Comedy Through The Chaos:Progress in the Parking Lot

Hello, Cadre Sphere. I am walking down some stairs here. Happy Thursday to you. If you are watching me on Thursday, if you're watching me in the future, happy whatever day it is that you are joining us here in the Cadre community. I am Ms. Shannon Paul and one of your contributors that talks about being a caregiver here. I am in the middle of working at a conference for angel investors, which I think is a very interesting, one of the more interesting things I get to do. And I am currently at Huntington Bank Stadium here in the great state of Minnesota.

If I turn around, then you can see what it looks like there. Hello, Steph T. Thanks for joining. I was just showing that I'm taking a little break from a conference that I am part of here at Huntington Bank Stadium over at the University of Minnesota and we are having some lovely weather here. Steph T, go ahead and give me a little heart in the chat if you can hear me, okay? Because I know that it's probably a little bit different than what normally happens when I'm in my studio or someplace where I can control the WI fi.

So hopefully you can hear me okay? Because I, even though I'm working today and I'm working on site someplace, it was important to me to go ahead and check in with our Cadre community. I ended up taking the week off last week because last week was a complicated week and I think that it happens a lot or more often than we'd hope sometimes for all of us who are caregivers to remind everybody along with doing things like this, which is kind of cool, where I get to go ahead and talk to our adult friends and be a speaker and some of those things.

I'm also the proud mother of an adorable 17 year old boy who happens to be high supports on the autism spectrum. So we have our adventures and an adventure was to be had last week and that was where I was at last week. We had to do a doctor's checkup and it's not my favorite thing to do during the year because, you know, we're not always good at going to places like the doctor's office. And I get especially concerned when it's a new spot with people who are outside of our control and I want to make sure that they're not in danger.

And so basically last week went okay until it didn't. And we got there and we got through some of the minutiae part of the doctor's visit and then unfortunately my son got anxious and we had an escalation. But the good part about it is that we were able to end up making it home and have a good day the whole rest of the day. And the thing I think is interesting is that it's something that I prepare for. I had talked about it here on the live stream that we were practicing certain things so that we could go to this doctor's visit.

And as tenuous as I know these situations can be for us, I really try to also put as much positive energy into it as possible and not presume that things are going to go poorly just because they've gone poorly in the past. So the thing that I need to give myself grace for is that we did do better than we had in the past, although we weren't able to do the whole thing. Hey Luke, thanks for joining. Although we weren't able to make it through the whole doctor's appointment and you know, unfortunately you it ended up escalating in a way.

Hello. Hello. W. Weisman, thanks for joining us. I'm just talking about the reason why I wasn't on last week is I took my son to this doctor's appointment and the thing that the thing that is good about it is that I did notice and one, he did better than he'd done in the past. So thank you very much, Luke. Thank you very much, Luke. Just so you know, here I am currently at Huntington Bank State is where we're hanging out right now because I'm at a conference inside. And so the thing that happened that was really cool and that even his doctor said is that we did make it through the initial parts.

We made it through getting his blood pressure taken. We made it through getting his heart checked and getting his weight checked on the scale. We didn't make it through him talking to the doctor. We ended up outside and of course I have pick you. We ended up outside and that's when things got unfortunate because he did escalate and he escalated in a way that concerned onlookers and unfortunately for us ended up having somebody decide that they were going to call law enforcement. Now here's what I will say was better than anything that had happened in the past is that while I'm trying to get him to get re regulated, some people walked up and they said, hey, some people kind of must have, must have understood what had happened.

And I just want to let you know that they called law enforcement so that I kind of had a heads up. And to get that grace from onlookers is something that I haven't always experienced in the past. So I really appreciated that because that's new. And I appreciated that they saw us and were able to see the situation for what it was, which was a kid having a hard time and his mom doing the best that he could at the time. And I really appreciated that the law enforcement that showed up were the helpful kind of law enforcement, not the let me insinuate myself into this situation because that's one of the scariest things for me as a caregiver is that we would have some sort of escalation someplace that ends up making it unsafe for me or my son or anybody that's near around.

So, you know, we were able to get in the car, we made it home, he was over it by the time we got home. And then the reality is, even though he was over with it, I realized that I still needed more time to self regulate. And so that turned into okay. By Thursday, I'm like, you know, as much as I wanted to check in with all of you, I just needed some more time. And this was one of the things where I'm going, okay, I need a little more time to get my act together. And so we waited until this week to check in with all of you.

And I think that's really the story for a lot of us as caregivers is that there's so much that we want to do. There's things that we want to do for the people that we care for, there's things that we want to do for ourselves, and we often put the things that we want to do for ourselves on the back burner. You know, at least I know I do that a lot because I was like this incred, intense feeling of guilt with going, you know, I think I need to skip the live stream today because I want to be a resource for other people.

But it turned out to be a really good thing that I took a little bit more time for myself. So sometimes give yourself that extra moment, even if it's another 15 minutes that you give yourself back. If you need that time to go, here's what I need to work on refueling. All those 15 minutes can add up. And then, you know, now we're here and a week has passed and it is a beautiful day and I get to show you what's going on here at Huntington Bank Stadium next to the beautiful University of Minnesota.

So, you know, give yourself that time. I think it does make it easier on us when we have those difficult moments to go. This is just a moment to also be able to look back and go, what has been the progress that we've had, you know, and there's some little things like, you know, my kid did really well, and he did much better than he's done on some of these things before. And no, it wasn't like this most perfect experience, but it was good. It was good. And we were both okay. And real talk, we got enough done that.

Me as the caregiver, at least now when I fill all this paperwork out, we got far enough along that the reality is, man, I need you to be able to do this so that I can keep up with additional things in your care. If I can't get you to the doctors, then I can't do these other things that help care for you. And he doesn't understand that, but I do. So that's just the extra stress that. That I go, you know what, mom? The one thing you did do was get him there so that you can go ahead and continue doing the occupational therapy and continue doing the speech therapy and those other things that if I hadn't gotten him there and we hadn't gotten that far, we may not have been able to do.

So it was a win. It maybe wasn't a win win. It wasn't win with an exclamation point, but it was a win. And I'm glad that I am in a position to be able to hang out with you this week, although it is a little bit behind. So, you know, as caregivers, if there's some other ways that we can continue to support people, even if it's just being in community and sharing the fact that everything doesn't have to be a perfect day for it to be a progress, progressing day. So give yourself all of those kudos and those roses that you need, and when you get a chance, enjoy some of that sunshine.

So, fortunately, I'm glad that I get to be part of this community. If there's anything you'd like us to continue to share with you as we're talking in this situation, go ahead and let us know. We always appreciate you. You can either drop it in the chat if you're part of the actual live stream, or if you're watching us in the replay, you can go ahead and do that as well. We appreciate it. And chop, hop around. There's so many different contributors here. We appreciate all of them. So in the meantime, I guess I should probably get back to work.

But we appreciate all of you. Thank you for being part of the Cadre sphere. Tell your friends, your families and your colleagues if there's something that we can do to help build this community. We want to make sure we continue to do it for you. And I will see you guys on the other side. So see you next week, everybody. Enjoy that sunshine.