Little Things Add Up To Big Stress

The last few weeks have been stressful.  Actually, based on how I've felt the last few days, they have felt extremely stressful.  There is nothing "big bad" going on, but lots of small stress causers, and they pile up until I feel like I do now.

I think that's the case with a lot of parents like myself.  We live with a base level of stress, most all the time.  When small things get added on, and on and on, it doesn't take much to put us over the top.  The funny thing is, when things are REALLY bad, something kicks in---adrenaline or a hidden reserve or something.  It's still very hard, but more a sadness or anger or worried hard.  Stress, for me anyway, is like the workaday version of those.  It can be just as tough to deal with, or tougher, without being as headline worthy.

What is stressing me, you ask?  Or even if you don't, I'll tell you.  Let's start with the last 10 minutes, after Janey got off the bus but before she started watching a Christmas Madagascar special and kicked me out of the room....

 I sit out in the 95 degree heat, waiting for the afternoon bus home from summer school.  It comes at highly various times, due to highly various Boston traffic, so I wind up often waiting for it a while.  When it does come, Janey gets off the bus and within a minute, turns off both air conditioners.  She hates AC.  It is sticky hot in a way that Boston sometimes gets, an unbearable way.  I suggest she uses the potty instead of the bed.  This displeases her, and she starts screaming.  I take a deep breath and try to calm down, and offer her some chips if she will try the potty.  She calls my bluff by going to where I've hidden the chips, easily finding them and opening both bags.  And then rejecting them.  As I go to clip one bag shut, she somehow hides the other open bag.  As I search for it, she screams hysterically as I have not instantly put on the TV show she asked for at least 10 seconds before.  I stop the hunt, find the show, clip the chips and sit down to write this.

Now an update, 15 minutes later.  After I wrote what comes before this point, Janey changed her mind about a show.  I went over to put on the new show she asked for.  But that was not really the show she wanted.  I was supposed to know that, somehow.  So she screamed a while longer.  I figured out the right show, and she pushed me out of the room again.  I sat down to write and have some of my coffee.  Janey came over to turn off the AC I'd turned back on.  I turned to talk to her, and knocked over all my coffee.  Naturally, it didn't just go on the floor, but instead on Janey's special pillowcase, the one non-human object in the world she cares for, which she obsessively takes off the pillow and puts down various places.  I tried to sneak the pillowcase into the hamper, but she noticed and got extremely upset.  Somehow it having coffee on it made it necessary in her eyes for me to make more coffee.  She pushed me over to the coffeemaker and screamed until I started some.  I started it, and then snuck back over here.

None of this is huge stuff, but in the half hour since she's been home, it's a lot.  And that has been this week.  Getting on the bus in the morning is the worst.  The bus comes to get her any time in a 30 minute range.  Today it was there at the earliest time, yesterday at the latest time.  If we aren't out there when it comes, they do honk, but they have a lot of kids to pick up and can't wait long.  So...we have to go out to wait for it at the earliest time.  Janey tolerates 5 minutes or so of waiting, but then she wants back in the house.  And screams because she can't go back in.  If the boys are available, I have them stay inside with her, but even then, if they look away for a minute, she takes off her shoes, and otherwise makes herself unpresentable for school.  Generally, they aren't available (Freddy works until late and William is currently visiting my parents), so that isn't even an option.  I just have to figure out how to keep Janey from freaking out in the heat while we wait.  Again, not a huge thing, but it's making me a little crazy.

Oh, shut up, Perfect Woman!

Sometimes, I am up to dealing with stress.  Lately, I'm not.  It's the heat, partly, and my health partly.  I don't get into health details much here, not to be mysterious, just not to overshare, but there are currently four different diagnoses I carry, each of which has among the top 2 symptoms "extreme fatigue"  And I am feeling that extreme fatigue lately.  I am feeling every second of my 51 years.  Having a child that needs full time care, who is not capable of self-care and will not ever be, most likely...it's tiring.  And stressful.

The woman in the picture is how I feel like I'm supposed to be.  It's my ideal, one that reality doesn't modify much.  I should be calm always, working on solutions instead of complaining, feeling grateful Janey goes to summer school instead of wishing it was for longer, cheerfully doing the housework while she is there instead of grudgingly doing it and wishing I was just sleeping instead...yeah.  I should be making up a nice chocolate cake instead of writing right now.

