Week One is Done

Week one with my fellow Seneca Sheepdogs is over and I am already exhausted, but this is to be expected at a special needs camp.

This session, I had seven campers in my cabin, most of which were younger than 20.The first camper to arrive on Sunday was Jeffery. He has a pretty severe case of autism and an unusual sleep schedule to say the least. Sunday night, he did not sleep at all which meant two things: staying up with him in two hour shifts with the other Seneca counselors and a coffee-filled Monday morning. Jeffery is also diabetic so we had to stop him every time he begged for food, which was pretty much every opportunity he got whether it was attempting to raid the staff fridge or holding his hands in basket formation for other snacking campers to deposit their snacks. I quickly learned the sign for "pop," as he asked for it every time it was in sight.

Despite the food grabbing and crazy sleep schedule, Jeffery was still great to be around...during the day. As soon as I got over his peculiar habit of constantly spitting on the ground and rubbing that spit with his hand,  I began to see how fun Jeff can be. Jeff had an array of noises that he made (one night he made them from 3-8 a.m.) and he also had a trademark hop-skip complete with a huge smile. This skip was very different from his typicall, slow-paced waddle  and it usually happened when he was entering the nurse's station to see his favorite nurse, Keagan. He also loved to slam doors, toilet seats, and drawers because he has OCD. On Friday, the bathroom door could not handle anymore slamming and one of the pieces of wood came off.
Jeffery was also an expert puzzle maker. We found 4 puzzles for him to do, but they were only 24 pieces each; 4,976 fewer pieces than he has done at home, according to his dad.

Overall, I will definitely miss Jeffery, even though his absence will mean more sleep and fewer trips to the bathroom (he drank a pitcher of Crystal Lite at every meal.) Having Jeffery in my cabin forced me to learn some essential sign language too. Other than "pop," I can now say "later," "eat," "wait," "bathroom," "sorry," and of course "no," all thanks to Jeffery. Other than the signing, I also communicated with Jeffery by copying his favorite face: opening only one eye and switching back and forth.

Of course Jeffery was not my only camper this week. Roberto was another great guy to have in the cabin. He was nonverbal and his favorite look involved an eyebrow raise and a slight smile. We discovered that Roberto acts very strange right before he goes to bed because of his medicine. On Monday morning, Roberto woke up with Kyle's shirt underneath his sweatshirt instead of his own. When and how this happened we will never know.

We also had two brothers in the cabin, Zac (12) and Joe (19) who loved horsing around with one another. Even when they were next to each other in the showers we could hear them yelling and playing. They loved Pokemon and they both really seemed to enjoy camp. Joe demonstrated his Disney knowledge when we played Scene-it one night, and he was ecstatic to tell everyone how great he did.

Then there was Max. Max is only a year younger than me and he has MD. He had a great sense of humor probably got a little tired of us not being able to transfer and help him as well as his parents. Even though a lot of the activities were a little lame for his cognitive level, I still believe he enjoyed getting to know more people, including myself. I learned a lot from him, not the least being how to play Cribbage and how to adjust a breathing mask at all hours of the night.

Max's first mouth painting

Finally, Chris was in our cabin. He did not speak a lot, but when he did it was when he chose to and not when we asked him a question. My favorite memory of Chris this week was when we were giving him an award for best private dancing skills (he was shy about it, but he was good when he thought no one was looking.) When we announced what the award was, he turned around and faced the wall because he knew this award was going to him.
The week ended great for me because I was able to play the role of the archer in the council fire, a long standing ITC tradition where the campers are recognized for their achievements. I love the roll of the archer because it has the coolest paint, minimal lines to say, and of course a bow and arrow.
As a whole, it was a great week of memories, several of which I have failed to write down for sake of making this way too long. This can only be solved one way- posting more often. I will try to get in the lodge and make use of the WiFi during my scarce free time.