Mi Gordito.... (Brandon)

Ok, so back to the real reason I started this blog to begin with... My crazy, can this really be happening, wtf kind of life I have... My son Brandon is 12.  He's has autism.  If you know anything about autism, it's a spectrum disorder and some kids you might not even know are autistic and others are so low functioning that can barely function.  Brandon is somewhere in the middle.  He is the sweetest child and is very empathetic (which is unusual in a lot of kids with autism).  He is my big teddy bear.  He loves to cuddle and give me hugs!  He can watch a movie once, and then is repeating it back word for word over and over and over again!  I can ask him what day of the week any given date is, and usually after about a minute he can tell me correctly...(Shoot, half the time I don't even know what the date of today is, never mind what day of the week a date is going to fall on 6 months from now.) He can work any kind of electronic device, computer, phone, whatever that you put in front of him better than most adults.  But, his diet is very limited, his favorite things to watch are Elmo and Barney and when you try to hold a conversation with him, not really happening... He is verbal enough to tell me his basic needs, to talk to me about certain things, to answer questions, but he gets irritated if you start asking too many questions.  All kids with autism are different, but many do not know how to lie.  (This would be true of Brandon.) And do not know how to engage in imaginary play. 

So, this year Brandon started at a new school.  I guess we didn't realize how good we had it at the school he has been going to for the past three years.  But it was time to move on to middle school.  We were told that the middle school in our area would not be an appropriate placement, and that he would be attending a school about 35 minutes from out home that goes from 6th grade to 21 years old.  Many kids from the school he had been attending were going to this new school and we took a tour (from day one the place gave me the creeps!), but I trusted that the school was the right place if that is where we were told he needed to go.  We had been preparing Brandon all last year that he would be going to a new school, he would be changing classes, getting homework, etc...

He started the new school in the fall.  For the first month, he seemed to do fine.  He didn't refuse to go to school, no calls about his behavior, things seemed to be ok.  Then I went to back to school night...The nightmare began... I meet the teacher who (God forgive me) is DEFINITELY on the spectrum.  This is her first year teaching, and they have decided (without informing me) to place Brandon in a brand new pilot program.  He was in a self contained classroom with 5 other students.  And the rest of the school was changing classes each period.  For 45 minutes I listened to this teacher talk about what she planned to do this school year, and basically admit that for the past 4 weeks, they had not done a whole heck of a lot of work.  I scheduled a meeting with her to speak one on one.  I asked her to show me what Brandon had been working on, and she showed me NOTHING!  She said he was a role model to other students because he didn't complain when she had to work with the other students, he just sat at his desk quietly... Ummm, how about giving him some work to do??? I got him out of that class ASAP.  He started in regular classes.  (This is a special ed school.  When I say regular classes, I just mean that he was changing classes, had different teachers throughout the day, etc.) Things seemed to be going ok for the first couple of weeks.  No major issues, he went to outdoor ed.  Then the behavior issues started.  Not to say that we never had behavior issues with Brandon in the past, but NOTHING like this school was telling us he was doing.  This was one of my biggest fears sending him to this school.  I was told that a lot of kids had behavioral issues and that Brandon may pick up on them.  So, for the last month or so, I have been going to meetings, talking with the teachers, and trying to get him out of this school. 

Fast forward to Monday about 30 minutes before school got out.  I received a phone call from the health room that Brandon had an "incident" in the classroom, the security guard was in there, and that Brandon bumped his shoulder on the sink in the classroom.  The nurse told me that they put ice on his shoulder, it was not swollen, just a little red, and that he was telling them that he felt "much better."  She told me that she was going to have him come home on the bus, and to just keep an eye on his shoulder.  I told her not to move him and I would be there in 30 minutes.  I got there in 20.  I walked into the school, no one wanted to look at me, the principal and vice principal were talking quietly, and then the principal took me down to the health room.  Brandon was laying on a cot, with a sling on, a board under his forearm, and ice on his elbow.  (But he hit his shoulder on the sink?) I told Brandon to get up and that we were going home.  He could not get into a sitting position on his own.  He started crying and begging us not to move him.  The principal grabbed ahold of him and tried to pull him into a sitting position and I swear the cry of pain that came out of him was not human.  I told her to get out of my way, I helped him up, and started walking out of the school.  The teacher came up to me and wanted to chat about what happened.  She told me some story about how she was correcting another student, then Brandon became agitated, she came over told him to calm down and things escalated.  She had security come in because she "feared for her life".  Security grabbed ahold of Brandon, and then Brandon bumped into the sink.  And hopefully tomorrow would be a better day.  I told her Brandon would not be back on Tuesday and that I needed to get my child to the ER.  Took Brandon directly to the ER. 

I explain to the doctors at the ER what happened according to what I was told; that he bumped his shoulder on the sink in the classroom after being grabbed by the security.  They did X-rays from the shoulder down to his wrist.  The x-ray technician walked over to me and made a motion with his hand like he's breaking a pencil and points to Brandon's arm.  Then he took me into the backroom and showed me the X-ray.  He pointed and said, "That's VERY broken and whoever did it, does not need to be working with children." A doctor walked into radiology, looked at the film, and walked over and started asking Brandon, "Who did this to you???"  We went back to the ER room, and the doctor told us that it most likely is going to require surgery in the future, but for the time being, they moved the bone and placed a splint.  Ortho doctor told me as we were leaving that the kind of break that Brandon has is called a spiral fracture and is caused by the bone being twisted and to do with that info as I see fit. 

I filed a police report on Tuesday and Brandon slept off and on all day.  Also left messages and sent several emails to people trying to figure out what I need to do next because it will be over my dead body that Brandon steps foot in that school again.

Wednesday we went to Children's Hospital.  As we pulled into the parking garage, he told me, "This is Mark's hospital, not Brandon's."  Had more X-rays taken.  He was placed in a hanging cast.  Need to follow up with Ortho Clinic at that hospital.  It's going to be a rough recovery.  It's his right arm, and he basically needs me to do everything for him right now.   Now I need to figure out everything else that needs to be done....Long road ahead of us...But that is nothing new.