Thankfully, He Wears a Helmet

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Josiah wears a batting helmet with a face guard.  He wears it all day, every day.  It’s big, bulky and cumbersome.  It makes eating and drinking a bit more interesting, navigating around the metal guard, but it works.

It protects his face and ears from self injurious behavior.

Prior to the face guard, it was extremely difficult to protect Josiah from himself.  For reasons still unknown, he constantly punched his ears and cheeks.

It’s heart wrenching to witness someone inflict self harm and not know how to help. When it’s your child it’s devastating, overwhelming and exhausting.  It was beginning to feel hopeless.

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Back to the Boxing Ring

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Josiah is beating himself up again.  He’s not sleeping.  He’s refusing to eat much.  He’s having a difficult time this week.  It’s reminicent of the way he was behaving in August of 2015, right before he ended up spending 1 week at UTMB, then 10 weeks at Health Bridge Children’s Hospital.

Monday he had some mild sedation for a GI procedure called an anorectal manometry to check his sphincter muscles.  Everything was normal.  No need to see that specialist again until December, we were told.  I’m not so sure.

Tuesday he started sliding down a slippery slope.  Tuesday was also the very first night we had our 1 – 6 am caregiver.  Josiah started his happy day at 2 am, bouncing wildly at 6 am when I got up. The caregiver worked last night also. (God bless that woman and thank you Jesus for sending her!) He was up by 1:30 and now 9 hours later, showing no signs up being tired.

He is however attacking himself.  His left ear is turning purple and starting to swell from the repeateded punches. He has begun to pull his own hair, hard.  He screamed most of the morning with tears streaming down his face as he attacked himself and us.

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