My wife bought a shrink-wrapped box of chocolates yesterday as a Christmas gift to send to her grandmother overseas. She put it on the counter, out of the way, intending to prepare it later for mailing. She was then busy doing something else when she heard noises that alerted her to potential trouble.

Anthony must have been hungry. The top tier of chocolates--fourteen pieces--was gone, and he had polished off two from the bottom as well. He did not display any ill effects that a normal person might after that kind of consumption, but he did become unusually violent later. It is difficult to determine if the overdose of sugar contributed to that, but it may be worth looking into. A friend with an autistic child tells us that her son is considerably better-behaved recently, without medication, after eliminating sugar from his diet.

Anthony has broken a couple of items in the house this week. First was the toilet seat or, more accurately, the hinge between the seat and the lid. The toilet seat itself can still be used--carefully--until we get another. The second casualty was a wall clock in the living room today. My wife did not see it happen, but heard the clock crashing to the floor. I imagine that we will find a cheap replacement easily enough. Honorable mention goes to a screen on one of the doors entering our house. He knocked it out before he came inside. I'm guessing we are lucky to not have raised the accompanying sliding glass pane into its normal position.

I intended to write about another relevant topic today, but have decided instead to write about my inability to sleep well, which is due at least in part to issues with Anthony. I have chosen to write it while I am far from an ideal state of rest, realizing that my writing may not be to whatever standard it might ordinarily be, but hopefully capturing the surreal nature that is lost when one reverts to a "normal" state.

I believe I can relate to a person who has been a victim of sleep-deprivation torture. I am not attempting to be facetious, and I do not mean to devalue the experiences of those who have actually suffered this as prisoners of war. I also otherwise clearly go about much of my existence with pleasant experiences and positive relationships with my wife and children--even Anthony, to an extent--that would not be associated with incarceration. However, I think I do deal with some of the same causes, if unintentional, and also some of the same effects.

I have not slept well for years. I don't know if I have gotten into that pattern directly because of Anthony, but it did begin at the same time that he started not sleeping for extended periods at night as a small child. I have had high blood pressure for years. I am overweight, although I am attempting to eat more healthily and exercise here and there, and am having some success trimming down. But, of more immediate concern to me (and probably related to the chronic issues) is that I feel like my health is deteriorating. I became sick a couple of months ago and, although the "sickness" is nominally gone, I have not returned to what had become an accepted level of health for me. That is worrisome, because even the previous level was characterized by being tired all the time.

I have been taking the sleeping medication Ambien, or a generic of it. But I still do not sleep a full night. I am going to try the "controlled release" version of it, even if insurance doesn't happen to cover much of the cost.

Yesterday morning, I had returned to sleep after about two hours awake in the middle of the night, and was sleeping deeply when Anthony woke me up. I am guessing that we did not feed him enough the previous night. Unfortunately for me (and my wife, who also was sleeping soundly), Anthony often is the most animated when he wakes up and needs to go to the bathroom or is hungry. Of course, telling him to go the bathroom does not get him to quiet down, and he will not go and feed himself, so attempts to lie in bed and wait him out do not work; eventually he wins and the deep sleep cycle is history.

I was trying to rest this afternoon as well. I had closed the bedroom door, abandoning family interactions for what I supposed would necessarily be a few hours. Just as I was sleeping soundly, again, Anthony began bothering my younger son's action figures. Naturally, my younger son wanted Anthony to stop. That upset him, and his loud reaction jolted me out of the sleep cycle.

My brain continues to be hazy, but I will not be able to go back to sleep for a while and, by that time, it will be late enough in the evening that I run into preparations for bedtime for everyone. I will have to try to ensure that all of us go to bed as quickly as is reasonably possible.

The most immediate of the immediate concerns--written that way intentionally--is that I have on occasion experienced pain in my head that I would describe as shooting from the center toward the top left side. It can be an intense, heartbeat-correlated pain. I don't know what a stroke is like, and I have not done any research to this point, but I am guessing that it would be a more severe version of what I sometimes feel. I can often tell that I am approaching the possibility for that to happen--not a stroke, but what I already experience--when I am not getting to sleep as quickly as I would like. Clearly, I need to alter my approach to getting sufficient rest, and that includes accounting for the "X-factor" that is Anthony.

