Thank you for taking the time to read and follow our story. We appreciated every donation big and small. You impacted our family in the most positive ways. This website serves as our version of a "caring bridge" and "go fund me: both before and during our son's time at a hospital across the country.

 

Here is the short version of our family story (updated 3/25/2020):

 

Grant is my beautiful, 12-year-old son. He was diagnosed with developmental delay at 12 months and then autism at 22 months.  Grant always struggled with food, but in the spring of 2016, he stopped eating/drinking. Which resulted in a g-tube placement after dropping to 1% body fat. He survived solely on g-tube feedings for a year. During that time, we didn't have a label for what was happening and now have come to understand that he was suffering from a mood disorder and agitated catatonia.

 

Because of the mood disorder, catatonic-like symptoms, and autism; it most likely explains why Grant has struggled with self-injury for years (I believe it started around 6 years old). Meds nor behavioral techniques were enough to reduce his self-punching. We tried holding his hands, helmet, gloves because the self-injury has been so profound. The long-term damage he has done to himself is unknown. His worst days he was (or attempting to) hit 500 times per hour. He has bloodied and bruised his face and broke his hand. No matter how badly he hurt himself, it would not reduce what he was doing automatically.

 

Grant struggles to understand why destroying our house and attacking adults physically is unacceptable. His autism limits his interests to very little. His OCD makes him obsess about the same toys/activities. Again, these severe behaviors were most likely in large part due to his catatonia.

 

We have hired many specialists over the years that have not been able to help enough to prevent this next step (inpatient hospitalization). Our son has been in therapy (OT, PT, SLP, Hippotherapy, swimming, etc). After years of ABA therapy, we eventually turned to medications, which have also not been very helpful to date. We felt strongly that we exhausted our options in the Twin Cities once Grant stopped eating. The only children's psych hospital in MN would not accept him which led us to look nationally. It was impossible to decide whether to treat his food issues or self-injury. They both were profoundly negative, to say the least. This led us to the only hospital in the US that seemed appropriate for Grant. We waited one year and 3 months before it was his turn. I documented this in the blog on this page if you are interested in the details please click on the button above "Our Story".

 

As of the date, I am writing this, Grant is home with us now. He was in Baltimore for a year and 7 months. Originally, we would visit him in MD once a month to stay a part of his treatment and to let him know that his parents are still in his life. Towards the last 6 months of his stay out East, (dad) Scott, and I lived in a Ronald McDonald House so he can monitor him daily and, of course, be an active part of his life. 

 

It has been incredibly challenging. To say that I could predict that any child could be going through this is impossible to imagine. We are so, so lucky that the facility he attended exists and that the people out there are committed to helping children with severe behaviors like self-injury, eating disorders and aggression.

 

Grant has continued treatments in MN and is now is in 6th grade- going into 7th Fall of 2020.

 

For more information regarding why we originally set up this website and why we needed to ask for donations, please read this blog post.

 

THANK YOU for your support, love, and hope that life will improve for our "mister" - Erica, Scott, and Grant