A New Chapter

I brought Jovanna home today. The sub-acute wanted to keep her through the weekend and Monday to observe and I decided I wanted her to come home. She was stable and doing well and she really wanted to come home. This has been a real learning and growing experience as Jovanna's mother. Her dystonic/tardive dyskenisia movements seem to be getting better. This is good news. She may have some lingering eye movements that we hope will get better over time. But the greatest thing that has come out of this experience is that I am rediscovering Jovanna all over again. Once Jovanna was removed off of two medications that were pretty heavy duty medications, all of a sudden we began seeing some very exciting things from her. She was managing frustrations, quite typical and very much alive.

I think we may have been overmedicating her. There was a time a few years ago that she was so unsafe that without the medications, she would not have been able to live at home. But it appears that she has grown and matured and gotten through some of the toughest years for children like Jovanna, on the Autism Spectrum / Aspergers. She has returned to me from a very scary incident on very few medications and a child that I don't quite know, but I like a whole lot. She is polite, she is thoughtful, she is managing frustrations and disappointments. This feels like a whole new world. Could it be a new chapter in our lives? I am excited to see where this goes. What I have noticed about Jovanna on her first day home is other than a few idiosyncracies that are very related to Aspergers, she seems like a very typical child. Might be time to turn the page and start a new chapter in our lives...