A B(e)acon of Hope

If you’ve been reading previous posts, you’ll know that G’s appetite has come and gone several times over the past year. He’s extremely picky when it comes to textures and hates spicy foods (to which Derek is convinced he’s not his child). It seems that if Greyson eats something he doesn’t like, he will never try that food again, come hell or high water. That is, until he tried bacon.

This kid loves his bacon! Every Sunday while Derek and I are at church, G is feverishly finishing off half a pound of salty, crispy, fried pig. His obsession has become so intense, we now order him pizza with bacon on top. I have even debated buying bacon bits and sprinkling them on everything, just to get this child to eat vegetables or red meat. I am minorly concerned about giving him too much sodium, but I’m just happy he’s actually eating!

This isn’t the beacon of hope that I’ve alluded to in the title of this post. Today was another day, another doctor appointment with little man.

We met with Greyson’s local neurologist in Ephrata for a 3 month follow up. A few weeks ago, I called the neurologist with concern that Greyson’s cyproheptadine was losing its effectiveness for Greyson’s migraines. At that time (about 5 weeks ago), we doubled his dosage from 5 ml to 10 ml. This made G extremely tired and very very hungry. Not sure if it’s the cyproheptadine that surfaced his love for bacon, but he’s put on 5.2 lbs in a little over a month. I think that the bacon is to blame…

The neurologist said everything looks great with G! No seizure activity recently, no motor tics and his headaches appear to be under control. We have blood work to do before our next visit, but he’s in the clear for 6 whole months unless concerns arise! I am so happy that this is one less appointment we will be regularly attending. We will have a follow-up with the genetics team and neurology clinic in Baltimore on the 27th, and hopefully we will know more about what genetically is going on. Hopefully. I’m not sure if I’m ready to face the fact that we really could never know what has caused Greyson’s brain issues. Though I do feel like knowing could also be just as bad as not knowing.

Each month, the admin team at CADD meets for an engagement gathering to discuss ways we can better ourselves as individuals and as a team. This month’s gathering was about finding the positives in all situations, and how negativity and poor attitudes ultimately cause failure and is detrimental to the workplace and home settings. While watching the Ted Talks video, the speaker, Shawn Achor mixes humor with beneficial points about happiness and attentiveness to attitude.

This engagement gathering was particularly interesting for me because I have often struggled with finding the happiness in all situations, especially when you’re an exhausted mother of an autistic child. I wanted to take a tip from the video and find ways to promote my own personal happiness. I have decided that it would be difficult to write or journal about a daily moment of happiness, so I will commit to a weekly moment of happiness. My weekly moment of happiness will revolve around our journey with G and finding happiness in any situation, good or bad.

This week’s moment of happiness was Greyson’s first dance party. Now I cant take credit for this video since I was at work, but I’ve watched it at least a hundred times, and it never gets old. I’ve only seen Greyson dance maybe once for a few seconds… definitely not long enough to catch a video of it. I was extremely grateful that his BT was able to catch it and send the videos to me. See below and tell me that this tops all moments from this week. Maybe even your week. It was a close call between this and him giving me a kiss when I asked for one.

Now, don’t be jealous that you don’t have these moves yet, but hopefully Greyson will be ready to start teaching dance classes once he his age 5.

I encourage all my friends, family and readers to find a moment of happiness from this week and share it with someone else. You’d be surprised at how great you’ll feel after reliving the happy moment in your mind, and being able to put a smile on someone else’s face.