This is mainly just a rant. There aren't solutions.  And I'm certainly not alone.  I know you, out there in the wider autism nation, are right here with me in Stress Village.  And most importantly, I know Janey is stressed too.  And like me, she is doing the best she can.  So, we'll keep on keeping on.  55 minutes until Tony gets home.  Not that I'm counting.

Ideas for the toughest times

Now is not one of the toughest times with Janey.  It's been an overall good couple of years, which is an amazing statement to make, in that it has "years" in it. But this weekend Janey was a bit unhappy, with more crying and screaming than we've seen lately, and of course, it flashed us back to the toughest times. And it made me think---there's a lot of advice and ideas out there for those with newly diagnosed kids, and for daily life, and for tantrums and so on---but what about advice for the times that quite frankly are hellish?  If you haven't had times like that (yet), I hope most sincerely and strongly you never, ever do.  But most of us parenting a child with autism have, or will, and I have a few thoughts about getting through those times.  

Toss out the regular rules

When times were toughest with Janey, during days when she literally screamed all day, or cried all day, it sometimes took me longer than it should have to realize that it wasn't the time for consistency.  I at first would cling to the notion that if I gave in and did unusual things, like let her watch TV all night, eat chips all day, go for car rides day and night, take showers all day long, that it was going to somehow set a bad precedent.  I now realize---who cares?  When times are as tough as they can be, you are focused on survival.  If something gives you five or ten minutes of a happy or at least not as sad a child, and it's something that won't hurt them or you, do it.  You aren't in regular times.

Trade off

This is the time to beg your spouse to call in sick or take some vacation time.  If you are a single parent, hopefully you have someone that can help in times of emergency.  Either way, you MUST get a break now and then.  It can seem impossible, and you can feel as I have at times that you have to be there.  But even if it's only for 5 minutes, you need to have time to recover.  You need to be able to breath.  I remember the times Janey was in the hospital, when I'd get a chance to go eat in the cafeteria.  Those 15 minutes or so would feel like a miracle, and I'd come back able to go on.  And I remember times for whatever reason I couldn't take a break, and feeling quite literally like I could not go on.  You NEED to grab moments for yourself.

Get some mental support from those who get it

I am very, very lucky to have made some friends through this blog who are fellow autism parents.  I hope the rest of you are as lucky.  When you are in the midst of a crisis time, you need to be able to talk to someone who gets it, without "it" having to be explained. You need to be able to speak freely, to rant and rave and cry, to have someone who won't say "now, it's not that bad", to have someone who doesn't necessarily offer advice but just listens, to have someone who doesn't say something like "You REALLY need to get respite care!" when there IS no respite care...that kind of person.  That is part of why I made the Facebook page.  If you ever need to, post there.  I can guarantee there are others there who get it, and will listen.

Put off going to the emergency room as long as you can

You might not have been thinking emergency room, but I think most of us have had that thought at times, when your child has been screaming or biting themselves or banging their heads or crying for days.  It IS an emergency, and it's reasonable to think ER in an emergency.  And I would never, ever discourage anyone from getting help, but I know, from personal experience, that the ER is not a good place to be in a crisis.  It might be necessary, in order to get the next level of help, but it's a nightmare while you are there.  All my life, until my dying day, I will remember the approximately 24 hours we spent in the ER at Children's Hospital, before getting a room, as the worst 24 hours of my life, and the worst 24 hours I hope beyond hope I will ever have.  The ER is not set up to deal well with children with autism, to say the very least.

Don't be shocked if your child winds up in a psychiatric hospital

I was shocked.  I never, ever saw it coming, even though Janey was certainly in crisis.  When her school called and said they were sending her to the hospital by ambulance, well---I can't really describe that moment well.  And then when she was seen there, and the psychiatrist said she needed to be in a psychiatric hospital---again, blindsided. Sure, things were pretty bad.  Horrible, even.  But for whatever reason, I just didn't realize what that probably meant.  I won't get into right now whether the psych hospital was the right place or not, but I can say it was a safe place for her, and if nothing else, it let us recover for a few days while she was being taken care of.

Take it from me---it WILL get better

If anyone had told me how relatively calm and happy the last few years have been with Janey when we were in the midst of the toughest times, I would have laughed at them.  It did not feel possible.  It truly didn't.  But it was.  And talking to quite a few other people who have lived through such times, I've found that it does get better for almost everyone.  I'm not making promises about WHEN it will get better, or how long it will STAY better, but the very worst times somehow seem to be self-limiting.  If you can make it through those weeks or months, and keep yours sane and alive, there will be a day when you can look back at them and, no, not laugh, but marvel.  Marvel at how you made it through.  

Full Circle McDonalds Trip

This weekend, we spent a lot of time organizing our bedroom, to prepare for a badly needed new mattress.  Some of the work involved heavy lifting and cleaning, so we decided I would get Janey out of the house so Tony could do the work without Janey needing Daddy's attention 100% as she usually does on weekends.  I took her various places, one of which was a McDonalds.  During the meal there, I kept flashing back to another trip to that same McDonalds.

Here's a blog entry about that long ago trip, when Janey was four.  (LINK)  It's a trip that has stayed in my mind for all those years because it seemed like a dividing line.  Before that trip, I often took Janey out and about.  I ever said in the entry "Usually she loves to shop", which surprises me a bit now to read, but I vaguely remember as true.  Janey did, when she was very little, like to go shopping and to be out and about.  We often went to McDonalds and ate inside.  But that day, she had a violent reaction to something, and for one of the first times, tried to bite me, and succeeded in biting her own lip and the back of the chair.

After that trip, I didn't take Janey out much on my own ever again.  It wasn't safe.  We did a trip here and there, but overall, I just didn't.

Now, eight and a half years later, I do again.  Finally again I feel safe taking her places.  I have enough confidence in her ability to stay calm and my own ability to calm her if she doesn't stay calm that we are going places, fast food places and short trips to stores and yesterday, swimming at a Y for summer autism free swim.  The trip back to the McDonalds was smooth (besides them giving me a burger instead of grilled chicken in my sandwich and me just eating it rather than trying Janey's patience by returning it).

However, the trip also highlighted to me another change.  Janey is not talking much lately.  Her calmer behavior seemed pared with less activity overall.  During the meal, she said exactly one thing, an echoed "23" when I commented that the number of the marker we had on our table was 23.  She ate in silence, despite my best trials.

When I read back about the long ago trip, it is hard in some ways to read what she said long ago after the trip----"I heard a clicking sound, and the clicking sounded like BOOM! I heard a footprints sound"  All these years later, a sentence like that is basically unheard of.  It's quite hard often to realize that despite many, many years of speech therapy, ABA and schooling and just getting older, Janey talks substantially both less and less complexly than she did soon after her diagnosis, even during periods of more talking than we are in right now.

I don't think the two are connected.  I don't think talking less and being calmer go together by necessity.  At least, that's not supposed to be the plan.  It's supposed to be that talking, communication, can make Janey calmer---that if she can tell us what is bothering her, we can help.  But back then, she told me that long sentence that I thought was about what was making her upset, and it didn't help a bit.

I don't get to decide, of course, but what if I could?  What if I could pick a calmer but less active and communicative Janey or a more communicative but less calm Janey?  Which would be better for her?  I have no idea.

Another thought that has crossed my mind---maybe Janey talks less now because we have learned more about her.  Maybe she doesn't talk when she doesn't feel she has to.  She isn't into talking just to chatter---she talks when she has something to say, and maybe by understanding more of what she needs, she doesn't need to tell us.  Is that good or bad?  Again, I really don't know.

Whatever the reasons, the reflection on the two widely separated trips to McDonalds has left me with more questions than answers.

Summer without dread (mostly)

Smiles on the train

Tuesday was Janey's last day of school, and I kept thinking it didn't feel like the end of the school year and the start of summer.  After some thought, I put my finger on why---I didn't feel dread.

Of course, I feel guilty saying that.  It doesn't fit with the idolized autism mother I always compare myself to.  I'm not supposed to feel dread that school is over.  I'm supposed to feel happy, energized, ready to enrich Janey's life with all kinds of helpful and fun activities.  But every year up until this one, I felt dread instead.  Dread of long days full of tears, days where my good intentions to do all kinds of interesting activities with Janey ran up against the fact she didn't want to do those activities, or her behavior was such that I couldn't do those activities with her alone.  Dread of the feeling in mid-afternoon where all that keeps me going is counting the minutes until Tony gets home and I can collapse and have ten minutes to myself.  Dread, mostly, for Janey---for the unhappiness that I can do nothing about often, for the boredom I fear that she feels, for the confusion I worry she has about transitions like school to summer---dread of a summer that I always feel falls far short of what I want her summers to be.

