Monday things went well. Two very good things happened. First Hope and I had an appointment with her academic advisor and the person for on campus housing. This was HUGE! We have been working hard almost since Hope started at the university. You see Hope has a form of autism called Aspegers and on top of that she has really severe food allergies. These two things didn't work with a typical dual occupancy dorm room and cafeteria food. After talking with a psycologist, a counselor, and a couple of doctors we decided she needed to make a big change. So we limped through the semester with her making her own food with a microwave, a small crock pot, and a little fridge. But it barely worked. Since October the school and Todd & I have brain stormed ideas.
Do we rent an apartment for her? Do we have her in a dorm where there is a kitchen but also other roommates? What about a single room? How would this effect her socially? Then at the beginning of November she had a panic attack worse than she has ever had before. It was terrible. I ended up driving down to her school in the middle of the night to calm her down. The issue? --Having no alone space. People with Aspegers need alone time where they can create their base-- a safe place if you will. She did not have that. So that changed the whole dynamics of what everyone thought she needed.
After that I met with her advisor. But at that time nothing was available that would really work for her. So we set up this meeting we had yesterday and Hope felt stuck. She was in tears and was more stressed than I have seen her before. I didn't realize just how worried I was about it either. Then yesterday it was like God's light shined through. It was a fluke.
The housing person was presenting the same options and Hope was trying to accept that she was still going to have a roommate when the housing person said "Hold on let me check on something." She left the room and a moment later came back to tell us that she had a small apartment in the building Hope was already in. To top that-- next week after finals Hope could move her things in and it is about a thousand dollars less expensive than the other option we had been talking about. We got to see it. Oh my goodness! Hope was ecstatic! So was I. It has a small kitchen, living room, full bathroom, and a queen size bed! I couldn't have found something so right. She will still be in the freshman building. It is a place she knows the routines. That is important. She can still walk to many of her classes and activities. But she has the space she needs.
After that Hope decided she wanted to go to a couple events this next week on campus and I saw my happy fun loving daughter again. There was an ugly sweater party. She was really interested in and so we found an ugly sweater and bought it. Then Megan called and I got my second piece of excellent news.
Megan has also been in classes. She is working through an online school and she takes one class at a time. Each one takes seven weeks. She started a week or so after Hope and she is trying to maintain a 4.0 gpa. With this last class at two weeks in Alex became severely sick with a virus. She came close to taking him to a hospital and we don't do hospitals. Then she got real sick. All in all it cost her two weeks, but the professor was nice and told her to keep up and work on turning in the stuff she missed. Well she worked really hard along with interviewing for jobs, being my publicist, putting together a Bradley birth class session, and-- oh yeah-- as if I could forget-- being Alex's mom. Guess what? She got everything done for the class. She was hoping for an A- but expected a B. Turns out she got her A. Not an A- but a full blown A and her professor gave her an awesome review on her last paper. I am so proud of her! She found out her grade yesterday and so I had two reasons to feel good. Thought I would share some feely good stuff this time instead of my emotional ahhh crap. Anyway this is Cat out.
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