My life has never gone to my Grand plan. Every time I adjusted my plan for happenings in my life and got myself on a new road, yet another bump in the road would happen.
It started after failing HSC by one mark.....thats right, I failed English by one bloody mark. I could have given up then, but I didnt. I went back to nightschool, picked up extra subjects and then started on getting into the career I really wanted by the backdoor. Science was everything for me in those days. Little did I know at that stage just how mundane it really was. For every breakthrough in science, there are thousand and thousands of man hours put in doing the same tests over and over again. I participated in lots of great projects and saw some major achievements for science which stemmed from my original work. Originally I worked in wool technology, developing finishes and pressing of the fabric so that it behaved in a manner better suited for suiting and tailoring. Hardly exciting stuff, but I saw our work come to fruition when the Olympic team wore our fabric. It is now also a standard practice in superfine wools, you know the really really expensive stuff. Next I moved into health. I used to be on a team screening pregnant women for diabetes. Diabetes can cause major problems to babies and the mortality rates of these babies used to be quite high. With my testing work, it was discovered that all women were at risk for gestational diabetes, but in particular those of the middle eastern and asian origin and aboriginal decent. Now it is routine to test all women at 30 to 34 weeks and it has saved many lives. Next I moved into pure research. I asssisted PHD students with their projects. I worked on some of the original DNA sequencing of HPV. In those days we were still developing the techniques for Gene testing, it really was very cutting edge. This research was later used by a different team to develop the Guardisil Vaccine...again something that will save many women from cervical cancer. I look at that work with a lot of pride knowing how many it will save. I worked on ecoli too..research leading to vaccines for gastro. I loved science, but it really got quite boring at times, tests done over and over again hundreds of times. I used to have a winged pig hanging over my desk......PIGS MIGHT FLY ONE DAY...put there by my boss to keep me thinking that miracles really do happen and that I just had to believe.
I thought and was told due to scar tissue and endometriosis that it would be a miracle if I ever fell pregnant. So, I planned my life around that and went back to uni to do my accounting degree while still working as a scientist in animal health. Grand plans assunder again....LOL...I fell pregnant in my last semester. I failed one subject though due to morning sickness, so had to go back with babe in arms to finish it. The lecturer still remembers his youngest ever student.
I worked for a little while, trying to juggle toddler and a 50 hour work week and commuting an hour or more to work and marriage was just so difficult. I ended up giving up work to be a stay at home mum. This was when the black dog really hit. He bit me on the ass so hard I lost myself. Post natal depression is a devastating illness, a total black hole where there just didnt seem even a glimmer of light. I remember the contemplations of suicide , the thinking about how I was going to do it every waking moment and the incessant crying over my beautiful little boy. I bought a piece of hose, 3 rolls of duct tape and I left them close to the carpark in the YouYangs....I was ready to go. I got Steves Mum and Dad to babysit Bman, and I headed to the carpark. When I got there though, some kids had found the bag, the police were there...I sat in the carpark and just cried my heart out. I rang the doctor and much to his credit, he dropped all tools and came to me. For that I will be eternally grateful. He referred me to a great Psychologist who really put my life back on track and gave me the support I really needed. Thanks Marcus and Michael!!
Even at a young age, I knew Bman was different...he wasnt the same as any baby in our Mums group... but as he got older, the symptoms became more and more prevalent. He was totally OCD...he would constantly line his toys up rather than playing with them, had a total obsession with his body secretions and would ride his trike through the poo and through the house...it drove me nuts, and the constant meltdowns, anxiety and bolting and lack of meaningful speech. I was constantly told by family that he was normal, but hell I knew that it wasnt. It took a long time after diagnosis before family accepted it. My beautiful boy was autistic, and thank goodness I never listened to the original psych we saw....he said "don't have much hope, he won't ever be able to live a normal life and will go to special school" Fuck you pal!! I had other ideas.
By this stage I was pregnant with Melinda. I really made it my life work to help Bman as much as I could. It was constant. We used the Sonrise program before it was a program. A family in America had used a constant learning technique with their son, where every thing you did was a learning and exposure therapy for the child. Many many hours of showing him how to do things, helping him overcome the overwhelming anxieties by exposing him to it all at short but increasing doses. We were making progress, and then he started talking properly. He didnt develop functional language until about 6, but he was getting there.
Melinda was just such a beautiful baby......all smiles and this really engaging manner. She was just amazing and suprisingly, i had no postnatal depression with her, maybe because I had no unfinished business by that stage. I am a big believer that Post natal depressions is a symptom of underlying unfinished business. She developed so well, and hit all her milestones at the right times. At 9 months old, I fell pregnant again.
Steph was born. She was a great baby, very happy and engaging...she had great eye contact and would laugh like a hyena. She was just beautiful. I was thinking how lucky I was that the autism wasnt there with her. Then at 16 months, she changed......and how she changed. Over a 2 month period, she totally regressed...lost all emerging speech and started flapping and screaming. OMG, it had happened! My beautiful little girl became what I had totally feared. (Im crying as I write this). I was already pregnant with Jack by now. Steph got the diagnosis of severe autism for her 2nd birthday present and I got a new baby. I was devastated! I spent hours in a church, just wondering how the fuck I was ever going to cope with two autistic children (brent was pretty bad at this stage too). The minister sat with me for hours, just holding my hand and telling me that the strength was in me to keep going and that we were never sent burdens that He didnt think we would cope with. It was the hardest 24 hours I have ever had in my life.
I think I walked out of the church at 8.50, just as people were filtering in for the 9am service. The minister had sat with me for 6 hours. I remember him giving me a huge hug with 3 of the elders and sending me on the way with the words, "God knows you are strong" "You can do this" And you know.......I CAN!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment