You have to laugh...

...otherwise, you'll cry.

Somehow, Olivia managed to pick up the strep germ this past week. Aside from Sonjia's and Walmart, chickadee hasn't been anywhere since school got out on the 10th, but strep found its way into my girl and on Thursday evening, the fever hit. So, off to the doctor she went on Friday with a swab to the throat and a shot of Rocephin in the leg.

Last time O was on antibiotics, we finally gave up on giving it to her because she fought it till we were all covered in the sticky, smelly liquid and sweating like we had run a marathon. She would clamp that jaw shut, squirm and fight, and then if we managed to get some medicine in her mouth, the stubborn girl wouldn't swallow it for 10-15 minutes, if at all. Brian discussed this issue with the doctor and the needle solved the problem.

I wish I could reason with her. "Sweetie, if you don't take this medicine, you'll have to get a shot." That would have worked for me as a child, but little Miss Mystery doesn't quite get those kind of conversations.

The fever was gone by Friday evening and she has been able to eat and drink just fine, so I'd say her first bout with strep has been fairly easy to suffer through.

That said, she has been ill as a hornet this weekend. Nothing makes her happy and she wants to hit her head. All. The. Time. Makes me want to put my head through the wall myself.

Of course you wouldn't believe this if you saw her right this very minute. She's currently lying in the kitchen floor laughing hysterically. At absolutely nothing. Except for the hum of the dishwasher and the clicking of my fingers on the keyboard, there isn't a single sound near her. Or anything else remotely funny, for that matter.

Last night, around 1:45 a.m., I heard her laughing. Like someone was tickling her. Over and over. For well over an hour. Seriously. She has done this before, but it has been a long time since her last middle-of-the-night laughing fest. Have I mentioned that I'm a light sleeper? At least I was awake to the sound of sweet belly laughs instead of crying. (Yes, I'm a glass half-full kind of girl. Sometimes.)

So, the spends-way-too-much-time-online, researches-every-little-characteristic-of-Miss-Mystery-Girl, techie-momma got to work this morning looking for a reason behind last night's laugh-a-thon.

Google Search:

laughing in the middle of the night

The first link I click on in the search results was this. And the first thing I noticed was the colored autism puzzle piece awareness ribbon. I scroll through the forum posts and quickly realize that all of the comments were from parents of autistic kids. Then I read a comment about yeast. About how the child had high levels of yeast and after being on diflucan for a week, the night laughter stopped.

I kept searching, adding words like autism and yeast to my search phrase. I found many more related comments and blog posts about the connection between high yeast levels, autism, and "inappropriate" day and nighttime laughter.

Of course, Olivia just had a pretty hefty dose of antibiotics, and if she is anything like her momma, she's bound to end up with an overabundance of yeast. (That's a whole other blog post that nobody wants to read about. Trust me.)

As for the autism link... well, I've always felt like she has so many autistic traits. Not that I want her to be autistic. But she has so many characteristics, and despite the fact that every single therapist, doctor, teacher, and evaluation she's had since she was born has rejected the idea that she might be autistic, I'm becoming more and more convinced that she is.

Wait- I take it back- there has been one doctor who mentioned autism. He was one of the hand specialists in Charlotte who saw Olivia at the Saturday clinic a couple of months ago. After less than ten minutes talking with me, he said he thought she was autistic. I was already emotional over the fact that I thought I had traveled alone with the kiddos to Charlotte on a Saturday and spent three hours in the waiting room for much needed leg BOTOX injections only to find out we were there to talk about her hands with a bunch of doctors I had never met. That brought on the tears. I couldn't help it. So, I wasn't quite sure how to take his comment at that point.

Um, you haven't even tried talking to my daughter and you've known us a total of ten minutes. And you are confident enough to throw out the word AUTISM to a woman who is already in tears? Aren't you a HAND doctor?

Yet, through the tears, and at the exact moment I was thinking about how badly I wanted to scream at him, I was thinking...

Yes! You see it, too! And you saw it in just ten minutes! So I'm NOT losing my mind!

Instead, I mumbled some question about why he thought she was autistic and I walked away without any memory of his answer. I seriously need to start taking an audio recorder with me to Dr. appointments.

After my initial search this morning, I decided to spend some time researching autism. Again. I've been down that path so many times in my online research over the last four years. I've read books and subscribed to blogs. We even went gluten and casein-free for over six months. But, today I wrote down a list of stereotypical autistic traits that Olivia has, along with some phone numbers I plan on calling tomorrow so we can make some appointments for evaluations.

What will I do if someone assigns the label of autism to my mystery girl? Have we already missed the window when ABA therapy would be most effective? How consumed will I be with learning about the details of detoxification and supplements? Will someone ever be able to explain to me the difference between mental retardation and autism? Will the label of either (or both) give us any certainty, or just muddy the waters of this mystery even more?

I don't know. Makes me want to cry.

My girl has the right idea. When it's dark and you're tired, and you have every reason to be scared,

just laugh.