn’t make them stop either. 

The cold, hard reality is that these behaviors aren’t going to stop.  I’ve been trying to make them stop for over three years now, with all of the best of my parenting skills, knowledge of Autism, and prayers, yet they’ve only become increasingly more frequent and intense.  They’re not going to stop.

Shockingly, the pouring is the LEAST annoying of his behaviors.  He’s also managed to actually break nearly everything he’s seen over the past two weeks.  He’s pulled nearly all of the picture frames off of our walls, for example, and shattered the glass in them.  My home currently resembles a prison cell, with nothing but the bare necessities in view.  And even the bare necessities are looking tired and trashed.

I finally moved Cale into Alden’s bedroom in the basement (to the bottom bunk of Alden’s bunk bed) because there’s only one small, high up, basement window in that room, and there are two relatively large windows in the room that Cale was in before (which I feared he would soon shatter if he stayed in there).  And Cale has destroyed Alden’s bedroom.  It’s been cleared to the bones, and Alden has relocated, permanently, to the family room, since Isabel has moved into Cale’s old bedroom. 

The scariest thing about Cale lately has been his aggression towards other people.  He’s been coming after me mostly, but has occasionally gone after one of our other two kids as well, in ways that he knows will hurt.  And it’s completely intentional.  This is how I’ve known that something is wrong.  Cale’s aggression isn’t ordinarily about actually hurting people.  It’s ordinarily about communicating something.  But lately, it’s been about doing damage.  I’ve actually become rather afraid of him.  And I’ve actually contemplated, in depth, calling CPS and asking them where I can drop him off permanently.

You can’t sit down for one second when Cale is at home, unless you just give up and let him start flooding the house or breaking things or beating on you or one of the other kids.  And I get so incredibly tired that there are moments, I must admit, when I know that I’ll be cleaning up shattered glass in two seconds if I don’t get up right then, but when I decide that it’s worth it in order to sit still for one more.  And there are other moments, especially when I’m still sore from his last assault (my jaw, for example, still hurts from him kicking me in the face as hard as he could with both feet while I was trying to latch his seat belt last week), when I just have to leave, to get out and do anything at all besides deal with him.  These are the moments when I have to talk myself out of buying a one way ticket to Europe.   

I had forgotten to grab a cart, so I muddled through the tank tops and yoga pants for awhile - my usual thirty seven year old mother attire.  And I had just thrown a fresh gray tank and new sweater over my arm when, all of a sudden, I found myself in front of the cutest, most impractical, yet delicious little thing that I’d seen in ages.  It was a bright pink, satin and lace, push up bra. 

I wanted to put it on, but I couldn’t figure out why on earth I should do so.  So I just stood there staring at it, chugging my coffee, and thinking about how selfish it was of me to leave Cale with Shane.  I could just picture Shane trying to work virtually over the phone in the rain under the bathroom floor.  And that’s when I was struck with a brilliant thought.  Since I was already right in the middle of a pure, unadulterated act of selfishness, why NOT put on the bra?

I’ve had the same two bras for the past five years now, and I’ve washed them over and over and over again.  They’re almost as worn and as tired looking as I am, so I’ve wanted a new bra for some time now.  Finding a new bra isn’t as easy as it sounds, however, for someone in my condition – condition being that I used to have breasts, that I trusted those who said that breastfeeding wouldn’t deflate them, and that I’m now… well… deflated.  I reflected back on my last bra shopping excursion, which was just last week, in fact, when a friend of mine was in town from Phoenix.  She and I went to Victoria Secret to find me a bra.  

I knew that I had to get back home to relieve Shane of Cale before his next virtual meeting, so there was just no time for beating around the bush.  Therefore, when the sales lady asked me if she could help me find something, I said rather anxiously, “Yes.  I need an inflatable bra.”

Silence.

“You know?” I said, while making the motions of blowing up a balloon on each side of my chest, complete with blowing noises and everything, “I need a BRA.  More to the point, I need BREASTS.”

“Well,” she said, trying hard not to laugh, “I have several styles of push-ups that I think might be just perfect.  What size do you wear?”

“I wore a 36B the last time I bought a bra,” I answered.

“Oh no, that’s not right,” she said, “Let me measure you.”

She whipped out her little string of measuring tape, tied it around what’s left of my breasts, and said, “You measure at a 34 C.”

