Shabby Miss Jenn

Tuesday 8 July 2008

My sincerest apologies!

It has been so long since my last post, life has a funny way of throwing the odd curve ball your way no matter how well you may be prepared for it. I do apologise to all my readers for not blogging as often as I could be but here I am with an update.....now now stay calm...rofl!

Life is still very busy for me and I am still pretty much flying solo with everything although Tim has improved, it is still a long and bumpy road for him with his deep depression but he is so much better then he has been in a long while and for those that know anything about mental breakdowns and deep depression it is so dibilatating for so long but I know there is a light at the end of the tunnel and eventually it will be bigger and brighter and closer then it is now.

Lance seems to be doing ok. Although we do have a diagnosis for him now (in part) it has been a long time coming and although it explains so much and is a relief to finally have an answer after all these years of incredible upheavel and difficulty, the family and I are still coming to terms with it all. Lance is autistic....he has autism.

For the past 3 months his case manager has been dealing with Lance and I, trying to figure out how to help Lance with his own breakdown and depression (although we now know it was a major meltdown) when something I mentioned to him made him click into thinking Lance had Asperger's Syndrome or Autism. A meeting was held with all the professionals including paediatricians dealing with Lance and he put forth the idea that his gut instinct was what we were dealing with was ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) and had been all of Lance's life (he will be 17 in Sep). Everyone felt strongly that it had been missed and an assessment was carried out in May with everyone expecting it to be Asperger's Syndrome and we were lead to believe that it was looking more and more like it. So what does one do but as much research into Asperger's (which is on the autism spectrum) as much as possible until we were told it was not Asperger's but indeed autism and so it upped on the scale. As to exactly where on the spectrum it will be is still to come but we now have a diagnosis and we are now looking at all things Autism.....now remember both Asperger's Syndrome and Autism are on the same spectrum.

Because of the enormous difficulty Lance has in school we now need to look at pulling him out of where he is and putting him in another school (something that has been strongly encouraged by the experts) so he can manage and the teachers there are well equipped and able to handle someone with not only Autism but his severe anxiety levels (part of having autism) so we were strongly encouraged to learn as much as we could these school holidays on autism and when school starts back we can go in fully armed and ready to negotiate with the school Lance's situation. This is just in the short term as they team will be implementing plans but until we get the full scaled diagnosis this is something to be done just until then. We meet on the 18th of July and hopefully the team will have an answer but of course Lance starts back on the 14th and will have 5 days to manage as best as he can under the circumstances and trust me when I say the circumstances at his school are bad I really mean it. But I won't say anymore there because as much as it helps to vent and let it all out, it does no-one any good so I'll just leave it for now but they will be in for a shock when I tell them the reality and they will have to listen this time.

Anyway as you can well imagine there has been alot happening and blogging was not exactly on my priority list because I just had to take a step back and take everything in for awhile and after reading this I hope you will all understand and forgive me.

With all of this going on I have had to say goodbye to my CT committments with Pickleberrypop, something that did not come easy, a decision I did not make lightly and one that I mulled over for weeks before I decided that I could not keep up with the pressure of 1 LO a week.....4 LO's a month all the time. I felt it was not only unfair to the rest of the team that I may not be pulling my weight as usual but also the designers. Being on a store CT is a tad more difficult then that of a designer so I have now resigned but the good news is that the invitation is open if I want to go back on once things have settled down in my life.

The good news is that I am still on Tara Dunstan's and Bella Scraps MagazineTM as they are much more flexible and the requirements something I can manage. I couldn't give up all my CT's and besides Tara has become a great friend and has been there every step of the way for me with all Tim and Lance's stuff and I am not willing to give up BSM.

Scrapping is my passion, it is my "time out" in this crazy world of mine and it is something that I just love so you'll still see plenty of LO's and I hope you will still enjoy each and everyone of them.
Having said that here are a few recent ones for you to enjoy!


If you pop by and read this post please pop in and say hi.....I would really apreciate it. Anyway until next blogging, we are on the 2nd week of school holidays here so I'm not spending as much time on the pc, please take care and stay safe and don't forget to tell someone you love them cause we all need to hear that as often as we can.
To all you school holidayers out there.....we're past the half way mark now so stay sane....rofl! Hugs Chris xoxo

3 comments:

Mel said...

((Hugs)) Chris.
Hope the diagnosis gets Lance the help he needs.
And glad Tim is doing better.

ksharonk said...

Hey Chris ... just popping in to say Hi!!! LOVE the doggy layout ... :)

Melissa said...

Hi Chris, Sorry to hear things have been so difficult lately. Hopefully things will improve on both fronts now. Great layouts, scrapping is definately a great "time out". Take care.