Rest with William on the grass

However, this year, the dread was almost non-existent.  A lot of that is that Janey is just plain easier and happier than she used to be.  It's a rare day that she screams and cries all day.  It is possible, now to take her out in public even on my own at times, and certainly with one other adult.  But the other part is a change in my own attitude.  I have you, my dear blog friends, to thank for that for that to a large extend.  Last year I wrote about my guilt over the sameness of Janey's days when there isn't school, about how the highlight of the day is often just a walk to the corner convenience store, about how many videos she watches.  I was comparing her summer life to my own at her age----by the time I was 12, I worked at least part of every summer, I spent tons of time on the ocean, I did things with friends and read and biked and all the things that summer in Maine in the 70s and 80s meant.  But that was my life.  And you all reminded me that Janey might be quite content with her days as they are---that I should not feel guilty about what got us through the day---that a walk to the store for her might be like a walk along the coastline was for me.  I took what you all said very much to heart, and it helped me a huge amount.

Picking out a donut

So---I'm feeling better about this summer.  I've taken a few other steps to help too.  Tony has arranged his vacation time around Janey's summer school, so there are not long periods of time with just me at home.  I've figured out that making sure Janey gets a lot of walking exercise in early in the day leads to more relaxing afternoons.  I'm keeping the house very well stocked with foods she likes, and we are walking to the corner store several times a day.  And I'm letting her watch videos as much as she darn well pleases, and not feeling any guilt over it.

Yesterday, William and I took Janey into the city on the commuter train.  I would not have dared to do such a thing in the recent past.  It went fairly well.  We let Janey pick where we walked, and that resulted in an interesting random ramble around downtown, eventually into a small park with a fountain.  Janey said "I want to swim!" and I rolled up her pants and took off her shoes and she waded in the fountain for a long, long time.  And I didn't care that she got some looks for the financial world type people that were all over the park.  I enjoyed people-watching them, so the looking was two-way.  We met Tony to take the train home with him after work, and then I took a long nap.  If the summer can be like yesterday---not too bad, guilt-free and with Janey at least neutral if not happy all the time, I'm going to call it a success.

South Station, Boston

Walking along the Rose Kennedy Greenway

Searching for words

Last night, Janey said "I want to watch...." Then she stopped, and I could see she couldn't find the name of the show she wanted.  She started over "I want to watch...", and then did the same thing several more times.  Something about how she was saying it made me not jump in.  She had the look and the sound of someone who is searching for a word, who knows what they want to say but just can't quite bring the word up that moment.

When she started to look upset, which took a few tries, I did what I often do, and gave her a sentence with a blank.  I said "The show I want is named..."  I'm not sure why, but that sometimes makes it easier for her to fill in.  But this time, she didn't.  She kept looking at me, and the look started to break my heart.  It was lost, almost scared.  It was a look that said "Why can't I say this?  Why is what I need to say so hard to say?"

Janey's talking goes up and down.  There are times she talks more, and times she talks less.  We're in a low ebb right now, quite low.  I don't panic over this, because over and over I've seen that the talking will come back to higher levels in time.  But somehow, this felt like the first time she was aware of her own trouble finding words.  I could be reading too much into her look, but over time, I've gotten pretty good at reading her face.

After a few more attempts by me to give her a fill-in-the-blank, she said "The show I want is the show".  I then did what I had hoped to avoid.  I started listing shows she might want---"The show I want is..Angelina?  Blue's Clues?  Beauty and the Beast?   Kipper?  Wonder Pets?  Dora?  Barney?  Courage the Cowardly Dog?   Backyardigans?"  She stopped me there and said "Backyardigans"  So I put that on, and she seemed fairly content.  But still, I got the feeling that she simply was tired of the whole thing, and that she picked a show that didn't sound bad, not the show that she was really thinking of.

