Biography Draft 2

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When Cass got to work that mother’s day morning of 2000, she thought it was going to be a typical day of work. She was going to go work with Bill, the 50 year old man with autism who she had been caring for over the past 15 months. Bill has his own apartment, but required 24 hour staffing and assistance in all daily tasks. She talked with the overnight staff person to find out how he had been, Bill was extremely anxious the day before. Whenever Bill got nervous he would drink water excessively. Since bill is a 6’3”, 250 lb man, it can be hard to tell him no and/or physically stop him from getting himself a glass of water; she wondered why the staff hadn’t just turned the main water supply off to keep him from drinking so much. Bill was still in bed which was very rare, he never stayed in bed much past 7, and here it was already after 9:00.

At lunchtime Bill barely ate anything, another thing that was very rare for him. She tried to bring his lunch to him in the living room, and he still wouldn’t eat anything. Cass was beginning to get worried about the strange behavior, but tried to tell herself that maybe he was just having an off day.

They were sitting in the living room in the side by side recliners watching some television, when Bill began to have a seizure in his recliner. She could tell by his body language and facial expression when he came out of it and was in post seizure. He tried to stand up and lost his balance and fell. Cass was very worried and decided to call Kate, her boss, to see what she thought Cass should do. After she had explained everything that had been happening, Kate suggested that she call the nurse on call. The nurse on call just told her to keep an eye on him and keep him sitting down. Cass was extremely worried, but did as she was told.

It was 3:00 and time for another staff switch. Cass filled the afternoon staff in on what had happened and told them to call her cell phone if anything changed or happened. She headed to another clients house to give him his medication and start to prepare him dinner. She hadn’t been there for even an hour when her cell phone rang. She ran to answer it.

“Cass it’s me Jim. Bill has had another seizure and he fell between the recliner and the wall and I can’t get him up.” He said in one hurried breath.

“I will be right there.” She said back practically running out the door while she said it.

On the way back to his house, she called the nurse again. This time the nurse just told her to get him to bed and again keep an eye on him. When she got to his house and saw him, she knew it was more serious than that and called Kate again.

“Kate this is serious, he needs to go to the hospital right now. I don’t care I will pay for the ambulance myself. He needs to go.”

“Cass I trust you, if you feel that strongly about this, go ahead and call the ambulance I will meet you at the hospital.”

When the EMTs got there they started trying to strap Bill down to a stretcher. Cass tried to explain to them that he has autism and he isn’t just going to lie down and be strapped to something without a fight. He doesn’t and can’t understand what is happening, but they wouldn’t listen. They finally got him in the ambulance and to the hospital.

As always the emergency room was total chaos. Cass and Kate tried to explain to the nurses, that Bill wasn’t going to just sit there and wait; he has autism he doesn’t understand. He needed to be seen immediately. The doctors came in and began asking Bill a bunch of questions. He just stared at them, he had no language at all, and had no way to answer or even comprehend what was happening. Cass tried to sit by but when the doctors asked “Do you drink alcohol and/or use any recreational drugs?” she had had enough.

“Listen the man has autism. If you give him a beer, he will chug it, if you give him a joint he will eat it. Now can we just get to the examination?”

It turned out Bill had hyponatremia, a condition that occurs when a person drinks too much water and causes the body to loose too much salt. This condition is extremely common in marathon runners, and others who exercise a lot at one time. The doctors told them that they had no idea how Bill had survived this, his salt levels were at half of the level that is considered fatal.

Cass had been working with people with disabilities since the age of twelve; she knew she wanted to do it for the rest of her life. Over the course of her time with Bill she had decided that she wanted to focus her work on people with autism. The main problem that day at Bill’s was that he wasn’t able to communicate anything to anyone. He couldn’t tell any of the staff how he was feeling, and wasn’t able to talk with the EMTs or the doctors. It was that day she realized that she wanted to become a speech and language pathologist and work with children with autism, because that is the key time to improve their language.

