As a lovely early Christmas present, our whole family has
been given… a nasty virus. I have been
in bed for most of the weekend, Mr BooHoo took to bed midweek and on Wednesday
my three small angels were all pitifully flopped on clouds of tissues. Having all three girls not at school and poorly
for the day really highlighted for me the differences between Boo and the rest
of us.
I’m sure it’s not a politically correct thing to say, and I
don’t mean to offend anyone on the Spectrum, but when she is ill, Boo is so
much more Autistic than usual. She has
fully retreated into her own head this week; not one of my questions has been
granted with an answer though I know she can hear me. She will give me the briefest flash of eye
contact which speaks volumes: I hear you,
I am ignoring you, leave me alone.
She feels happier, maybe even more comforted on her own and I have to
respect that. I am reminded of my cat,
who after a trip to the vet would slink off to some cosy, private place and
hiss if anyone bothered her. Contrast
this with Boo’s sisters, who want to tell me how awful they feel, want to be
cuddled and coddled and have their pillows plumped.
All have had high temperatures, and so of course out comes
the trusty Calpol. Pipsy and Peeky eagerly
turn their faces up for a spoonful of medicine, like little baby birds. Worryingly they actually love the taste of
it, so much so that I have started to buy a cheaper, generic brand which
apparently tastes disgusting. But giving
Boo a dose of the pink stuff, whatever the brand, is traumatic for her (and us,
to be honest). Her autism-skewed sense
of taste is such that there are certain flavours which are physically
intolerable to her, and unfortunately this seems to include every kind of
medicine she has ever tried to date.
When Boo was a toddler, we could shoot medicine syringes
full of paracetamol syrup into her inner cheek when she was least expecting
it. She got wise fairly quickly, so our
next method was to pin her down - though we had to catch her first!
As she grew bigger, it was necessary to actually straddle her, pinning
her flailing arms to her sides and holding her head still, while a second
person put the medicine into her mouth.
She became expert at pressing her lips so firmly together that we had to
hold her nostrils closed, to make her gasp for just long enough. Quickly we would tip or shoot in the
medicine, and just as quickly she would spit it out. If she swallowed it, she would often vomit
moments later. She would be shaken and
upset by the ordeal, and I would feel guilty to have put her through all this just for the sake of a dose of
medicine. In reality, from Boo's point of view, feeling hot, listless and grotty was probably infinitely preferable to
enduring this overbearing treatment from her mum and dad.
So we stopped forcing Boo to take medicine, unless it was absolutely
necessary. For a while, the promise of a
chocolate coin bought her cooperation, but nowadays that doesn’t really cut
it. Our latest trick is to use the kids’
tablet form of paracetamol (which has a sugary coating) in the same mouthful as
a hefty hunk of chocolate, which sometimes works, although it always makes her
retch and often results in semi-chewed spittage down her front. She simply can not stand the taste. This week we just gave up in the end; put Boo
in some thin jammies and gave her plenty of water to drink, crossed our fingers
and hoped for the best. Poor little monkey. Who would have thought a dose of Calpol could
be so difficult? So when Boo’s sisters
take their medicine like good little girls, I never take it for granted.
Another difference between the girls, is their ability to
let us know what is wrong. Pipsy and
Peeky don’t think twice about coming to tell me if something hurts, aches,
stings or just generally feels funny.
Contrast this with what happened with Boo a couple of nights ago. First
we heard wailing in the late hours of the evening, and when Daddy went to see
what was wrong, he came back to bed twenty minutes later none the wiser. So then I tried to find out what was
upsetting her. ‘Does something hurt?’ Wail.
‘Do you feel sick?’ Wail. ‘Can you tell Mummy what’s wrong?’ High-pitched
screechy wail. Boo is six and very verbal; intellectually capable of telling us the problem, but all her energy was being used up in feeling awful, so she had nothing left with which to communicate to us whatever the problem was. After trying to work
out what was wrong for about an hour, we had to admit defeat and just give
up. Daddy got in bed beside her for
company, and we listened to her scream, howl and wail for about THREE HOURS,
still not knowing what was wrong. It was
a blessing that her sisters were poorly and so deeply asleep that she didn’t
disturb them, too. It’s awful to see
your child suffering and yet not have a clue how to make it all better, we feel
so useless sometimes.
I often hear parents say of their children, ‘Oh I hate it
when they’re ill.’ Well I totally relate
to that. But when it comes to Boo, I
really really REALLY hate it when she’s ill, because I don’t always know what
to do to make her feel better, or whether the things I do will actually make
her feel even worse.