We have a bottle of a red liquid in our shower. It might be shampoo, and we are using it as such. However, the bottle size matches that of many body washes we buy, and the consistency of this liquid seems a little different from what we are used to with shampoo. We may never know which it is unless we go to a store and look for an identical item, because Anthony opened the cabinet and peeled off labels on several products. We do have another bottle there that we are certain is a different brand of body wash despite any writing.

A significant focus of the meeting with Anthony's school staff was how to prevent him from pulling labels and stickers off anything in sight. I readily understood why that would be a concern after seeing how items, drawers, and cabinets were marked there. Anthony has been taking a medication prescribed to lower his level of obsessiveness, but it clearly either does not work or has yet to produce the intended effect. Anthony's teacher has created a small board with stickers for the express purpose of re-directing his energies. This nevertheless appears to be meeting with only limited success.

This fetish may sound like just a minor nuisance. However, we have other items around the house that are essentially useless because of Anthony. The ice/water dispenser on our refrigerator has a black panel with six red lights, for example, but what are they for? The remote controls for both an oscillating fan and our daughter's boom box (a birthday present) similarly have no markings, and we no longer have any idea how far to turn the dial to produce the desired temperature on our griddle.

Beyond his existing victims, what if Anthony starts to target cleaning solutions? What if our medicine cabinet, with some prescriptions, comes to his attention? Unlike dealing with a small child, he does have enough awareness--and height--to discover objects of interest virtually anywhere in the house. We won't make the mistake of attempting to use them without labels, so we may potentially be left with a lot of worthless stock that requires additional expense to replace. It may also be difficult to convince a pharmacy of the legitimate need to replace a prescription before it should have been used. We might ultimately invest in a locking cabinet in which to hide these things if it comes to that.

We met with Anthony's teacher and other school staff last night. Based on experiences of my wife (with another school previously) and a friend who also has an autistic son, I was prepared for a potentially uncomfortable exchange. Thankfully, it was not that way at all. The school principal, who had come to our house as soon as she heard about Anthony breaking the school bus window, was there and very involved. The teacher was positive and clearly looking for ways to improve the situation for both Anthony and those who deal with him. At the least, ideas were generated that perhaps would not have been otherwise.

One concern I had that ultimately is probably not an issue was the lack of hand-washing before consumption of food. The teacher would not have sanitized his hands last night before giving him a treat if I had not mentioned it, and the conversation on food-based rewards deepened my suspicions. To top it off, she said that Anthony is good about washing his own hands after using the toilet. I cringed inside when I heard that. Anthony "washing" his hands consists of him putting his hands in the water, putting some soap on them, and patting them together a bit as the water is running on them. He does not understand the "why" of washing, so he does not perform the "how". Nevertheless, we are probably lucky in that regard: Anthony simply does not get sick very often, and it isn't as though he himself has qualms about eating anything, anywhere, off of any surface. Perhaps it is not feasible to sanitize the children's hands each time a treat is given. If so, we will continue to hope that Anthony's anomalous physiology keeps him free of serious illness.

I also took Anthony to the bathroom at the school before the meeting. After seeing the toilet, I can only ask myself what the designers of a school for special-needs children were thinking. The toilet was attached to the wall without support on the floor. I am of course certain that the support is secure for regular use. However, I cannot imagine that the school will never have other incidents of children breaking toilets away from the wall in the future.

Regarding bodily functions, I realize now that my wife and I may be taking for granted Anthony's ability to use the toilet. It is true that we make significant efforts to ensure that he does not wet himself or do worse, and yet he still does occasionally. Nevertheless, the school staff we spoke with said they do have other children there who are Anthony's age, yet are still in diapers.

***

After I came home from work tonight, we ate dinner quickly and left for my daughter's school presentation. Anthony did not last long in the auditorium, and I believe I know why: when we returned, he promptly went to the toilet and plugged it again. Because of the hurried nature of the evening, I was looking forward to relaxing just a little bit before dealing with something like that.

