The anger stage......

I have somewhat of a  keen memory of events that have happened throughout my life.  Some people are born double jointed, or can flip their eyelids inside out (gross), others have extremely high IQ's, or a  photographic memory.  The list goes on.  Myself, I can remember many details of my life as far back as age 2, including what I was wearing. I say this so you will understand, my story is not made up.  I may at times get off the subject of fragile X, and maybe speak about myself more than Cody, and if this troubles some of you I am sorry.With that being said,  I feel it's necessary to also explain what I was going through and what choices I made, in order to make Cody's life fulfilling.  If you are reading this and are disappointed I haven't talked about what kind of Medicine he takes or what FX kids eat or where to go for financial assistance or who's a good doctor, or about guardianship, I will cover all of this as well as other questions you may have. But if you need answers now, just email me, and I will help you.  OK
So now back to the story.. .......The night of the babysitting fiasco, triggered an anger inside of me that I will never forget.  I believe it was the start of the loneliest and most frustrating time of my life. I wanted so badly for  someone to tell me things would some day get better, but it was very much the opposite.
  What happened to the book the sitter told me to read?  I had the book in my car the whole next day, and instead of reading it, I began thinking of ways I could shove the damn thing up the babysitter's ass.  Isn't that terrible?
Sidebar....., .  It seems I was let down by those that I should have been able to count on.  At the time Cody's dad and I were still married, but since we were in the process of getting a divorce, he made it clear he was no longer responsible to help with any of My problems.  And by the way, his attitude has never changed much in the last 20 years. I don't know how many times I have heard from Phil, " you wanted the divorce, so Cody is your problem to deal with."  Oh and my favorite, he would say over and over, "I'm not your babysitter, I have a life, so figure it out yourself."   Who was he fooling, he knew something was not right about Cody, and he didn't want to deal with it.  And why would I even want him to be around Cody with that attitude, let alone be  married to someone who referred to being with his son as babysitting?  I have to say any couple who has a child with special needs, and continue to stay together happily, should consider themselves  lucky.  It's very rare, and really shows so much love and devotion to their child, as well as each other.

I wasn't looking forward to taking Cody back to the sitter's and putting him through another night away from his home, but what else was I to do?  As I pulled into to her driveway, Cody went hysterical.  I hated this for him.  He didn't deserve being stuck here in an unfamiliar location, plus I had such an uneasy feeling about leaving him.  What made matters worse, no one answered the door.  I was already late for work, so I decided to just go in and see what was going on.  Finally the son of the sitter came into the room and told me his mom had to go to the hospital for a family emergency.  He assured me she wasn't going to be gone long, and that he was watching the kids till she returned.  I guess the other children  were playing outside in the backyard, who knows. So I reluctantly agreed, but felt uneasy about leaving Cody there. Thing was, I went 9 months carrying Cody.  Loved him more than life itself, yet I just left him with some high school kid, I didn't even know, and this kept going through my mind as I drove to work.  I was about half way there when I decided I needed to go back, so I did a U-turn and floored that 79' mustang, because I made a mistake leaving him where I did and he needed to get out of there.

Again, no one answered the door, so I walked in figuring they were out back.  Thing is I didn't see anyone in the back, and it seemed no one was even home.  Then I heard a faint sound coming from behind the couch at the other end of the room.  I knew it was Cody, who just the week before  started making a peculiar Eeeeeeeeee sound.  An sure enough, there he was sitting, looking at the wall, and eating his poopy diaper.  My God that sight was enough to do some Karate chops to that idiot high school kid's balls, where ever he was.  Cody had a poop beard and mustache dripping down on his face.  I basically grabbed  Cody and all his things, cleaning his face on the way to the car, and got the hell out of dodge. Strange that I never did hear from the babysitter, except for a note a week later, she put in my mailbox, asking for her book back. Sure I returned her book, but only after I had read it enough times to realize everything in the book about Autism described my precious baby Cody.  It's also when I knew I could not go any longer ignoring the fact Cody did have something wrong with him mentally. And it was the beginning of a lot of changes in our lives!