Saturday 28 October 2017

Desensitation/Making things a little bit less scary...

When it came to hospital & GP visits, DS would be ultra cool about them.

He didn't mind these sorts of appointment visits at all and I would even go as far as to say that he would actually look forward to them! :D

It wasn't always like that though. It took a lot of forward thinking, work and lots of time to get to that stage but once we were at it then it was a breeze!

Unfortunately, since then DS has had to have two blood tests quite close together. He hated it and it was mega traumatic for him.

Ever since, he has developed mega anxiety to anything medical related; so that's GP surgeries, clinics, hospitals and even dentists.

I am gutted as I feel we have gone about 18 months to 2 years backwards :(

Of course, I will start again trying to build up his trust with these sorts of visits but with his fantastic memory of those nasty blood tests, then I worry that he may never be okay about visiting the GP again.

However, I really want to start working towards this as soon as possible.

I have taken DS to the odd GP appointment with me, just to observe that it's all fine.
He has been anxious about it but been okay.

Today I decided to move our own little desensitation programme on a little bit.
This involved us driving to our local hospital and having a drink in the coffee shop.

I told DS where we were going and he wanted reassurance from me that it would just be the coffee shop within the hospital that we were visiting. I reassured him of that and he walked in with me, though still a tad anxious.

DS sat beautifully though as we drank our drinks and he munched on his apple :)

I am so happy that he was more than fine with it.
I will repeat this coffee shop visit several times before moving it on to maybe having a little walk down one of the hospital corridors....

Baby steps is the key here but I am so pleased that today was a success.

I am so proud of how he copes with so much.

Have a great half term! :)

Love Amanda xx