A year ago.

Today it is a year ago that i had my accident, i was run over by a car backing out of a drive way, she did not see me and left her car standing on my foot while i fell over my bike and my postal-bags, well seen doctors and been to hospital, x rays showed no broken bones everything was going to be alright it just needed time. now i have CRPS type 1 as a result of the trauma during the accident, not so good.Today i have a checkup at the pain clinic and next month i will be starting in a rehabilitation team. Procedures done up until now do not give improvement, so waiting and hoping and praying for the best possible outcome.

Just saying park your car in backwards...it's safer!

I have had anger and sadness and even hatred towards that woman that hit me, it took me some time to get over that and maybe i am not yet there, i still feel fear when i see a car backing up from a parking lot, those reversing lights give me panic and i scream when i am in the car and other cars come to close.

The CRPS is progressing from the foot into the lower leg, it's the pain and mostly the burn and the just not being able to be touched on my foot and leg that is very hard, sometime it is all to much socks, shoes, trousers, blankets, the mattress the touch it all hurts. Sleeping is very hard because i wake up a zillion times a night, so you are tried all day and all night.

I am keeping a positive attitude that is all i can do right now, and forgive but i well never forget!

Well we will seen that the doctor has to say in the pain clinic this afternoon.

It is a thin line.

It is a thin line i feel like walking very day. I cannot say my life is easy but some how i manage to feel happy most of the time. I have two great kids a son and a daughter, 20 and 18 years old. I am married almost 22 years and we have a nice home and a dog and we live in the Netherlands so please forgive my poor English.

It is a thin line i balance all the time ever sins our son is born, he was the cutest little boy with blond hair and a face that you can easily fall in love with. He cried a lot more then 8 hours a day, he hardly ever slept and when he slept it was for a very short time, and in the car or in the buggy while we where walking or driving. Sometime in the crib in a sling that gave him the position he seemed to need to sleep.

He had lot of troubles with his tummy, lots of cramps and later on he developed some allergies and up until today he has trouble sleeping. He was a loner playing by himself no friends hard to make contact with. But ones he had his object of his passion he could talk and play for hours and hours, he had and still has a great fantasy.

When he was 7 the teacher called him a bizarre little boy and asked if we had any trouble having him tested, well we saw the differences between his classmates and him, the way he was growing up was not the way all the kids his age around us where growing up. So we got him tested and not to my surprise he got diagnosed whit PDD-NOS and ADHD. I had known just kept hoping that i was wrong.

Because of bulling and physical violence we had to change school, he never found his right spot in the regular education system. And by the time he was 17 roads brought us to special education where the situation only got worse and he got depressed and suicidal. He had to leaf school and go in to a intense day care program for people with autism.

That did not do him any good for he got conscious of the problems and restrictions he was experiencing because of his autism. He went down hill fast and one day he came to me to tell me mom i could not take it any more i tried to cut my wrists but it did not work (thanks god!). He got even more support from this autism team got on medication. But it all did not really help a lot it still was that thin line, trying to keep the balance.

When my son was 2 and a half our beautiful daughter was born, she took care of him, protected him was the sweetest little sister ever. Then she started to get in to puberty and hormones started raging, she started to take her place and standing up for herself, we thought thank god that is what she needs,Go Girl!

But my son felt like she and the rest of the world was rejecting him he could not understand his world anymore, his depression got even worse and one day he went into the kitchen took out a knife and started cutting his wrists. I was in the living room with my daughter she went upstairs very quick not being able to deal with this. I run into the kitchen tried to talk my son out off doing the cutting and in a reflex i took the knife out of his hand and in doing so i cut myself, seeing me bleed snapped my son out of it, our blood was dripping on the kitchen floor we took towel and tissue and checked the cuts. Thank god we did not have to go see a doctor so i cleaned out the wounds and put some bandaids around his wrists and my fingers, I talked to my son until he had calmed down some.

In the meanwhile i called my husband who was away for sports, and i called our personal autism coach. He talked to our son and me to see if he could stay at home that evening and be safe. He calmed down enough so he stayed home. the next day he had a crisis intervention. We had lots of talks, he went away for some weekends on time-outs, but after some time it became clear that he could not stay home. Not for him and our daughter and us as parents, so he got a space in a assisted sheltered housing project for young people with autism, he was 18 when he left our home and now after lots of up's and downs he has his own apparent about an hours drive away from us.

His life is still hard, he still struggles every day, but he has become a fighter, still on antidepressants, but he has built his own life, not like society want us all to life, he is way outside the standard what how cares i do not, i love him like he is a very special young man, we laugh and cry together, play games i suck at and he is a star at.

I visit him ones a week, he comes home every 3 months or so but that is so hard on him, all the triggers in our home, the people, the trips home and back to his place, even the food and the pets, he is relieved when it is time to go home.

His autism has had a big BIG BIG impact of all our life's especially me and my daughters and my husband, we all are or have been in therapy, also for PTSS, i did EMDR and my son, i had some benefits from that, he did not!

Life has not been easy, but i can even not say i wish he did not have autism for then he probably be a complete other person, i would wish more happiness and stress free moments for him, but i would miss his honesty and his feeling for justice, his passion for all kinds of fantasy story's and books and figurines, his kindness and happy smile for he can enjoy thing some other people i know totally take for granted!

He has never asked to be born with Autism, we his persons never asked to have a child with autism, we got one, we love him and it is very hard to seen that some people blame him for is autism, it's hard to hear somebody say : he will grow over it, or he will need to get his act together and act normal, best one...O, give him to me for a couple of days, i will fix that (over my dead body!).

It is a thin line between despair and hope!