Always an impression, always

A few weeks ago we met a friend and his beautiful daughter at Disney. We had a great time with both of them. It had been 6 years since we saw them and didn't seem like that much time had gone by.

Our friend got to see firsthand what we experience with a special needs child. He handled it well and had a lot of patience, thankfully. Things went well with autism lingering at our side. Gabriel didn't interact much with them but Lane was fascinated by our friend's daughter so it worked out fine. Two girls and two boys evened out our family perfectly for the day. Autism reared its ugly head at the end of our day. Andrew took Gabriel to Space Mountain but when they got to the ride, he changed his mind about going on it. Andrew took him to the end of the ride to wait for our friends. Gabriel, with stealth speed, picked something up off the ground and chewed it.

The object was a blue capsule with some type of white powdery substance. Swell. We couldn't tell what he had eaten. Was it medication? Disney is an international affair and who knows what kind of drug could be hiding in that capsule. Was it an illegal drug? I walked to the nurses station while the kids went on one last ride together. (Gabriel would have had a complete meltdown if we hadn't agreed to the race ride) My heart was racing. I held the blue capsule in my hand and prayed that it wasn't something dangerous and that the capsule wouldn't dissolve in my sweaty, anxious hand.

I asked the nurses if they had any idea what would be contained in the capsule. They examined it and one nurse made the following comment to me. "why didn't you stop him?" I replied, "he's almost 8, he has AUTISM. The only way to stop him would be to live in a bubble and that isn't an option." I smiled because I had already mentioned evil autism and his age. My knees were buckling and I felt sick to my stomach that my child had eaten something with this type of danger. This wasn't the regular rocks and pencils that he sticks in his mouth on a daily basis.

It was determined that the capsule was from a toy. Whew - another catastrophe avoided.