My in-laws use AT&T for home phone / internet / TV. down in Florida. MIL called me yesterday (on her cell phone) (Tuesday, the 7th) worried because nothing was working. She thought she’d messed it up somehow by trying to log in with an outdated password.
I talked her through walking over to the box and unplugging / replugging it to see if that solved it - the power light was on but the other lights were red, indicating no connection.
No help. So I logged on to their account, seeing if I could force a reboot from the web. I might have - but it said the box was not connected. I found an outage page, which a) said there WAS an outage (but that said outage had started about 2 weeks ago), but just in case, there were two AT&T stores nearby that had wifi hotspots. Only… the two listed were in California. Not Florida. WTF.
So we called customer service, and got to a human, who was able to help MIL reset their 4 digit PIN, and who confirmed that there is indeed an outage. No ETA to fix - but hopefully within a couple hours.
I put in my cell number to get a text when service was restored, as MIL has no idea how to use texting on her cell phone.
So this afternoon, I’d heard nothing. I assumed all was well - but MIL called again and STILL no service. We called the service number and didn’t even get through to a human. Basically the message said “Yep, outage. Hopefully fixed in a couple hours. And don’t bother talking to an agent - they won’t know anything more than this robocall does”.
This is fucking DANGEROUS. The in-laws are in their mid 80s, not in great health; both have those fall-alert pendants (and both have used them within the past couple months). The base station for the pendants requires communication - which does not exist at the moment. If one of them falls, and cannot get to the cell phone, they are screwed. If they did not have a cell phone, they’d have no access to outside help at all.
I think I’d have had the same reaction, and I don’t have any (diagnosed) mental health issues. Yes by all means talk about this, but for me the important takeaway was you were in fact able to control your impulses, which wasn’t easy in that situation - good work.
Retired AT&T employee here, which I’m mentioning mostly to explain why I still have a landline - it’s dirt cheap and in the event I need to call 911, they will know where to find me. Also handy for calling my cell phone when I can’t remember where I laid it down.
At least twice I’ve noticed that I had no service. No way to know when it went out, and it seems like it was at least a week both times before they located the trouble and restored service. Since in neither case was the problem at my end, I have to believe the whole neighborhood at least was out - leading me to also conclude that I may have the only landline anywhere around here.
Hopefully since internet is out (and I think corporate actually cares about that) your MIL’s turnaround will be faster.
Has she had good results with it? I was on it for a year and it didn’t seem to do much. My psychiatrist thought stimulants might increase my anxiety. But it turns out when you can get work done, you have less anxiety.
Funny how I said I was bone tired and something had to give with childcare and housework. I have since taken an additional five hours a week off my husband’s plate. He is behind on work because he’s been going through this logistical nightmare to coordinate care for our son. We are facing the grim reality that our lives are going to be consumed by this administrative and logistical bullshit for at least the next two years. We are not buying a house, we are not realizing our dreams of being more politically active and engaged citizens, I will not get to start saying “yes” to life as I naively wrote in my journal a couple of months ago, pretty much this is all there is for an indefinite period of time. I’ll be lucky if I can hang onto my career.
I’m somewhat okay with all that, other than a few crying spells, but my husband isn’t handling it the same way I am, and I feel like there is a lot of distance right now between us. We have very different personalities and while we usually get along swimmingly, we are just not on the same page emotionally right now at all. I’m trying to find meaning, he’s… not.
The only thing I can think of to do to help him is take on even more childcare. So he can do more work. So I am now looking at getting Wee Weasel ready in the morning, taking him to daycare, picking him up from daycare, feeding him while I cook dinner and putting him to bed at least two nights a week. With a full time job that I’m finding it very difficult to focus on these days.
We met up with a friend last weekend who we haven’t seen in years. She asked us what our hobbies were. Lol what? Does watching a half hour of television before bed count?
Is this sustainable? I don’t know, but I don’t see an alternative. We have not one single person nearby who can provide logistical support. Any breaks we get require paying people. We are going to start attending a support group later this month. We are hoping to meet someone in the same boat where we can support each other.
Meanwhile I’m lying in bed listening to the rain feeling depressed. I am going to clean the kitchen now because I think it will legitimately help me feel better.
With the exception of doing both ends of the daycare… I got up early and went to work (into DC, which required tricks to deal with the traffic) while my husband did dropoff then went to HIS job. I did pickup at the end of the day. When we hired a nanny (after Moon Unit was born), he stayed home until the nanny arrived and I got home to relieve the nanny at the end of the day.
My husband isn’t proud of this part of our tale: it got to the point where I’d call him at work every evening to gently ask what time he was planning on heading home “to plan dinner”, dontcha know. Work was his refuge.
Nobody nearby to help - which was especially fun when I was on bedrest with the pregnancy, and my husband was on the other side of the Potomac, and a suicidal person was threatening to jump off the bridge (IIRC, the person ultimately did jump / fall but was okay).
TV pretty much didn’t happen, ever. And the crying spells didn’t happen much either because we made a conscious decision to Not Think About It At All aside from coordinating visits to practitioners. We developed a fairly serious ice cream addiction for a while there, because no matter how crappy the day had been, there was always that one good thing to look forward to in the evenings.
Did that work? It’s hard not to think about it right now.
A lot of our friends are really not getting how serious this is. I’m trying not to hate them.
We agreed to prioritize positive family experiences on the weekends, so at least it’s not the only thing we’re thinking about. Sr Weasel works all day Saturday so really I mean Sunday. But a couple of weekends ago we went out to breakfast together as a family just to see what would happen. It went fairly smoothly, so maybe we will go again sometime. We can try the zoo again in the summer. We need to have at least one day where we don’t think about it.
