Tag Archives: autism

Getting Used to It…

31 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by in Asperger's syndrome, Autism, Independence

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“I’m going out with work friends after work. They will bring me back to work so you can pick me up.” Marie’s text message on Friday afternoon to Ralph and I.

I paused before replying.  Not asking us. Just informing us.

Marie is the oldest and last of our children to move toward independence. Both Will and Patty are living together in another city. In the first part of 2016, we strongly urged Marie to move out of our house and find an apartment or a condo. We looked up apartment complexes and visited several. Ralph met a real estate agent/nurse at his cardiac rehab program and Marie and I looked at condos with her. Twice we were at the stage of signing papers; one to buy a one bedroom condo, one to rent an apartment. Only to back away at the last moment.

We went to Ohio for a weekend to pick up Patty from  grad school, leaving Marie at home alone. Marie cannot drive and had no friends that we knew of to hang around with. She was lonely and bored. After we got back, she informed us that she did not want to live alone. She then went up to her room and used half of the money she had saved for the down payment on a condo to pay off some of her student loans.

So much for our efforts to push her toward independence.

Then Ralph was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer in June. Our doctor made an appointment for him to be evaluated by a bone marrow transplant team in July.

I realized that we had to move out of our 100 year old house due to his immune deficiency, especially if he was going to get a bone marrow transplant.

To be honest, I had long talked about moving. I felt overwhelmed by all the stuff in our house, by the maintenance work that we could not keep up with, by the outside chores. Ralph had been ill since the fall of 2014. When I talked about moving, he said, “We can’t move until I have fixed it up.” But he wasn’t strong enough to do the work. And I didn’t have the time or the skill.

So I suggested helping Marie with a down payment on a condo, and having her get a mortgage with her job and her stellar credit. She had savings and no debt except her remaining student loan payments. And I believe God prepared this condo for this situation in our lives. This was the only property we looked at. We took a tour on July 3, 2016. Marie signed the mortgage on August 11, 2016. We moved in on August 20.

Instead of Marie living with us in our house, we are now living with Marie in her condo.

So yesterday, she let us know she was going out after work with Friends. With people we don’t know. Friends she had made at the job that God supplied. The first time she has ever done this alone. We have always supervised her outings or made sure she was with people that we knew and trusted. For me, it was almost as hard as the day that Will got on a plane by himself and flew to California for a week. I was nervous. But I couldn’t say no.

At eight, I texted her to see how it was going.

“We are walking around Rockford. We are having a good time,” she replied.

As the evening wore on, I said to Ralph, “You can start texting her at 10 to see when she is coming home.”

At 10, Ralph didn’t get any response. Texting or calling.

I messaged my younger daughter, Patty – Well, Marie is out with friends. I have never met these friends.

Patty – So? You don’t get to be protective like that forever. Let it go.

I texted Marie, and asked her to please call me. She called me at 11:00 and said she was on her way. I could hear the voice of the young man who was bringing her back home in the car. I asked if he was going to bring her home.

When she came home, we didn’t say anything about our concerns. We asked her what she did and did she have a good time. She had a wonderful time. They laughed a lot. Went to a restaurant that several different kinds of locally brewed root beers. They ate fried mushrooms, fried pickles, and chili dogs. We did mention that we would like it in the future if when she went out with her friends to have them drop her off at the condo. That way we wouldn’t have to go out in our car to get her late at night.

Patty is right. We can’t protect her forever. She will have a life of her own even while we live together. 80% of the employees at her job are required to have some sort of disability or health condition that is a barrier to employment. The young man who organized this outing is about 28 and just got his license last year. Four of them went out. Two young women and two young men. It’s normal for some of them to never be able to drive. And they took care of each other.

I’m not sure, but this might have been a date.

I guess I’ll have to get used to it…

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Vulnerability

29 Monday May 2017

Posted by in Asperger's syndrome, Autism, Disability, high functioning autism, Independence

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Patty has been living with her brother, Will, since February. On Wednesday evening, she she messaged me on Facebook.

Can I ask you something

And can you promise not to tell Dad?

Yes.

Will was conned by a young woman asking for money.

Cash?

Of course.

How?

So, she claimed to have fled an abusive relationship in Alabama…. She was at the grocery store. Will went shopping Monday.

Alone.

I was not there. Otherwise, this probably wouldn’t have happened.

How much did he give her?

Quite a bit.

Does she know where you live?

I’m not sure the total amount.

No.

Good.

We kind of know where she is supposed to live.

How do you know he was conned?

I think we need to call the police. Weeell. He went and saw her tonight (she was asking for help again.)

How much?

And she claimed to have lost her wallet. That’s tonight.

She has his contact information?

She asked for $300 more.

Oh no.

Unfortunately, yes.

He gave it to her?

Block her.

Yeah. I know. Sigh. People prey on those with obvious disabilities.

