Autism and illness don’t really mix in our house.

It’s hard enough with R, who isn’t particularly helpful in describing when he’s not feeling well… but then you have the Monster, who’s positively non-verbal when it comes to how he’s feeling.

Sunday afternoon, during our outing to the pool, the Monster’s lifejacket kept riding up, and left faint rash-marks on the sides of his jaw where it kept hitting as he was “swimming”.  (I’d call it “bobbing” but when permitted, he was making fairly good forward progress with his arms and legs.  And I say “when permitted” because, between a third and a half of the time, he was flying through the air, being thrown by yours truly.)  The wife noticed the marks when we were loading the kids into the car, so I promised to apply hydrocortisone when we got home.

And when we got to that point, I noticed it was red behind his right ear.  No big deal, we all get rashes or whatnot sometimes, so I applied some there as well, and we made a note to check it again in the morning.

In the morning, the rash on his jaw was gone, but the red spot behind his ear had turned into a distinctly bulls-eye-like rash.  Uh-oh.

“If it’s still red when he gets home,” we said to one another, “he should go to the doctor.”

It was still there when he got home.  Off the wife went with the Monster.  And yes, the doctor agreed with us on what she thought it was – it was the most text-book example of a rash she’d seen in a while, apparently.  (No sign of the tick, though.)

Lyme Disease is not that serious, when you really think about it – it’s treatable with antibiotics, and most of the time, you recover fully.  But, the key phrase in there is ‘it’s treatable with antibiotics’, meaning that we’d have to convince the Monster to actually take medication.

The Monster is not good at taking medication.  It’s taken a lot to get him into the routine where he’s taking vitamins, fiber and probiotics in the morning (7 separate gummies), and while he’ll take melatonin gummies at night, giving him else anything to help him sleep is usually a non-starter.  He hates having sunscreen – lotion or spray – and bug spray applied, certain items of clothing are verboten, and… we’re going to have to give him 10mL of amoxicillin twice a day?  Yeah.

As you can imagine, the first administration went down poorly, mostly with me restraining him with both arms and my legs, and the wife getting him, pleading with him, cajoling him to swallow.  The first morning sounded just as bad.  (I was half-conscious upstairs, after an all-night meeting.)

But sometimes, he surprises us.  As you can see in the pic, he actually let us give him the medication the second evening, without too much of a fight.  (Well, we did have one early throw-up, but he then took it like a trooper.)

I’m hoping that this is how it goes if they ever decide to get him to take medication on a regular basis…