I knew I needed to give him a bath, so I turned on the water, checked the temperature, and had him get in while I began attending to the toilet. When I saw that the water was the right level, I turned it off and again checked the temperature. He had apparently decided that the knob turned some to the left was not in the correct position, and returned it to vertical so that the water was now decidedly cool rather than nicely heated. Unplugging the toilet had turned out to be more work than I anticipated, so now not only did I still have a plugged toilet, but I needed to immediately deal with Anthony in the bath so that he would not get too cold. As I write this about the time we would normally be getting kids to bed, the toilet still is not ready for use.

The school district of which Anthony was a part split this year. As a result, Anthony is attending a new school with teachers and aides who are unfamiliar with him. After the recent incident with the school bus window, the relationship between them and my wife--I have yet to meet them--has become decidedly cooler as there has been what to us has seemed a heightened sensitivity to Anthony's actions. His previous teachers seemed to be prepared to deal with him, but my wife has lately had some of his behavior presented to her in a way as if to ask her what she can do about it.

Alas, Anthony is not helping us out; today's occurrence cannot be dismissed as something that he has done before.

When Anthony is upset and is told to use the bathroom, he sometimes bounces up and down on the toilet as he vocalizes his displeasure. He did that today at school. . . and did it with enough force to break the toilet away from the wall. Water all over the place. I don't think the design of our toilet here at home would have allowed that, but he has indeed broken a toilet seat on one of my parents' toilets previously. Gratefully, my parents are my parents; they did not charge us for the replacement!

Because of concerns about Anthony, we have been asked to meet with the school in a few days. I do not know if there is a possibility for the school to refuse to accept him. That likelihood would clearly present us with additional problems that we do not need.

Our hand soap refill bottle ran out a couple of days ago, followed by the dispenser in our bathroom. I exchanged that with the one at the kitchen sink, expecting it to last until we made a trip to the store.

Yesterday, I was baffled to find the replaced dispenser already empty, then realized when I went to the kitchen that it had been switched back. I surmised that one of our younger children had done it, but could not determine why, and swapped them yet again.

The true culprit was discovered this morning as my wife was trying to get Anthony out of the house to board the school bus. It turns out that he knows which dispenser "belongs" in a particular location, and hurriedly traded the two one more time while my wife waited at the door.

***

On another note, I saw Anthony's shirt sleeve with what appeared to be red stains on it this evening. Anthony regularly has stains of various types on his clothing from food in particular, but also from something he might have been doing at school, so I wasn't surprised. I finally noticed, however, that he was bleeding from his ear. More disconcerting is that the source was the cut that had received a stitch rather than the other scratches in his ear that had also bled. That suture ultimately will have been for nothing.

I took Anthony back to get his stitches removed yesterday. The nurses thanked me for keeping ointment on them. I wasn't aware of this beforehand, but not following that directive apparently causes a cut like that to scab over to the point that removing the sutures becomes an impossibility. We have also been told to put sunscreen on the cut any time he is outside, regardless of the weather, for a year to minimize scarring.

Anthony has a long history of hitting his head against walls and the like. I remember all of us (myself, my wife, and two small children at the time) trying to take a nap together. I had Anthony, who was perhaps four years old, lying next to me. I was lying on my side with an arm over him. Without warning, he rammed his head back, and hit me squarely in the nose. I have never been punched in the nose, but I can't imagine the pain being worse. I have since kept my distance on the occasions when I lie next to Anthony to try to get him to sleep.

He was a little younger than that when he routinely targeted a glass pane on a multimedia cabinet in our living room. Our repeated attempts to distract him were unsuccessful, and he eventually hit it hard enough that it broke. Perhaps because he was so young, the experience seemed to frighten him and he stopped for a time. A friend asked me if this latest incident will deter him for a while. Sadly, I don't think so. I sat with him in the back of our car while my wife drove to the hospital, and it is probably a good thing I did, because he did lean over several times to try to hit the window. We must now alter how we monitor him when he shows any sign of agitation if he is near glass.