At this point, I began messaging Will. I found out he had been approached by a young African America woman who claimed to be escaping from an abusive relationship. She asked Will for money to pay her rent. She was crying, he said. She told him she would pay him back, and asked for his phone number so she could pay him back when she got the money. However, over the course of three days, she never paid him back. She only pleaded for more money. Over the course of three days, he gave her $1,600.

I asked him if she knew where he lives or his last name.

He said, No. I hope not.

Do you know where she lives? Did you go to her house? Did you take her to your house?

No. I don’t know where she lives.

Block her. Don’t talk to her ever again.

I’ll give her another week to pay back the money.

No. Block her. Consider the money lost, and this an expensive lesson.

Okay.

I knew that he was still unconvinced. He is independent. He is an adult. He’ll say one thing and then do what he wants anyway. After all, he is an adult (29) and doesn’t want to argue with me, his mother. I understand that.

The next morning I received a frantic phone call from Patty. “Mom, that woman called Will and is asking him to buy her food because she is hungry.”

“Go and tell Will to hang up. Right now.”

I heard her hurrying down the stairs. “Mom, said to hang up. Right now!”

Will hung up. Patty handed him her phone.

“Will, don’t talk to her anymore. That money is gone. You will not be able to get it back no matter how much she says she will pay you back. She will only plead with you for more.”

“I know.”

“Block her.” Then I thought, her friends would still be able to call, or she could get a different number. “Change your phone number. Right now.”

“Okay. I will.”

A few minutes later he sent me a Facebook message with the new phone number. Later, he told me that he was relieved that she couldn’t contact him anymore. We went to visit him and Patty yesterday. Privately, I asked him how she could have gotten $1,600 from him in three days. He said, “She just kept tricking me.” I told him that he had a good heart, that he wanted to help a woman in distress. But she took him advantage of that good heart in him. I know, he said.

Oh Lord. How I want to keep him and his sisters safe. I did not think to prepare him for this. Fortunately, Patty who is living with him, tried to stop him. And when he snuck out to give this woman even more money, Patty enlisted me in the effort to stop him. I hate to think what would have happened had Patty not been living with him.

I hope that he will not give into the desire to try to get his money back. That he will not contact her with his new phone number. Oh Lord. Keep him safe.

Adults with autism who are functioning in the adult world may be more vulnerable to scams. Our Will wants to believe good in others. This experience will hopefully make him more wary in the future. He is usually very careful with his money. And the loss of this money did not endanger his ability to pay his bills.

 

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Provision

21 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by in Autism, cancer, faith, Health Crisis, Miracles, Thankful

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On June 10, 2016, Ralph received the diagnosis of myelodysplastic syndrome (a rare bone marrow cancer). He started on chemotherapy the next week. We were told that his prognosis was six months to two years to live. Before he started the chemo, we were told that any fever of 100.5 and above was a reason to call the doctor, day or night due to his significantly impaired immune system.

Someone said to me on a support group Facebook page “dust will be your husband’s enemy.” That shook me. We need to move, I thought. I remember going downstairs to do laundry and looking up at the rafters in the basement with dust all over them. I stood at the washer and I prayed, ” Lord, what am I going to do?”

God heard that prayer. Wrapped up in that prayer was the thought, How will I care for my husband in this house?

And it was as if he said, ” Now you will see what I am going to do.”

Saturday morning, July 2nd, I suggested to Ralph that he could take some money out of his 401(k) to help Erin with a down payment on a condo. He agreed. The next morning, he said to me, “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but don’t think we are going to be able to find a condo.”

“I think God will provide a place for us,” I said. “Look how He has provided for us in the past. He provided a way for you to go to college and graduate with no debt. He directed us to move into this school district where our kids got the help they needed for their autism. He provided a job for me before the kids went to college. He provided the money our kids needed to go to college, graduate, and kept us safe during that time of taking them back and forth to school. Don’t you think that if God provided all those things, He will provide a place for us to live in our time of need.”

Ralph went to the computer. “I’ll look, but I don’t think I’ll find a place.”

“Well, here’s a place. Two bedrooms, two baths. Maybe we can go over and look at the outside of it. To see where it is located.”

I then sent an email to a real estate agent that we have been working with to find a condominium for Erin close to her job. I told her about Ralph’s cancer. She replied that she didn’t think we would be able to find a place. 45 minutes later, she called me and told me about the place that Ralph had found and we all went over to look at the inside of it.

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In a market so hot our real estate agent told us condominiums were getting 20 offers, God found us a condominium within 4 days of that prayer. On July 5th, Marie made an offer on a condominium in Kentwood, only two miles from the job that God provided for her a year and a half ago. At 6:30 the next morning, we received a call from the seller that her offer was accepted.

On August 11, Marie signed the mortgage papers for her own condominium.

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Then God also supplied the help that we needed tomove. Many from our church came to help us, sacrificing two Saturday mornings, one to help us move to the condo, and the second to clean out the house to get it ready to sell. Our backyard was a jungle.  The youth group came to cut down the brush and clean up the back yard.

What a testimony this has been to our neighbors and my coworkers. They say they were amazed at how this all happened so quickly.

