today's visit

I can't even begin to describe how wonderful today's visit was with Alex. It was so wonderful, that I'm sad right now. I'm sad because he deserves to have days like this more often. I'm sad because we had to send him back to his home rather than continue to enjoy him. I'm sad because we likely won't have this good of a visit for who knows how long. I'm sad because we have no clue what makes his bad days so bad.

He was happy, calm, giggly, playful, cuddly, and super smiley for most of the 4 hours he was with us today. He did get gassy (I think he's having constipation issues) and start crying big tears, and showing us he was uncomfortable for about 10 minutes during that time. A dose of GasX made him happy again though. We haven't seen him in this good of a mood, for such a sustained period of time, in years. Like five years. Seriously.

I'm not sure what to attribute it to either. He has been in a pretty good mood the past couple weeks, but two or three days ago he had a major meltdown. Gave himself two black eyes, busted open his lip, gave himself a sore on the bridge of his nose, and bit the crap out of his arms and hands (I can see individual teeth marks on some of those bruises). This happened a day after making some pretty major med changes, so it was likely due to that. Is this happy mood also due to the med changes? Because we totally got rid of the amitriptyline? Because we reduced the risperidone? Because we added a little Seroquel? Who knows? I'm not naive enough to think this will last though. You can bet I'm wishing and hoping with all my might that it will, but history says otherwise. Only time will tell, and I can only hope that Alex will get to see brighter days in the future.

Here are some cute pictures I took today. These are the kinds of days that are priceless to us.


















And one un-retouched to show the reality of the damage he did to himself.