Friday 15 November 2013

A dog for Edward

A few weeks ago, Richards Uncle came to stay for a night. With him he bought 'Clooney" - named so because he is so gorgeous - a working cocker spaniel. Well, you should have seen Ed. Imagine the most excited boy in the world x 1000 and you are about there. "dog! dog! dog!' Poor Clooney was pestered to within an inch of his life, and what a lovely dog, not once did he do anything other than get up and try and get away.

In the morning, Ed woke up in our bed instantly in a bad mood. He sat up, made his 'I am in a really bad mood' noise, was about to kick off when he stopped himself, 'dog!' says he, and down he goes in the best of moods. Here a little glimmer of light shone in his mothers life, because for over a year now, I have been on the waiting list to get on the waiting list for a dog from Dogs for the disabled. A wonderful charity that trains dogs for disabled children and children with autism. In two weeks time, I was almost at the top of the list, which meant a visit from them with a dog, to see how a much bang for their buck they could get placing a dog with us. Clooney showed us at least, there would be a lot of bang! Finally, after a full day of pestering, when Ed trod on his tail, the dog finally growled at him, and Ed kept a better distance.

So when the happy day came for the people from Dogs for the disabled to assess us, it was lovely again to see how Ed reacted. Well, I was told that it could take 6 weeks for them to make up their mind whether they thought one of their dogs would help us, but yesterday, after just a few of weeks, I got a letter saying we had been accepted onto the waiting list - Yeah!! So now, I am just waiting to be 'matched' to a dog, what an amazing difference it will make to our lives, I just can't wait. Through out the assessment, things happened and things were said that I kept apologising for, "Don't worry Mrs Oke, we have seen it all" "Don't worry Mrs Oke, we have heard it all" they were so nice. Finally it came to questions from me.
"We all dress up in fancy dress on Christmas day, as its your dog, would you mind if I dressed the dog up to?"- the pair of them looked at each other,
"We haven't heard that one before!" Oh, how I laughed, but the good news is, as the dog will already be used to wearing a jacket, I would be allowed to dress it up, but just for Christmas.

What will this dog mean for us? Well, as I said, it comes with a jacket. I hold it on the lead, and Ed holds onto a handle on the dogs jacket, so it feels like he is walking it, but in case he runs off (a behaviour know as bolting) there is a belt round his waist that clips to the dog. As the dog has been trained, it means it has the same right of way as a blind dog, so I would be able to take it anywhere, with Ed. This means, that if they find a dog they think matches us, our whole lives are about to make a quantum leap in possibilities. And, as its a rather large dog, (because it needs to put up with a bouncy autistic child), it means I will have no excuse but to walk it and walk off my big belly that has appeared along with my third son.

So all in all, things in our mad household are moving forward. Since I started Ed on the Iodine, he has started coming out with more words ( only at school ) and is slightly more calm. His business end has improved also with the introduction of the kefir water, and touch wood, we haven't touch cloth for a while. The other night as I was rubbing him with coconut oil after his bath, I really looked at him, and noticed fully how has he changed. A year ago, I started him on NAET, at that time he had alopecia (loosing his hair from stress) was pulling his hair out as well, I think from pain, was so skinny you could see his kidneys (not really but you know what I mean) scratched himself till he bled, had dry eczema skin, could s**t through the eye of needle and then would spread it, would bang his head against the floor, would scream and shout randomly, would hardly eat anything, and would bounce all night long if given the chance. Now, most of that has changed. He has thick, glossy hair, beautiful soft skin, has even grown a wee tummy to match his mum, the head banging which is most distressing has stopped, his bum whilst still a work in progress is so much better, and now by about 10-11pm he is all bounced out. He is still as mad as a hatter, but his physical condition gives me hope that as that improves, his brain will start to clear as well, which hopefully, with the new words he is coming out with at school, is already happening. As I have said in previous posts, it has been noted by his short break workers, that he is the only autistic child improving - the others just add more layers to their onion. So to all those warrior mums out there, who have swallowed the party line that they will be like that forever, take heart. It doesn't need to be that way, even if we can't recover them completely from the fog of autism, we can make improvements in their lives and our own x

No comments:

Post a Comment