Sorry this is late…
Fela seemed calm enough when he arrived but within a few minutes of Chloe and Emma leaving, he became agitated. (See arousal state)
He engaged in numerous OCDs in the loo, and I did not interrupt him as this was a clear sign of anxiety. When I read Emma’s report, he had been up for a whole hour humming after visiting the loo. So even though he had only been up once, his sleep was still disturbed. After coming out the loo, I offered him cards and he proceeded to insist on game after game for a total of two hours. He even turned up his nose at his snack and cup of tea.
Fela requested ‘All time Hymns Instrumental’ with the deer in the woods image. He did not want Louis Armstrong which is unusual. Fela seemed to come out of his ‘mental fog’ around 12 noon, and Michael called to him for lunch. He then signed ‘finished’ and was willing to put the cards away in their boxes.
Fela enjoyed his lunch of beef chilli with new potatoes and peas. He lingered at the dining table, so I decided to offer him some rice & quinoa pudding. (It only needs a bit of water to warm this week as I made sure it was not as thick as last week’s pudding). He then seemed a lot happier, and when asked he preferred to stay downstairs rather than go upstairs. So I pulled out the foot rest from the armchair and brought the cushions and blanket from upstairs, and tucked him in. There was a black and white film matinee playing which he nodded that he was happy to watch. It looked harmless enough with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. I then did some skull tapping with the spikey yellow ball from his rucksack. He kept prompting me to continue.
Fela began scratching quite a bit so I applied witchhazel and gave him an aloe propolis pot to self-apply. I did the board with him explaining that Chloe and Maxine would soon be here to take him home to relax and then later if he wanted he could go to Flip Out for trampolining. He seemed okay with this.
As a precaution, I cancelled drumming with Dan as I figured he needed to mentally recover and rest even if he didn’t sleep rather than get all excited with drumming. I explained this to the ladies and the fact that he needed a low-stim afternoon with hopes of a nap but at least for mental renewal so that he would hopefully feel able to go to Flip Out. When Fela left at 14:00 he seemed calm and agreeable.
Arousal States – Start: 1 Baseline End: 1 Baseline Did his state change? Yes to Fela was getting noisy whilst we were chatting with Emma and Chloe during Handover. At one point Fela got off the bench where he takes his shoes off, and went to ring the door bell. As soon as they left he became agitated and stomped into the loo upstairs where he proceeded to be agitated for about half an hour.
WhenI popped my head in the door, he became more agitated so I left him in there – he was touching and re-arranging objects and he emptied the handwash bottle and was cleaning the sink repeatedly.
I put Louis Armstrong on, and he calmed for a while when the duet with Ella Armstrong came on – 'Cheek to Cheek'. I also told him we could play some cards and put the two decks on the table. Fela spent about 30 minutes in the loo, and eventually calmed. Did he have a bowel movement? No Bristol score: Was Fela incontinent?: No Did he have vigorous exercise?: No – Fela was clearly out of sorts and his OCDs were intensified so I did not push him to do anything he didn't want to do but just went with the flow.
