All night long

We decided not to totally sleep deprive Zach after calling a neighbor who is a pediatrician and talking to her about Zach's EEG. Steve let him sleep from 10- 1am. Poor Steve stayed up all night. I got up around 4:30ish - although I didn't sleep well in aniticpation.

Zach did surprisingly well. When he started to become sleepy at 6ish, on came the radio and some dance music. I loved doing my morning calisthenics with him. Boy am I in terrible shape. He became sleepy on the way out the door - but nothing a little candy cane coudln't help out with.

We had to drive through traffic and tough weather, but we got there pretty much on time. We waited for a few minutes. Then the tech came out. After viewing Zach and trying to mark his head where the probes would go - she said "I can tell you this is not going to work." Zach was far from cooperative - but this kid is 1) 2 years old, 2) sleep deprived, 3) in a strange room with a strange person trying to stick stuff to his head, and let's not forget 4) autistic (in order of impact). I told her, "we don't quit that easily." She wasn't wenchy, but I wasn't impressed either. She went on to tell us she wasn't used to doing EEGs on kid this age. Huh? Where did they send us to? Then she put the probes on, and proceeded to tell us it is a good thing she is so experienced, because she normally has to take head measurements to get the probes in precise placement. Great, and she it just winging it. Steve recommended letting him fall asleep with this in mind. She insisted on doing while awake. I do hope there was a reason for that, because it sure did feel like torture. After the probes were in place, Zach continued to cry for around 15 minutes. I thought Steve was going to pass out in pain and lack of sleep. Zach eventually passed out and then we had to wake him up for some sort of strobe light test. I was so glad to get it over with.

We came home, and he is still awake. I forgot to cancel his speech therapy today, so he had a session today - ha ha. Yeah, Wednesday will be his last session with C. As much as he has shown little progress with her, she has been helpful, and confirmed our suspicions about the autism. We will always be grateful to that. Oh - and she just told me that there is supposed to be respite care in early intervention too - funny how they did not offer that to us.

So, he is operating on 4 hours sleep and is watching Word World on PBS right now, jumping up and down after eating some cashews and a banana. He sure is taking the EEG in stride now. Poor Daddy is off to work without a drop of sleep. Hope he is OK.

Hope we get test results soon.