Yesterday my son had a sore throat. We have done very well at avoiding covid here. Despite having one person working in a hospital, one in a primary school, then high school, one going to university and the other working in a small office, none of us have brought it home. We’ve been quite cautious too. I wear masks everywhere, as does my youngest son. My husband had to wear one for work but now only has to wear it in certain customer contact areas. My oldest son wears his when he leaves the house. However, he’s just been on a three-day respite trip with a support worker who doesn’t like masks, so my bet is he didn’t wear one, either. I’m not asking for clarification on that because I don’t want to know.
Either way, Oldest Son (OS) came home with a sore throat. He’d forgotten to pack his antihistamine nasal spray and has terrible allergies, so it’s entirely possible he had the sore throat from breathing through his mouth all night. We did what we have always done to anyone in this house who has any symptoms of anything – no washing or drying of dishes (nobody minds that), and all meals eaten at the breakfast bar instead of the dining table. The quarantined person can see and hear everything happening at the table from there; they just aren’t close enough to cough all over someone else or their food. That’s especially important in the case of OS, who has very poor hygiene skills. The other requirement is that if you are moving into communal areas, the person who is sick either wears a mask or asks (from a distance) someone else to get what they want and bring it to their door. It’s not such a bad thing to be unwell in our house!
We set those health measures in place years ago because of the cycle of infection and reinfection. I was constantly getting sick from either my workplace or my own children, and I wanted to break the cycle of illness. We waited until the boys were old enough to understand without feeling excluded and to comply well enough to make a difference. Every person in the house follows them, even when they’re the person who has to be quarantined. We’ve also used the same practices when someone has an operation pending to ensure they are as well as they can be before the surgery and to help them recover without having to deal with illness as well.
So, when OS came home with a sore throat, all of those measures went into place. Despite being a very intelligent young man, he is clueless about his proximity to others and doesn’t seem to recognise the warnings his body gives that he is about to cough on people. He did very well in science at school but doesn’t understand how the transmission of germs occurs. He does, however, accept our protocols and follow them, with a bit of reminding every now and then.
Unfortunately, OS is also prone to blood noses. Very dramatic ones. He has caused us to have to leave cafes and restaurants as blood streams from his nose and over everything in front of him. He had such an extensive bleed at the gates of Dreamworld on our long-awaited holiday to Queensland that even my husband, a trained and experienced nurse, was concerned at the volume of blood pouring out. Hubby used up all of the tissues we always carry in trying to stem the flow, while OS’s blood soaked through his jumper as well. There doesn’t seem to be any trigger for the bleeds other than the combination of allergies, a deviated septum and a tendency to put his fingers up his nose to relieve the pressure.
Last night, at 2 a.m., I was sound asleep when I heard a banging noise and an urgent whisper. OS’s whisper is really just a tone down from his usual loud voice, and it woke me instantly. There he was, in our bedroom doorway, rapping on the partly open door. “Mum, Dad, I need help. I’ve had a massive nosebleed, and it’s all over the walls”. Hubby didn’t seem to notice the noise and had to work that day, so I jumped up and went to him. On the way out the door, I grabbed a mask because OS hadn’t put his on. Regardless of what he had, I didn’t want it, and neither did I want to be face down scrubbing blood off the toilet floor and walls without one. I didn’t, however, because I was tired and not thinking straight, think to also grab my glasses.
It turned out not to matter. I could see, even if not clearly, the bright red blood on the dark blue tiles and beige walls. It looked like someone had slaughtered something in that tiny room. As OS had entered the toilet room, he had either coughed or sneezed. Blood streaks ran down the wall from the toilet paper dispenser to the first row of wall tiles that has to be installed in bathrooms and toilets here in Western Australia. It stood out clearly against the dark floor, too – shiny on matte tiles. Even worse was the toilet bowl. OS had tried to block the flow with toilet paper which he then threw into the loo, not realising it would expand and prevent the toilet from flushing effectively. Clearly, he wasn’t one of those kids at High School who regularly vandalised toilets by blocking them up or throwing wads of wet paper at the ceiling.
At the same time that I was digesting the horror, OS was talking loudly about his lack of ability to know how to fix it. I signalled for him to shush because his brother was asleep in the next room, exhausted from attending a weekend-long LAN game. The last thing I needed was for his brother to wake up and need to use the loo. I also couldn’t process OS talking at the same time as trying to use my sleep-addled brain to work out what to do next.
I did the only things I could think of at two in the morning. I grabbed a bucket and bottle of disinfectant spray. I sprayed everything – the walls, the floors, the toilet bowl and even the white toilet step designed to help prevent constipation because it was covered in blood splatter as well. I then went to the kitchen and grabbed some paper towels. When I got back to the toilet, the spray had loosened the blood from the walls, so I wiped everything down and threw the bloody paper in the bucket. Then I had to deal with the toilet bowl. All I could think to do was get some tongs – which I promise you will never be used again – and dip them into the toilet to remove the soggy clumps of now-red paper. Blood and water poured from them as I did so. I was glad I couldn’t see everything that was going on. Once that paper was also dumped in the bucket, I flushed the bright red water from the bowl. OS thankfully had retreated to his room by then, so I didn’t have two of us feeling like vomiting from looking at it.
I left OS with the instructions that if it happened again, he was to use the paper towel instead of toilet paper and dump it all in the bucket (now emptied) in the hallway. Then I played that classic covid game – because it was still possible he was contagious – of how to not touch things. I had to touch our bathroom door to get in and the tap to wash my hands. Thankfully we have flick mixers, and I know how to use one with the side of my hand or arm instead of my fingers. After I scrubbed my hands and disposed of the mask, I then had to clean the bathroom door handles because it wouldn’t be fair to my husband to touch the same knobs if he woke, not knowing they were potentially a source of infection. Eventually, satisfied I had done as much as I could, I got back into bed. I was just drifting off to sleep when I realised I hadn’t been very clear in my instructions to OS. All I could think was that he now probably thought I meant to use the paper towel for his nose, not to clean up after himself. I couldn’t summon enough energy to go back and give more explicit instructions – that is, use tissues for your nose but put them in the bucket, and then use the paper towel to clean the wall and floors. I decided my best course of action was to try to rest and deal with whatever disaster greeted me when I got up, hopefully with a bit more sleep behind me.
I managed to get another couple of hours of sleep after talking myself through a breathing routine that a friend showed me. I visualise a square and then follow its lines while either breathing in, holding, breathing out and holding again. I count to five if I can along each line or three if I’m more stressed. I definitely couldn’t manage five because I was very wound up and alert. I dropped to three instead and focused on the square and the count. I remember getting back up to four (breathe in while counting to four, hold to the count of four, breathe out to the count of four, hold again for four before breathing in) and then woke, feeling rather stuffed, at 6:30 a.m.
Thankfully there had been no other incidents overnight. The toilet was still clean; OS was asleep and snoring. I felt completely done in, but given that Monday is my day off, even though it is always full of appointments, I was able to move slowly until I got my head back together. This, my friends, is life with autism. With children who look like competent adults, and indeed are in some areas of their lives, but who still need their Mumma’s at two in the morning when they’re flustered and scared. He’s 23 years old now, my darling son and sometimes I still feel like the parent of a twenty-three-month-old, up at random times in the night, dealing with whatever need has presented itself.
A Glorious Mess 