I sat in church the Sunday morning after we moved, thinking about what God had done. It was stunning. God’s hand was clearly evident in all of this. Praising God through the tears.

Ann and Ralph.

 

 

Moving

09 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by in Asperger's syndrome, Autism, cancer, faith, high functioning autism, Independence

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Well…

Things are changing quickly. On Saturday, on our way to go fishing, I said to Ralph, “We should take some money out your 401k to help Marie make a down payment on a condo.” He was open to the idea.

The next morning, I said we should look for a condo. He said there was no way we could find a suitable condo in our price range. I said to him, “God has provided for us in so many ways. He provided the money for you to go to college, and you graduated from college with no debt. He led us to this neighborhood where our kids received an excellent education in a tiny school district. Our kids were more successful than we could have imagined. God provided the funds for them to go to college. Don’t you think that if he has been faithful with that, he would be faithful for our need to find another place?” (I went on to list more instances of God’s provision for us in our lives.)

Then he went to the computer and started looking up condos for sale. “Here’s one we could afford. Two bedroom, two bath.”  That is, one that Marie could afford. We cannot get a mortgage due to our debt and medical bills. We showed the condo to Marie, and suggested we go over and look at the outside of it.

I wrote an email to a real estate agent that we have been working with for the past six months. I told her about Ralph’s cancer and wondered if Marie would be able to buy a condo, and we could move in with her and pay rent to her. She emailed me back and said that it wasn’t likely because the real estate market here is so hot…and some condos are getting 20 bids with some bids exceeding appraisal values. She doubted we could find anything soon.

45 minutes later, she called me and told me about the same condo that we were planning to look at the outside of. We went over with them and instead looked at the inside and outside of it. Nice. Very nice. It has a den/dining room with french doors that we could use for a clean room should Ralph’s white blood cell count dip to dangerous levels. Two full bathrooms, two bedrooms. A gas fireplace. And only two miles from Marie’s job.

Out in the car we all agreed that we liked it and should make an offer on it. We made an offer on Tuesday night at the full asking price. At 6:30 the next morning, our real estate agent told us that the seller accepted Marie’s offer, but only if we could sign the acceptance by noon. Marie did that. Now she is going through the process of getting the mortgage. Next week are the inspections. Then the appraisal. Then hopefully the closing not too long after that.

Then we move out of this old house. Now to choose what to take, what to sell, and what to throw away. The thought is overwhelming. Will is planning to take our old dog, Daisy, and one of the old cats, Chris. We will take the old cat, Mistletoe and the two younger cats.

Then we sell this house. We are downsizing. We won’t even “own” our own house. But we will have a place to live. And Marie, although she is qualified for this mortgage and has excellent credit, will find it easier to pay the mortgage and other costs with us paying rent. She could have the condo paid off fairly quickly. Marie told us a few months ago that she did not want to live alone. We are very fortunate to have her as a daughter. We never imagined that our daughter who spent 13 years in special education, but went on to obtain a college degree in accounting, would come to our rescue. We are praying that everything goes smoothly with no hitches.

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Hope Deferred – Marie

22 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in Asperger's syndrome, Autism, cancer, Independence

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Hope deferred makes the heart sick,

Yesterday, I took Marie to an apartment building in our town to look at a one bedroom apartment. Normally, this building has a long waiting list for one bedroom apartments. The rates are reasonable, and many residents are long-term. This apartment was available, I suspect, because it was being reconditioned. It is going to have completely new flooring installed. The apartment is modest, but pretty nice for a first apartment. It is less than a 20 minute bus ride to her job. Very important because Marie will never be able to drive.

Marie was going to write a check to reserve the apartment after work today. She was so excited to move into her own place.

Today, I received an urgent call from Denise from our health insurance company. She told me the local transplant center was out of network for them. If we chose to have Ralph evaluated there, our insurance company would pay 60%, leaving us on the hook for 40%, which would cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars. Completely out of our price range. The approved stem cell transplant centers are over a hundred miles away. We would need to travel and stay at hotels for Ralph’s treatment.

Marie will be 30 this summer. Her younger brother moved out four years ago to take a job in another city. He bought his own house a year ago. Her younger sister, Patty, moved to Ohio to pursue a graduate degree. She had to get an apartment.

Marie has been waiting to get her own place. She is the most impaired of her siblings; so her journey toward independence has been drawn out. Still, I believe she is ready. And moving to her own place would relieve us of the responsibility of driving her to her job (a precious job which took her four years to land after college.)

But she pays rent and transportation to us, which I am sorry to say is something that we need to make ends meet. Especially now that we will have to find a way to pay extra expenses for Ralph’s treatment. And we need someone to house sit our dog and our house if and when we need to be gone for a while. Our old dog is not nice to strangers. We need her at home. Yet she longs to be on her own. We need her help.

It’s not fair.

But she is willing at this point to help us. Of our children, Marie is the most selfless; like her father. I hope we can figure out a way for her to take this step sooner. And maybe this loss will turn out to be for the best.
    but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12

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