The David Blog

Welcome to what has obviously become my weekly blog.

It's so hard to blog daily. I don't have that much on a daily basis that is worth extended discussion or analysis. Plus, with the advent of Facebook and Twitter it seems we all microblog daily. 'Andi Watson is eating jelly beans', 'Andi is beating her children', 'Andi pooped so hard she saw stars'... and so on and so on...

And so it is that this is Thanksgiving week. We had been doing our yearly 'orphan's Thanksgiving' but this year, neither Jason nor myself are doing a show over the holidays nor are we housing or entertaining actors from out of town. (Which has been the norm for about the last 4 years or so now.)
So, we decided that we're still going to open our doors for the holiday (this time at mom's house. Yay!) though we don't expect to have the turnout we did in years prior. We'll see how it goes.

I've done the major Christmas shopping for both Christina and Jason. I just have David left... and will have to be creative in order to cover both his birthday AND Christmas. And not just any birthday, but his 16th. I can't quite believe it. Sixteen years. It's quite a milestone for our family.

To give a little history about David... many know that I had him at a very young age. I became pregnant my senior year of high school. Thankfully, I wasn't showing by graduation... my close friends and family knew I was knocked up, but for the rest of the school (and my teachers) it was business as usual.
My father had kicked me out of his house after learning about the pregnancy and I lived with my mom for the last two months of school with the understanding that I would be on my own once I graduated.
I graduated with honors and set out to find a job that had health benefits to cover prenatal care and the birth. Promptly upon graduating, I started work with AT&T at their call center in Mesa.
Before I could draw my first paycheck, however, my father sold my car to settle debts I owed (for rent and insurance while I was living with him my Senior year). I had tried unsuccessfully to find a roommate situation close to my work... and ended up in a sleazy apartment with a woman who fed her two-year-old day old beans and stale bread. She had no TV or phone and was struggling to make enough money to send to her 'baby daddy' in prison.
My best friend Amanda and her father showed up one evening with a truck to move my possessions out of this woman's apartment and into their home where I lived for the next two months. What a change it was to be surrounded by loving, encouraging friends and family. Two days a week, Amanda got her butt out of bed at the ungodliest of hours to drive me to work. The other three days, I was in the office carpool. Saving my pennies for a deposit on a place to live and hopefully a vehicle of my own eventually. To this day, I still believe I never would have made it without my extended family to take me in.
By July, I had a one-bedroom apartment close enough to work that I could walk there and did so every day. Rain, 116-degree heat, etc... I waddled my happy butt to work every day, thankful that I had made it to a place where I had a home and a future for myself and my child.
I was young enough that I hadn't picked up any horrible habits yet. I didn't smoke, didn't drink, hadn't yet become addicted to caffeine. I ate right, got good rest (what else can you do without cable?) and had my daily half-mile walk to work and back. I was in great health throughout my pregnancy and everything was 'business as usual'...
I finally relented and married David's dad in October of '93 and David was born in December. We lived in my dinky little apartment for about six months before we closed on a cute little house in Chandler and waited for the construction to complete.
It wasn't until David was about nine months to a year old that I began to notice developmental issues. He wasn't developing language or interpersonal communication skills at the rate he should have. We started having him tested for everything his pediatrician requested. Medical professionals deemed that it must be his hearing and suggested he have his tonsils and adenoids removed. The next step would be to put tubes in his ears if that didn't help. Well, his hearing tests came back normal so the next step was more tests. BAER, OAE, CAT scans, neurological tests, etc. Many came back inconclusive. By this time, David was 5 and starting his first year of school. He struggled socially and had horrible tantrums of frustration that stemmed from his inability to communicate. At the time, two of the four pediatricians that we had consulted were suggesting Ritalin or other forms of medicating him to control behavior. I was adamantly against it unless they could prove to me beyond reasonable doubt that it was what he needed. They couldn't. We went back to testing.
Thankfully, we now had the schools, educators, and professionals in child development evaluating David as well. We heard suggestions of many different learning disabilities and social disorders, which is where we first started hearing terms like 'autistic' and 'pervasive developmental disorder'. Woah.
David spent most of his elementary education in 'special ed' classes. It was there that they discovered his mild dyslexia, which helped to explain his difficulty (read stubborn refusal) with reading or writing. Through therapy and the education system, we finally reached a diagnosis of HFA or 'high-functioning autism' with characteristics indicating Asperger's Syndrome.

I went through a long period in which I didn't really discuss David's issues. Most of my closest friends never suspected that David was anything other than a somewhat quiet and awkward kid. Some asked about his odd behaviors and I would explain that he was developmentally disabled or had learning disabilities. It took me a couple of years to actually use the word 'autism'. Because I knew so precious little about it, it was a scary word to me. One that meant my son might never know freedom or independence. The only thing I knew about autism was that Jenny McCarthy was against vaccinating her children because of it.

Fast forward to the present... David is in his Sophomore year of High School. He is now integrated into regular classes (though he spent two months in summer school to make up English credits) and is what they call 'mainstreamed' into the 'normal' adolescent hierarchy. (Though calling high school kids 'normal' is a stretch in any scenario.) He is still awkward and shy, but the last two years have seen leaps and bounds in his development and his ability to engage in both social and solitary situations.
It has been a long road.

He still needs assistance in the kitchen and may not have a driver's license in the very immediate future, but he's learning to be self-sufficient and responsible... one step at a time. He still has a bad habit of accidentally hiding things like the remote control, keys, cell phone chargers, etc.

I'm thankful that we stood by our decision to pursue diagnosis and I'm thankful that David was given a (mostly) normal life. His dad is hard on him, which kills me sometimes. As a mom, I want to protect and shield him from anything unpleasant or difficult. But he is becoming a strong young man and has always been a beautiful, sensitive and loving boy. Now he's 6 feet tall and gangly... and a beautiful, sensitive and loving teen.

David has worked really hard the past few years and 'mainstream' status is his victory over his prognosis. He is now talking about the kinds of jobs he'd like to work at and the things he wants to do with his life as an adult. It's a huge step and brings me great joy to see the small transformations, though this is something he will struggle with all his life.

Next month, he will turn 16. It's mind-boggling to think that it was 16 years ago that I gave birth to this... young man. I laugh, I cry... I run to the mirror to make sure I don't look 50 yet.

We have found mutual forms of communicating with music and laughter. I love to make my son laugh... it is one of the most beautiful sounds I've ever heard in my life.