It is extremely important to presume competence in everyone. It does not matter if the person is disabled or not. The consequences can be dangerous.
Yesterday morning, N jumped off his top bunk and landed on the floor. My husband tried catching him but was unsuccessful. We kept him home from school that day and had him rest. We wanted to wait 24 hours before bringing him in to prevent any trauma from the hospital.
My husband brought him into the pediatric urgent care to get it checked out. There was a time where my adult sister in law had a broken arm and no one believed her and I did not want that for my kids. So he was brought in and had an X-ray. While waiting for radiology, he was rolling around the place in a wheelchair and was having fun. They got a lot of the wiggles out.
After X-ray they found a cyst in his bone where there is a missing space in one of his bones. A bone cyst is a fluid filled space in the bone. This is usually not caught until there is an injury. They want him to stay off it and did not give him crutches. They sent them home.
When they came home, N could not walk on it and I was afraid of him falling by hopping. I called the urgent care clinic. I asked about this and they told me that they did not think he could use them. I said there was an OT at school that could work with him and they blamed his dad for not saying anything. They did not even offer crutches.
I went to there, I am in pain so I asked them to bring them to the car. So if he keeps on putting weight on this foot before treated, he risks a fracture. Their excuse that children that are 10 are a liability when on crutches.
They just did not want to be bothered. All I had to do was show him once and he was able to do it. If he did not have parents that advocate for him and just accepted what they said, he would be in danger of fracturing his ankle and have bigger problems. This case he could really have hurt himself if we did not know better.
Because we presume competence, N will be able to stay off his foot until we can get a referral to a medicaid orthopedic to address the problem. He will be less likely to fracture that foot.
Fierce Autie 