SPD, Interoception, and Figuring Out Whether a Kid Is Really Injured

In my previous post I wrote about how since Stow always thinks he has broken a bone whenever he twists an ankle or stubs a toe or a finger, we have a difficult time knowing when something is actually serious. This isn't because he is trying to get attention or be melodramatic but because, thanks to sensory processing disorder (SPD), he is hypersentive to touch and also has a heightened sense of what’s going on inside his body (this sense is called interoception). Typically, we have to wait to see how he seems one or two days after any kind of injury to determine whether it requires medical attention.

After taking a baseball to the tip of his middle finger on Wednesday (you know, when I refused to go pick him up because we wanted him to make it through a whole week of school), we waited until Thursday to see how he was feeling. When he said it hurt more, and he felt like he could feel a bone moving 🤢, I called to make an appointment.*** By the time we finally saw his regular doctor, the X-ray technicians had gone home for the day, so it took another day to get the x-ray and results. Late Friday, they confirmed it was broken.

He loved that the X-ray technician told him to “give her the finger”--lol.

The orthopedic doctor's office told me they couldn’t get him in until Wednesday. An autistic kid with a hyper-elevated sense of interoception and a good dose of anxiety who now knows his finger is broken can NOT wait an additional five days to have his injury treated. Just, no.

So, today we went to the orthopedic walk-in clinic in another town and got a diagnosis and the appropriate splint. Fingers crossed that this won’t require surgery (and, yes, I’m aware of my bad pun—sometimes I just can’t help it).

Fortunately, Stow finds humor in the fact that he will be “flipping people off” for the next six weeks because I’m having less fun with this. In fact I’m about ready to never let him leave the house again, at least not unless he’s wrapped from head to toe in bubble wrap.

***If you are wondering why I didn't just take him to the ER: 1) He doesn't like change so wanted to see his usual doctor, and 2) Waiting can be really hard for autistic kids, and I didn't want to add the stress of an interminable ER wait--of course, if we thought it was an injury that required immediate attention, we would have taken him anyway, but since we had it splinted, and he wasn't in excruciating pain, we waited.