I feel that so hard right now. We have two separate weeks coming up with no school for my daughter and our best solution is to drive her to my parents one week and my cousins another week. Both live out of state, about 3 1/2 hours drive one way. Building and maintaining relationships with people I don’t already know is impossible right now. And affording all this stuff… just insane.
Yes. We tried Ritalin with disastrously bad results. She would have 3 hours of perfect behavior and then the balance would be absolute chaos. We looked for studies of ADHD medicine used for children with both ADHD and autism and found that very few studies have been done but one showed positive results with non-stimulant ADHD medicines like Strattera. For her, it really works. She has way better emotional regulation and impulse control while on it and it is almost immediately noticeable when she misses a dose. It’s not perfect, she still has bad days but I think we would still have bad days with something else.
I’m glad to hear this. Vyvanse changed my life for the better in ways I did not expect. The right meds can make a real difference. I still struggle with task initiation but once I get rolling, I can get a lot done.
In other news - I got the topiramate filled. To get this done, I scoured the HR site and accidentally found the apparently secret website that lets me compare drug prices. Then I used that to find out what drugs are actually covered by my insurance. Next, I messaged my doc to ask if we can change the prescription from one type to another. He said yes and sent the prescription over to the pharmacy who filled it right away. That was WAY too much work. And I recognize people do this every day.
This may or may not be helpful. In September 2019, Michaela went back to New York for her last year of college. Kayla’smom was going through some Alzheimer’s stuff at the time. Michaela knew that caring for her mother was placing a lot of strain on me, so she did some research and found an organization called Hilarity for Charity. Just after she went back after the Christmas holiday, she applied for a grant for me to get some respite services from them. About a week before her mother passed away, she was notified that I was approved for a grant for about $4000.
As I have related elsewhere, I never got to avail myself of the grant, but it did get approved. Hilarity for Charity really concentrates on assisting families dealing with Alzheimer’s, but contacting them might result in a referral to a different organization that would be able to assist the parents of a child with special needs. In fact. I’ll try to give them a call and see if they have anything to suggest.
Well, not entirely - OK, not much at all - but we tried our hardest. It may well have helped that we were also dealing with a newborn right then - in fact the pregnancy was not an easy one, which meant I never saw Dweezil around other kids, so I had no clue how out-of-whack his behavior was.
I like that you are making a point of doing positive family stuff. That’ll really help - plus helping the Wee Weasel burn off some energy. I remember once asking my sister-in-law (their older son is also on the spectrum, and FAR more impaired than Dweezil ever was) if it ever got to the point where they did not have to plan out every single outing before walking out the door. I honestly don’t recall what she said - but it DID get better. By the time Dweezil was 7, he was the “easy” kid.
Moon Unit was diagnosed with various issues, likely including some ADHD, when she was school-age. Technically she didn’t meet the criteria by some standards (on the TOVA test) but when weighed against her very high intelligence, the results were interpreted that way.
We tried her on Strattera (I think that was it) and it didn’t make much difference. We were warned that a stimulant such as Adderall might cause behavioral issues - and knowing that, we opted to give it a try, with the understanding that it might not be ideal. It apparently helped with her focus, but did also cause her behavior to worsen, so we stopped it. I think she spent a few years on Buspar; ultimately she gave up on that some time in high school.
She’s since tried Vyvanse as an adult - and it seems to help some, but she lives 500 miles away so we don’t see the effect on a daily basis, and I know she’s not taking it as regularly as she perhaps ought.
She has NOT been formally diagnosed as on the spectrum but it wouldn’t surprise me; I personally think she’s got a somewhat mild form of bipolar disorder given how little effect a traditional antidepressant had on her; when she was put on Lamictal for seizures, the change was stunning, and I know that’s sometimes used for bipolar. I think that in females in particular there are blurred lines and autism / bipolar / ADHD can be misdiagnosed.
My depression is very bad today. I had to leave work early because of it. I’m debating calling out tomorrow because of it as well, but my Puritan work ethic is making me feel guilty about doing so.
I can’t remember if I already mentioned this, but I have very limited experience with children. The other day we were watching Taskmaster and there’s a toddler on the show, quite a bit younger than Wee Weasel.
I was absolutely floored by the difference between her and my son’s behavior. I mean she’s playing with stuff, she’s fully attentive to the adult in the room, she’s answering questions, her body is coordinated and calm. At one point she dumps a bucket of water all over her clothes and doesn’t even miss a beat. Just keeps right on playing.
I couldn’t believe it. I thought oh my God, my kid needs help, like, yesterday. Every time I think about it I start crying again.
One thing we were talking about is how neurotypical kids just seem to learn things by pure exposure. With Wee Weasel every single skill is a struggle and every gain can be lost the next month. I didn’t know it wasn’t supposed to be that way.
Interesting. I’m an adult with ADHD-Innatentive type (definitely not on the spectrum) whose depression does not respond to SSRIs. I started having seizures while taking Wellbutrin, eventually I was put on Lamictal as an anti-convulsant and it did wonders for my depression! Then my neurologist died(!) and rather than replace him, I just get a scrip from my psychiatrist. I’ve also used other mood stabilizers in the past and for some reason they give me the best results. It’s like being on a tether. You can’t go too high or too low.
Two hours after my previous post, I finally sent an email calling out for tomorrow. I hate that I feel guilty about doing this but I can’t start crying at work, especially right now that we’re so busy.
