don't be deceived by my cuteness...i am evil...so now we are at about three weeks ago, and gus is asking me for the hundredth time if he is going to be okay. he is convinced he has poisoned himself because he touched the bottom of his shoe then touched his face. or touched a roll of toilet paper and touched his shirt. or because he touched a plant and ate something an hour later. or didn't wash his hands as long as it takes to say the alphabet (not always a great thing to teach a child to do). or because he smelled a funny smell or tasted a funny taste in his mouth. whatever. it is bad, and he is not coping well at all. and this has essentially come out of the blue (in a cruel coincidence, it started around the time that stress ball blew up in his mouth). it got so bad that one day, gus' worst day ever, he woke up at 3:30 in the morning and spent 12 straight hours asking me if he was going to be okay, going from thing to thing to thing to obsess over. then his teachers started calling home about gus' behavior at school...
finally, about a week ago, he decided his breakfast was poisoned and wouldn't eat. i called his pediatrician and she got me in touch with a behavioral psychologist who specializes in obsessive compulsive pediatric cases. she thought this might be severe OCD, but two things bothered her: his age (about 3 years younger than the typical OCD patient) and the suddeness of the onset. she mentioned that sometimes, rarely, but sometimes a strep infection can mimic OCD symptoms and that he should probably be tested with the understanding that it will probably be negative.
but it wasn't negative. read more tomorrow...
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