Mr. Adorable

Dr. "hey Paul can I fix your eyes today"?

Paul after thinking for a minute or two "okay, just don`t break them".

I was under the impression that they were just a little bit broken already otherwise we would not be there, I would not have filled out more forms then a person can keep track of, and answered the same questions over many times.

One of the nurses, who by the way looked like she was about fourteen, called Paul Mr. Adorable.

Paul gave her a wide eyed look and said," I not Mr. Do-able, I Paul" for the rest of the time we were at the hospital everyone was calling him Mr. Adorable.

Ms Nurse asked him if he wanted to put on some of there blue PJ's and of course he did not because he already had on the ones he had worn from home, no way did he want to take them off. He most certainly did not want to part with his Tow- Mater underwear cuz Mater is a tuck (truck) well now everyone figured out that he is totally obsessed with anything that has wheels and a motor so they talked him into the blue PJ's by putting car and truck stickers all over them. He did not give up his Tow-Mater underwear though they were going to have to get them off when he was asleep.

The next thing after getting the vitals a half dozen times and giving him some medication to send him to la-la land was going to be to get him off mom`s lap and onto the bed. One of the nurses suggested that the bed was a car since it has wheels, but he was still having nothing to do with getting off mom`s lap so they decided that Mom needed to dress from head to toe in the gorgeous, blue, paper clothes and take a ride with him on that car to the operating room.

Surgery went fine, and then trying to keep him calm while we waited and waited and waited to see if he was going to have a seizure was exhausting, but there were no seizures so it all ended well. We finally got to go home and they gave him a balloon. He has been really, really quiet today. This is the kid who never sits still or stops talking so while he rested in the big blue chair I was able to go through the mail that had been piled up here for the last three days.

Mr. Adorable did a super terrific job of handling all of this. He has no fear of being abandoned, has clear boundaries, and is not anxious about anything. He was appropriate with expressing his desires and as long as everything went one step at a time, with clear simple directions he could handle it. He is hyperactive, a concrete, thinker, and impulsive but we can work with that because he is attached without question. It also helped that the staff at this major medical center has had extensive training in working with kids who have special needs. They were very good about asking what was going to work best for Paul, they listened and followed through with the suggestions, and they were flexible enough to make accommodations where they were needed.