teen autism: ear canal landscaping

“Getting an object stuck in the ear is a relatively common problem, especially in toddlers,” WebMD. Teen autism, on the other hand, is not always best viewed with a chronological scale.

Sometime last evening a certain 16 year old autistic teen decided to landscape his ear canal while out in the back yard.

Having just returned from watching “Pink Panther 2” with Patti, I channeled Inspector Clouseau and deduced the culprit was likely a crushed slate chip, probably 3/8th inch (9 mm) in size.

Jagged edged and stone it was likely NOT to become dislodged by itself. Plus autistic behavior of frequent fingers in the ears was only compounding and worsening.

I learned from Jennifer that over the years landscaping of his ear canal while not an every day occurrence has gone in spurts and included stones, sticks, and arts and crafts supplies. Removal requires hospital emergency room visits and usually sedation since her son resists help.

Anytime sedation is involved there are not only increased risks but exponentially higher medical costs.

After 6 hours including visits to two hospital emergency rooms the slate fragment was successfully removed without anesthesia.

Is “all’s well that end’s well”? Yes and no. While maternally relieved and happy, Mom is also out a day’s work and faced with trying to turn this into a teaching tool of ‘bad choices vs good choices’ through all the learning channel noise of autism.

Now certainly, doing truly stupid things is part of being a teenager. One might even argue essential to the learning process of transition from childhood to adulthood.

Teen + autism may be an equation that could challenge any theory of relativity.

Caregivingly Yours, Patrick Leer
web site: http://caregivinglyyours.com/
videos: http://www.youtube.com/daddyleer
musings: Patrick Ponders ...