My wife and I were on our way home after she picked me up from work yesterday afternoon, when we received a fairly frantic call from our 12-year-old daughter. She told us that Anthony was bleeding and upset. My wife could not immediately ascertain from her whether he was bleeding from his teeth or cheek.

Our daughter is mature beyond her years (usually!), and some of that is likely due to having a special-needs older brother. So, we have not had qualms about her meeting his school bus if it does arrive before we get home. We might have to reconsider that position if we have another incident like this.

The bus driver told her that Anthony was upset, and asked if she was all right taking him. She thought she would be OK doing so--she and her younger brother generally know how to handle themselves if he is angry--went on the bus a couple of steps to see him, and turned to get back off to wait for him to be released. She saw him hitting his head against a window, but did not pay that particular attention because we have all seen it before.

This time, however, she heard the window break, and spun around to see him running off the bus with blood streaming down his face. She ran into the house to call us and appropriately left him on the doorstep.

We returned a couple of minutes later. I went to Anthony while my wife spoke with the bus driver. His sweatshirt was rather drenched, and he appeared to have at least cut his ear in addition to having a sizable chunk taken out of his cheek.

I went to look at the side of the bus and saw the tempered glass fragments on the ground. The uniformity of the pieces gave me hope that, while his appearance was admittedly unsettling, he did not have fragments embedded in his skin.

The bus driver had called paramedics as soon as the incident occurred, and they also arrived within minutes of our return. One aspect of Anthony's level of autism is that he has a very low comprehension of speech. I am, almost without exception, unable to convince people of that initially, and the paramedics were no different in this regard. They attempted to tell him what they were doing and that it would not hurt, et cetera. I told them that I would need to hold and brace him to calm him while they worked on him.

The paramedics were very conscientious in their attempts to work on Anthony. They bandaged his head nicely, to the extent that it reminded me of a Civil War wounded soldier when they were through. However, one of them asked if he could cut away Anthony's sweatshirt. I suppose he assumed that, due to the extent of the blood on it, it was unsalvageable. So, I agreed. It turned out, though, that he simply wanted to cut way to expose Anthony's arm to measure his blood pressure. The sweatshirt was rather loose, and the sleeve could easily have been pushed up to accomplish that. It was a new sweatshirt. Oh well. It was indeed soaked. Anyway, Anthony spent parts of the remainder of the night trying to get his sleeve to feel like a sleeve again.

The paramedics offered to take Anthony in an ambulance to a hospital, but my wife and I did not think his injuries were that serious despite his appearance. We also naturally wanted to confirm with insurance where we could go and be covered.

We have a newer hospital nearby, and left our two younger children to go there after speaking to the insurance company. However, the attending physician in the urgent care center felt that Anthony would need to be sedated to check his ear, and referred us to another hospital because she said they did not have that capability.

I called my mother, and asked how her evening was looking. Knowing how things can be with Anthony, she hardly seemed fazed when I explained the situation and asked if she could come to stay with our kids since it had become likely that we would be gone for a while.

We arrived at the other hospital, and, as unfortunately seems to often be the case with emergency rooms, did not actually get to Anthony's main examination for three hours. The cafeteria food was pretty good while we were waiting, though. I shared with my wife a pear and Gorgonzola salad with strawberry vinaigrette dressing, and later went back for a grilled tuna with cheese on wheat bread. My wife burned her tongue on the soup that she was separately eating because neither of us knew when Anthony would be attended to, and she ate it quickly while it was still too hot.

When all was said and done, we were there for five hours, coming home about 11:30pm. Anthony ultimately did not require sedation (meaning we didn't have to go to the second hospital), as he was getting tired and I was able to hold his head and cover his eyes while he was stitched up. He does have cuts on his head as well. The doctors recommended a CT scan, and, although afraid of the costs rising before our eyes, we agreed that it needed to be done to look for glass (there was none, thankfully).

As the doctors had thought he would need to be sedated, he ate virtually nothing the entire evening. So, we gave him some of the food that my parents had bought for our other children when they came over. Because it was so far after our normal bedtimes, we forewent washing Anthony or changing his clothes--I changed the sweatshirt with the cut sleeve, but not his undershirt which also had blood on it--choosing instead to shower with him this morning. I tried washing off the inside of his ear but gave up when it became apparent that would simply produce more blood.

The cut on his cheek is close enough to his eye that we have to cut off most of one side of a bandage to put over the sutures. Then, of course, it is difficult to keep the bandage on. We have been instructed to keep "triple" ointment on the cut and his ear where he was stitched as well until they heal. Anthony has inner stitches and outer stitches on his cheek, and we have been told that the outer stitches are purposely the non-dissolving type so that he will not be easily able to pull them out. We are to go back to the hospital in precisely five days to have them removed. We are hoping we can do that without another emergency room insurance co-payment.

I am taking today off from work and staying home with Anthony. I will be surprised if I have not forgotten some post-worthy details from this incident as I attempt to be (relatively) brief in getting it all down, so I anticipate adding something later.

I went to buy some skewers yesterday. When I returned home with my purchase, my daughter asked what skewers are usually used for. The reason she asked that is because skewers are mostly used for something entirely separate from their main purpose in our household.

As with some other information I pass along about Anthony, this is not pleasant. If you have tired of reading about unpleasant issues, please stop reading now until the next post.

I have written about the infrequency of Anthony's bowel movements. Because he rarely goes more than once every five days or so, the output (with its compact nature) clogs the toilet. Unclogging in these cases often cannot be accomplished just with a plunger. I have resorted to using skewers to break up the matter in the toilet. It can take quite a while. My younger son saw me working at this last night after I bought the skewers and said he felt sorry for me. I thanked him for his sympathy.