I thought about this incident a lot last night and this morning.  I wondered how I could have handled it better.  I wish she could manage the TV remote and pick the show herself, but it's so complicated to use Amazon Fire TV to pick a show that might be on Amazon Prime, Hulu or Netflix, that might be a video we've bought or one that is on the air---all of us have trouble with it.  I could try to get her to watch videos on her iPad instead, but she is very clear when she wants the big TV and not the iPad.  I could have a page of pictures of shows she likes to point to, but she rejects that kind of solution at home almost always, and even if she didn't, the list is limited to ones I think of, not all the ones that exist.

What I really wish is that she could learn more word retrieval skills.  She has a very good speech therapist at school right now, but her time with the therapist is limited, and I have the feeling there might be specific kinds of therapy that most help with word retrieval.  A few months back, I started trying to find a place for her to get outside speech therapy, and found it was far from easy.  There are lots of places that do autism therapies, but they are almost all exclusively ABA, and most word with kids under 13 only.  Janey will be 13 in two months. I have found iPad programs specifically to help with word retrieval, but they are aimed at people without intellectual disabilities, and quite honestly are far beyond Janey's abilities.

Before school this morning, I stopped Janey and said to her "I know sometimes it's hard for you when you can't find the word you want to say.  That must be very frustrating.  I saw how sad it made you last night.  I want to help you with that, and so does Daddy, and everyone at school"  I have no way of knowing how much she understood, but I am glad I said it, and she listened, and smiled at me.

There is so much about Janey that is mysterious to me.  How often does she settle for shows she doesn't really want, food that isn't what she is aiming for, songs playing that aren't really the song she wants, because she doesn't have the words?  Why can she sometimes talk so much more than other times?  How is it that she can remember endless song lyrics, or show dialogues, but not sometimes simple titles or names?  How can I help her?  And sometimes I ask myself the hardest questions of all---how is this fair for her?  Why does she have to struggle to be understood?  What would her life be like if she could talk more readily?  Those last ones don't have answers, I know---or if they do, they are beyond my own word retrieval skills.

Writing Raw

I don't normally write when I am feeling raw, when I am not in a calm writing state.  But today I will. I won't get into all the reasons, not to be mysterious but just because it's not always the forum here for that.  But I am feeling discouraged this week, very discouraged.

It's not really Janey's behavior that is discouraging me, but with my other worries, it's the constant grinding feeling of knowing there just doesn't seem to be a place in the world for kids like Janey.

I put an article from the New York Times on my Facebook page---here's a link to it--Link  It's just one thing in a long list of endless things, but it upset me.  It talked about a new program in schools for kids with autism, a program that in many ways is like the school Janey attended for the first 5 years of schooling, an inclusion program.  I liked what it had to say, until I read the line that said "To get into the program, children must be deemed capable of doing grade-level work"  Yeah.  Okay.  Like so many other programs supposedly for special needs or autism, kids like Janey are specifically excluded.  This is something I find over and over and over---camps and lessons and special events and on and on and on that simply don't want to deal with a child like Janey (or if I am being kinder, would like to deal with her but just don't have the resources)

And I will get really cranky here and say I'm sick of hearing that, basically, intellectual disability doesn't exist in autism.  It's not something I hear directly, but something that is often implied.  I am the first person to say that I know Janey has many, many strengths.  I know she understands more than she lets on.  I value her extremely much, AS SHE IS.  It is not necessary to make her something she ISN'T to value her.  She is a child that has a very significant intellectual disability.  It's fine if people choose to not accept that.  But they can't choose to not accept that but then still think they are helping all kids with autism.

What if I said "Janey IS capable of doing grade-level work!" and tried to put her in a class like the ones in the article?  Because, who knows?  Maybe she somehow is!  I can just imagine how that would go over.  It would not.  The truth is, what someone might be capable of is not, in practical daily life, that important.  She could not function in a class like the ones described.  I am not just guessing this.  She used to be in a school with classes like the ones described, or actually, a school far MORE inclusive than the ones described, classes that did welcome kids with intellectual disabilities, but were not able to deal with the full range of autism's challenges.  I wish she still could be at that school..  But she can't, and the school was right to admit she couldn't.

And there are so, so many other things like the inclusion classes the article talks about.  If you ever want a good laugh, do a search for camps in your areas that say they accept kids with special needs or even more specifically, kids with autism.  And then look at the details.  There is almost always a rule saying something like "child must be able to function in a 5 to 1 child to adult ratio", "Child must be able to safely follow routines"  or even "Child must be fully toilet trained"  I'm overstating a bit here, but if camp fliers were honest, they might say something like "Children with special needs accepted as long as they don't have any needs which are beyond those of other children"  Or in other words, special needs children are fine if they don't have special needs.

