A Sick Day for Aisling
Early Monday morning, Aisling’s school nurse called me to let me know she was complaining that her ears were hurting really badly. I tied up a few loose ends at work, made a doctor’s appointment for later in the day, and rushed to the school to pick her up. She was sleeping soundly on the cot in the clinic, which was my first clue that she actually was feeling just as bad as she claimed.
A little backstory — Aisling is notorious for making mountains out of molehills when it comes to her illnesses in order to try to get sent home early and avoid being at school. There was a time about a year ago where it got so bad I simply had to stop coming to get her. Unless she was running a fever or throwing up, I had the nurses send her back to the classroom. In this particular instance, however, she’d been complaining about her ears off and on over the weekend, so I knew there must be some truth to it, and I figured she might have an ear infection.
When Aisling is honestly feeling bad, it’s always obvious, because she immediately loses her usual sassy bravado and adopts a very sweet, soft-spoken demeanor. “Thank you so much for coming to pick me up,” she told me as we walked out to the car. She also said that her ears were “bruised,” and tried to come up with broad generalizations about her illness to logically explain why she should be allowed to do certain things: “Just because my ears are bruised doesn’t mean I can’t read a book,” she’d say, for example, when she wanted to know if it was okay for her to read in bed after we got home. My favorite was, “Just because my ears are bruised doesn’t mean I have to be nice.” I responded, “Just because your ears are hurting doesn’t mean you have to be grouchy, you mean?” “Yeah,” she said, and continued to work on her homework.
As we sat in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, I realized that not only was she much more calm and subdued than usual, but also that her autistic traits were much more pronounced when she wasn’t feeling well. I had already noticed that she was staring off into space more often and had a much longer “lag time” in her responses, as if it was taking longer for her brain to process the information her senses were collecting. In the waiting room, she pushed one of those bead-and-wire toys around and around in a circle as she walked around the children’s table over and over again. I don’t generally see her spinning or walking in circles too often anymore, so I immediately took notice of this activity. That being said, she did a great job of explaining to the nurses and doctor that her ear was hurting, which one was hurting, how long it had been hurting, etc. “I got water in my ear In the bathtub, and now I have an ear infection,” she told the nurse. Both the nurse and the doctor attempted to make jokes with Aisling, gently picking on her because she was so convinced of her self-diagnosis, but Aisling would have none of it, screwing up her face and giving them an aggravated look which is what usually happens when Aisling suspects she’s being made fun of. I gently and quickly explained that she was autistic, that communication was an issue and that she didn’t really understand jokes. They looked in her ears, said that she didn’t have an ear infection but that she had a lot of fluid behind her ears, and that she must be suffering badly from allergies. They sent in her medication prescriptions and we went home to have lunch and wait for them to be filled.
Again, Aisling continued with her soft-spoken and super-sweet demeanor, asking gently for a snack of Goldfish crackers after lunch, being extremely patient in the store, with taking her medicine, and then with the large amount of homework she had to work on. She even kept a very positive attitude when working on her math homework — something that *never* happens — until I pointed out that she did half the problems wrong. As another aside, it breaks my heart how much she struggles with math. Sometimes, it seems as if she gets the basic concepts, but she has such a problem with the application of those concepts in a consistent manner. She doesn’t pay much attention to detail, and her answer is often wrong by one digit, or a decimal place, or a missing zero at the end. We work on math almost daily, and she’s getting special help through the resource department at her school, but math homework is probably the number one major cause of meltdowns in our household anymore. It’s especially difficult when Aisling tackles her homework with the positive attitude she had yesterday and still has trouble getting everything right.
Aisling also becomes much more cuddly and affectionate when she’s sick. As I sat on the couch, watching Gilmore Girls on DVD and drifting off to sleep, Aisling would curl up with me, give me hugs or kisses, and ask me if I needed anything. She wanted to snuggle, to be held and comforted. It’s almost as if illness makes her more emotionally available, helps break down some of the usual barriers of communication. It’s heartbreaking and sweet all at the same time.
I did let Aisling play a little computer and a few minutes of video games, but I also got her in bed early where she was promptly knocked out by her allergy medication. She still wasn’t 100% today — and, in fact, she complained so much about feeling terrible that the school sent her home early. All the same, she’s on the road to recovery, and in the meantime I can contemplate her actions, delight in her mannerisms, and try to determine whether or not she’s feeling well enough to shamble back to school tomorrow, or whether she’s just trying to get out of going to gym class.