Alex's Story

I’ve recently gotten approval at my job to work four ten-hour days rather than five eight-hour days. This allows me to visit Alex once on the weekend, and another time mid-week. It’s really nice to not have to feel like I need to get a minimum of 2-3 hours in any visit or else “waste” a week. It’s also nice not to have to feel like missing a visit is the end of the world. If we get sick or something, we can still see Alex once during the week rather than having a two-week span with him wondering where his family is. Continue reading →

We saw Alex this weekend for over three hours, and it was a pretty good visit overall. He had quite a few moments of rage, but none that lasted longer than a few minutes, and none that got as intense as the episodes he had before the group homes. It was nothing in comparison to two weeks ago, but that was, as I mentioned before, an incredible and very unique occurrence.

Sadly, we got no videos this time, because things were a bit too hectic. At the time, videos seemed like a big tradeoff – spend time with him or get videos of him. Unfortunately, when he’s a little bit volatile, we will always opt to just be with him instead of trying to break out the camera, catch a minute of happy, put it down when he gets made, try to grab it for another few minutes of happy, etc. Oh, well.