In December of 2001, Cass began a job as a para-professional, working as part of the early intervention team for a 26 month old boy with autism. She was extremely excited to work with a child with autism for the first time. She was going to be providing 40 hours a week of one on one therapy to him. When she first began working with him he would run away or become violent towards her and/or himself whenever she tried to get him to sit at the table and do some work. He could only label things with nouns, and had no pragmatic skills. The only things he enjoyed doing were sitting in corner coiling and uncoiling a belt, flipping through a book, or taking any objects he had and lining them up in a neat and perfect row.

Cass would immerse him in language all day long, with no response. She hadn’t even been able to get him to acknowledge her presence unless he was being violent toward her. One morning, six months later, she walked in to the classroom.

“Good Morning Nicholas.” she said to him as she had been doing every morning. He looked at her made eye contact and said, “Hello.” Instantly her heart was filled with joy. He had just communicated with her for the first time. She held back the tears of joy that she wanted to shed.

“Wanna play?” she asked him.

“Play, yes” he said in response. That was twice. She couldn’t have been happier.

They sat at the table and he willingly played and interacted with her. He also didn’t just label stuff with nouns, he began to use verbs. Nicholas has come so far since that day. He now has full conversations with numerous people every day.

Cass worked with him up until the time she went back to college to get her masters. Although she had always known she would someday go back for her masters; it was while working with another boy with autism that she realized she had to do it now.

Shortly after Cass began working with Nicholas she was offered a job working in the home with Adam. He also had autism and needed a one on one therapist to be in the home with him after school. His mom was friends with Nicholas’ mom, which is how she got in contact with Cass.

During the 2003-2004 school year, things started to go downhill drastically for Adam. His one on one at school left and they just put him with the only available person.

As the school year went on Adam started to go downhill; he was becoming extremely violent and self injurious. Cass began to voice her concerns to everyone she could think of. She went to the principal and the superintendent, but no one would listen to her. She was just a para-professional what did she know? Cass wasn’t the only one with growing concerns; Adam’s parents had had enough and got into litigation with the school. It is the schools responsibility, by law, to provide care for their child during school hours, and as far as they could tell that wasn’t happening.

The members of Adams team tried to come up with new treatment and behavioral plans that would make things better, but nothing was working. Cass and his parents tried to explain that it wasn’t the plans, it was the therapist. He needed someone new. After a few months of getting no where, Adam ended up being pulled out of school. His family ended up moving out of the area and Adam now attends a school just for children with autism, and is an entirely different kid.

During the summer of 2005 Cass got the chance to get back to providing therapy. As part of her masters’ degree, she was required to work at the on campus clinic. She was placed as one of the student clinicians in a social skills group. All the children in the group had some level of ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder. Each child in the group would be paired up with one of the student clinicians that were involved with the group. On the first day of clinic Richie, the child Cass was paired with, arrived. He wouldn’t let go of his grandmother’s leg, he hid under the table and refused to participate. Cass has always loved a challenge, and instantly went home that night and started to pull things she had learned over the 3 years she was in the field and began making treatment plans and figuring out how she was going to get Richie involved. Over the course of the summer Cass made a lot of progress with him.

During a meeting with her supervisor, she was once again reassured that she was meant to do this for life. Her supervisor told her that she was so happy that of all the clinicians involved in this group that Cass had been the one to be paired with Richie; and that because of his needs she would have requested that there was a switch if Cass hadn’t been the clinician originally working with him.

Cass had started to use a system of pictorial prompts and cues for Richie and it was working wonderfully. At the end of summer when she was writing up her final report, she was having problems with the recommendations. This report was going to a licensed speech and language pathologist at his school. Being just a student clinician she didn’t feel that she was qualified to write any recommendations. Her supervisor finally told her, “Cass what you did this summer worked with him. If his SLP isn’t doing any of these things at his school she needs to know that they work.”

Cass is now finishing up her masters degree. Her graduation is planned for August 18, 2006. She is very excited to be done with school and get out there and do what she has wanted to do since she was twelve.