Wide eyed and absolutely delighting in her outright lie, I had to fight the urge to kiss her.  But the feeling quickly faded when I actually put on a 34 C.  “Can you see the problem here?” I showed her. 

The problem with a “push up” bra, when there’s nothing left to push up, is that you end up with a shelf that you could actually set a can of beer on.

“Oh dear,” she said, “Let me bring you a box of different push up styles.  We’ll find one that works for you, don’t worry.”

As she was bringing me the box of size 34 C bras to try on, she was interrupted by another sales lady who had almond sized breasts herself.  And why is it that everyone wants you to be just like them?

“You need a smaller cup size,” said the nasty little interferer.

Between the two sales ladies, I must’ve tried on twenty bras.  But the problem was that they kept getting smaller and smaller.  I mean, I didn’t mind the bras themselves getting smaller.  But the cup size kept getting smaller too.  And that was just plum unacceptable.  I mean, had I not asked for breasts?  I kept trying to convince them that it was the style (the push up), not the cup size, that wasn’t working, but they knew better.  They were professionals. 

At the incessant urging of the interferer, I finally tried on a size 32 A push up.  And when I came out of the fitting room to show her the sheer pointlessness of hoisting up nothing, I asked her, “How, exactly, is this supposed to make me look like I have breasts?”

“The 32 is the correct size around, but I think that you’re going to need a double A cup,” she actually had the nerve to say to me.

I stared straight into her thick blue eyes, just to make sure that she was being perfectly serious.  And she was.  “Okay,” I finally said, ripping off the Barbie doll sized cups and handing them back to her, “I’m outta here.”

That poor woman had spent almost an hour helping me, and I hadn’t bought a thing.  But at least I hadn’t told her to fuck off.

I grabbed the pink bra that was in front of me at Target.  It was a 34B push up that advertised a two cup size enlargement.  Perfect.

I took it into the fitting room and put it on.  And it looked awesome.  But when I put my t-shirt on over the top of it, I was genuinely baffled by what I saw.  It actually rounded out on each side just underneath my armpits.  “My GOD,” I said to myself, turning to the side.

The nasty little interferer, it seemed, was right.  She wasn’t trying to offend me.  She was trying to keep me from looking like a porn star. 

I bought three practical but very pretty A cup sized bras that morning, ones that lifted and rounded and placed everything properly.  It was the first time, in a very long time, that I had felt lovely.  And even though I was in my usual, boring, thirty seven year old mother attire when we got to Cale’s psychiatrist’s appointment the following afternoon, I felt better knowing that I had beautiful underwear on underneath.

“How’s Cale doing on the Prozac?” the psychiatrist asked.

Cale had been on Prozac for a little over two weeks.  “Well,” I answered (it’s a lot to try to explain in just a few sentences, isn’t it?), “the duration of his tantrums seem to have decreased, but the intensity of them has increased.  He’s actually attacking people with the intention of hurting them.  And he’s become more hyperactive and destructive than usual.”

I told her about some of Cale’s recent destructive behaviors, and cited some examples of his hurting others.  “And this,” I said, “has to stop.  If he kicked one of my other two kids in the jaw as hard as he kicked me in the jaw last week, he could really do some damage.”

“I think he’s bored out of his mind because he’s not in school all day right now,” Shane added.

“He ordinarily likes to listen to music and watch certain T.V. shows though, but he won’t even do these things lately,” I continued.

She prescribed 20mg per day of Vyvanse (a stimulant based ADHD medication) to be given to Cale along with the Prozac.  But she had said, just two weeks before, that she wouldn’t be adding an ADHD medication to the Prozac for at least a month, so that she could get a very clear picture of what the Prozac was doing to him first.  Yet there she was, adding an ADHD medication after only two weeks.

Cale started screaming and hitting Shane and trying to get out the door about then, so Shane took him into the waiting room to play with the toys while the psychiatrist and I discussed how to open a Vyvanse tablet and dissolve it in juice in order to give it to Cale (because he can’t take pills).  Then I asked her, very specifically, “Are you sure that you want to leave him on the Prozac?”

“Well, if the duration of his tantrums have decreased, then I think that it’s helping him a little,” she answered as she stood up (the signal for me to leave).

“Okay then,” I replied, “I guess that we’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”