Pain - and cut fingers!
People with an autism spectrum disorder are often extremely sensitive to pain, or don’t feel it at all.
With Jack, you can never be sure how the ‘wind will blow’, so to speak. He often head butts and thrashes himself around without feeling a thing, being oblivious to any bruises or ‘hurt’ that occurs as a result. Cut body parts (especially with blood) however, are a completely different story.
Today Jack was in the garage, attempting to do what he had seen Steve do often, trying to pump up a bicycle tyre. Unfortunately he had decided to use his hand as opposed to his foot to operate the pump (couldn’t quite get the foot action) and managed to catch his finger in the mechanism and slice the top of it.
From the screams and sheer panic, you would think he had cut his finger off completely. Not letting me near the finger to check the severity of the damage (though I could see blood pouring everywhere), he screamed and cried continuously whilst I packed he and Anna into the car and drove them to the local emergency department to see a doctor.
The result? No major damage, in fact, not even worth stitching or glueing (as they do these days). He let the doctor dress the wound (still not letting me near it) and we drove home, with me feeling like a totally overprotective panicky mother.
I guess it’s better to be safe than sorry though, and I couldn’t have taken much more of the hysterics on my own not knowing if the finger needed attention.
I’m hoping the pain in the finger will subside within a few hours. I have to smile to myself though, throughout the whole saga, Jack still continued to head butt me and thrash his body around on the furniture in the waiting room at the emergency department. Like I said above, it’s pain to one extreme or the other!
October 25th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Due to Beauty’s high threshold of pain I am constantly concerned that she will hurt herself seriously and I not realise.Yet the other day we passed a dog who merely sniffed at Beauty and she started yelping OUCH, OUCH OUCH! The poor owner of the dog looked stricken, it took me a while to convince him there was nothing wrong.
March 27th, 2008 at 12:40 am
What do you do when jack head-butts you? My sister-in-law has a daughter who has autism and I notice the little girl sometimes hits her mother or kicks her (usually when it’s time for school.) My SIL just tries to keep out of range. I wonder if there’s a better solution.