To me, whenever I feel that the media isn't presenting a full picture of children with autism, when voices of parents like me are silenced because we are "speaking for our children and not letting speak for themselves", because we are "portraying autism in a negative light"---well, to me that feels like the truth of Janey, the truth of children like her is something that is being hidden, something that is somehow too horrible to talk about.  And it isn't.  Janey is an amazing person.  Almost everyone who has met her is drawn to her.  She is amazing AS SHE IS.  She is amazing not because she might have mysterious hidden abilities, she is amazing WITH intellectual disabilities.  And WITH occasional self-injurious behaviors.  And WITH incomplete toileting skills.  And WITH aggressive behaviors when she is very upset.  And WITH very limited speech.  She is amazing as she actually is.  And I will fight until my last breath for children like her to be included, truly included.

"William lives here too"

We've had a lot of success over the past year with new approaches to Janey's behavior and our responses to it, which I've written about a good deal.  In a nutshell, we've realized if we let her follow routines, and we focus on behavior outcomes more than on how we get to those outcomes, life is a lot easier for all of us.  However, there are limits to this approach, and we've been running up against them lately.

Janey and her big brother William

The difference in the last month is that Janey's brothers are home from college.  It's great having them home, for Tony and me.  Janey adores her brothers, and was very excited at first having them here.  But they don't always fit in with the routines she's set up for herself over the school year.  Often, they don't obey the rules she's made---rules like "Nobody can be in the living room with me while I watch TV", or "No music can be played in the house except as approved by me" or "Daddy and Mama give all their attention to me when I ask for it".

When I have read books about parenting kids with autism, especially the extreme "I cured my child" books, one thing I noticed often is that siblings are pushed to the background.  Either there are no siblings, or you get lines like "Of course, the other children often wound up missing out on our attention, but in return they learned so much compassion and love!"  I swore I'd never have that attitude.  Luckily, Janey's autism came to the forefront right around when the boys were reaching the age that less attention from Mama and Daddy was not a bad thing.  I have guilt that will last forever at events I missed and times I was too tired to listen well, but overall, I think Janey being seven years younger than Freddy, and ten years younger than William, was a lucky thing.

However, as anyone with adult or young adult children living at home knows, they still need you at times.  And I don't ever, ever want them to feel like Janey is more important than they are.  But what do you do when a force like Janey's will meets a force like her brothers?

The answer is---I often just don't know.  For Tony and me, the peace and calm that comes from letting Janey control the things she can control is so worth it.  But what do we do when Janey quite literally pushes William out of the room he wants to be in?  What do we do when she screams because Freddy is trying to show me something on the computer?

Generally, I stand firm.  I say things like "William lives here too.  William has a right to be in the room.  Freddy can watch a video on YouTube just like you can"  But, as I've written about, just being firm doesn't work with Janey.  Her routines, her need to control her environment---these things are not something she can change easily based on rewards or deterrents or our attitudes or words.

Over the last week, I've seen the return of some disturbing behaviors I haven't seen Janey show in a long while.  Last night, when I told her that she couldn't use the big TV right when she wanted to, she lunged and tried hard to bite me.  Only a quick reaction on my part stopped her.  This morning, when I was putting on her shoes, she wanted me to use the shoehorn, as Tony usually does.  When I didn't immediately comply, she tried her hardest to break the shoehorn she'd brought me, and almost succeeded.

So---what do I do?  It's one of those cases without a right answer.  All my kids are important to me.  The boys certainly have modified their lives and behaviors a huge amount over the years, but I am not willing to tell them they can't even be around, which is what Janey quite plainly wants at times.

All this is making me think of how extremely difficult it must be for those of you with children close in age to your child with autism.  It's something I have never had to deal with.  Like with so many ideas for dealing with autism that might work for one family but not another, many of the approaches we've had success with would quite literally be impossible if Janey had a close age sibling, or if not impossible, extremely unfair to that sibling.

We'll see how the summer plays out.  I'm glad Janey is still in school for now, and will be in summer school for a good chunk of the summer.  But I'm worried about the changes in behavior, worried with the fear of someone who has seen just how tough things can get.  I hope they don't.