Connor and Daddy visit the ER.

My brain cannot seem to calculate the amount of sleep I have gotten over the last 24 hours. Connor is fine and has a couple of stitches in his foot.

Autism makes certain things very difficult. Monday night, I was waiting for melatonin to kick in, Connor, emerged from his room with an odd pained expression. I assumed his bladder was forcing a command performance, but a whimper told me something more was wrong.

When I am up and my spouse is sleeping, I 'try' to intercept Connor, depending upon his mood, needs and wants. In this case there was distress and he wanted Mommy. He was also limping, and had a bandaged foot. Odd as I did not recall him limping earlier.

While he cuddled with Tina I grabbed the mini-flashlight and a warm washcloth, his feet were dirty so he must have been playing outside without his shoes. Something, we do not like him doing. I washed up the non-bandaged foot and moved to the next. When I removed the bandage covering the space between his second and third toe I got to see a deep punctured like laceration. Time to go to the ER.

Connor is a tough little kid, he shrugs off stuff that would make a grownup cry. He also does not have the language skills to tell you whats wrong or what happened. I tried a number of ways to find out where he hurt his foot to no avail.

The ER wasn't crowded so it only took four hours to finally see a doctor. They cleaned the wound and took x-rays. Nothing was lodged inside his foot. Now comes the fun part.

My past experience and uncanny knack for figuring out whats coming allowed me to prepare Connor. While on the drive over I told him they would clean his foot, take pictures, stitch it up an he would get a shot. I further told him it would hurt, it would not be fun but it was very important. All the above is language he can grasp. (key word 'can')

So its time to stitch up his foot. The doctor and the soul nurse assure me that they can handle a ten year old. Last doctor visit Connor had busted his chin open, the arched out of three nurses grips. This time, I didn't defer, they needed him stomach down, I used my Dad voice to get him on his stomach then used my body weight over his hips and one arm to lock up both of his. The doctor called in two more assistance to handle his legs.

This left him with screaming and me talking him through the procedure. He seemed to understand that this was needed and actually would lie still for the bulk of the procedure.

The final thing was the tetanus shot. By this point the folks in the ER treated me more as an expert on Connor and not just a parent (yeah, I think they are synonyms as well). The nurse actually showed Connor the needle and he sat still and accepted the shot like a pro, even taking his shirt off by himself. Brave little guy.