November 23, 2008

Anthony’s Reward
Violent outbursts kept an autistic boy away from public, until his family found answers

By SAM CRAIG
of The Chronicle

     It’s just a couple minutes to five and 17-year-old Anthony Buchanan is sitting atop a desk in The Dalles post office next to the customs invoices and change of address forms, staring out the window at the train tracks.
     His eyes are wide and his mouth is open in a toothy smile. This is his favorite time of day.
     The post office is just about to close and Anthony’s knees start bouncing up and down, unable to hold back the excitement.
     A security guard comes to close the gate around the tiny stationary store, and Anthony jumps down from his perch to help. He has a little trouble getting the Plexiglas gate around a sharp corner, but that doesn’t get him down. The guard locks the gate and Anthony returns to his post.
     If a train happens to go by, he’ll be there to see it, but before the clanging and whistles of a passing Union Pacific freight train comes by, the post office is closing for the night.
     “The blue gate,” Anthony shouts, excitedly. “There it goes!”
     The gate comes down with a thud, and that’s the last anyone will see of the postmen until business hours tomorrow.
     “Goodbye,” Anthony shouts at the locked gate.
     “Goodnight, Anthony,” a muffled voice shouts back.
     Anthony laughs loudly, and genuinely surprised, “They said goodnight!”
“Come on, Anthony,” says Pam Robbins, who lives with Anthony, “let’s see if there’s any mail.”
     Anthony goes sprinting for the post office box he could find with his eyes shut.
     Robbins turns the key to open the box, and Anthony reaches in with gusto to grab the mail. His eyes grow even wider.
     “Pam,” Anthony says, like he’s just discovered a treasure.
     In with the mail, there’s a second key. It means there’s a package waiting for him in a second box.
     He finds Box 30 with a little help from Robbins.
     Anthony turns the key and cracks open the door. A small, brown package is waiting at the bottom.
     He nonchalantly hands the box to Robbins and goes back to looking for trains.
     “He doesn’t really care what’s in the package,” Robbins says. “He just really wants to open the mailbox.”
     Anthony’s mother, Rose Buchanan comes into the post office after dropping off some of Anthony’s prescriptions. She tells him it’s time to go.
     Anthony looks at Robbins and says, “It’s a good five o’clock day.”
     “Yeah,” Robbins says, patting Anthony on the shoulder. “It’s a good five o’clock day.”
     A year ago, taking Anthony to the post office, or anywhere public, was nearly unthinkable. He threw tantrums and was occasionally violent. He’d rip glasses off the face of a complete stranger if he felt like it.
     Anthony is autistic. He didn’t particularly want to do any of those things, he just didn’t know how to communicate when he was unhappy. His mother calls those moments, “Having a behavior.”
     And, while Anthony still has a behavior or two now and again, it’s nothing like it was before.
     A couple years ago, at the Grocery Outlet, Anthony had a behavior of epic proportions. He didn’t want to be there and didn’t know how to channel his pent up energy. Unlike most people who would simply sigh and roll their eyes, Anthony began knocking things off shelves and threw a shopping basket at an elderly woman. He missed, but, to keep him from trying to injure anyone else, Rose had to restrain him.
     Several store patrons thought she was abusing him and called the authorities.
“I had to sit on him. It was the only way to control him in that situation. I’d much rather sit on my son than see him go to jail.”
     Back then, they had been living in Mosier. Anthony’s behavior had been wild and unrestrained and he had a series of caretakers who, Rose believes, did him more harm than good.
     Once, while trying to calm Anthony down during a behavior, Rose put him under a warm, soothing shower. She left for a couple of minutes, and when she returned, Anthony was sitting in several inches of freezing cold water.
     “He turned it down,” Rose says, “When I asked him why, he said, ‘I thought I was being punished,’ because apparently the person who had been taking care of him had been putting him in freezing showers when he had a behavior.”
     A few weeks later, Rose caught the same caretaker violently shaking Anthony in the parking lot of Fred Meyer after he had thrown a stack of papers out the window of a car. “We contacted a lawyer from the school, but nothing ever happened with it,” she says.
     “That’s one of the things with autism,” Rose says. “Parents have really got to watch who’s watching their kids, because they have a hard time with communication, and they may not say anything until it’s way blown out of proportion. Too many people can abuse our kids and our kids have a hard time communicating what’s happening.”
     After declaring bankruptcy, the Buchanans moved from their Mosier home to a place in The Dalles. It may have been one of the most important moves of their lives.
     After getting Anthony involved with North Wasco County School District’s Transition Learning Center, things started to change.
     Lynn Stephens and the rest of the instructors at the big yellow TLC building have taught Anthony something he’d never learned before. Flexibility.
     He has a daily schedule, a Velcro-stripped book with interchangeable activity cards that can be moved around to show what he needs to do each day. If something comes up, and he has to make a change, he can deal with it.
     The days start with sharing time, where the students in TLC stand up in front of their classmates, telling what’s going on in their lives. Then they discuss the calendar. The days of the week, the month, the weather, even the type of clothing that’s appropriate to wear that day.
     Anthony’s next stop is usually in the activity room. Today it’s bingo day. A big card shows pictures of famous landmarks around the world. An instructor reads the description of them, and Anthony tries to guess which one they’re describing. He gets a few, but needs help with a lot of them.
     After bingo, it’s time for some physical therapy. Anthony is a big guy. Over six feet tall, he’s hunched over a bit due to chromosomal problems that keep his body from growing proportionately.
     In a cement room, Anthony sits on a giant, orange ball. He bounces on it for a few minutes, before being layed back to stretch out some of the tension from his back.
     Around noontime, Anthony heads home. He’s had enough school for his liking, but his mother hopes he can do a bit more starting in January.
     Anthony can deal with not doing what he wants to when he wants to. He’s learned that doing what’s right can bring rewards.
     The big reward is the post office. His daily, sometimes twice-daily trips to the post office are his reason for living. Anytime it looks like he’s about to have a behavior, Rose will say, “Post office,” and he straightens up.
     At home, Anthony’s got chores to do; not that he completely needs to do them, he loves to do them.
     The laundry just went in the washer about two minutes ago and he stands up and says, “Better check the wash.”
     “You just put it in,” Rose reminds him.
     Anthony shrugs and runs downstairs to check.
     At dinnertime, Anthony is a star in the kitchen, stirring soup, cutting vegetables and even making cornbread. Anthony loves to cook, and Pam couldn’t be happier.
     “He’s made dinner so much easier,” she says.
     Anthony’s sister, Tralina, is autistic as well. She’s into Hannah Montana, but, more than anything else, loves her horse Billie. Twice a day, she and Rose go out to feed bread, apples and hay to Billie and her stall-mate Dancer.
     Anthony doesn’t care much for the horses. If forced to go down to the stable, he’ll yell out, “Stupid horse,” just to get his sister’s goat. His sense of humor tends to get a rise out of people.
     Stepping out the front door to see who’s coming up the steps, Anthony rings the doorbell. “Anthony, post office,” calls Rose. Anthony peeks in the door, a goofy smile creeping across his face. He dings the doorbell again, looking his mother right in the eyes. “Post office,” she says again, this time a bit more sternly. Anthony runs to sit in his recliner, as if nothing’s ever happened.
     Anthony and his sister Tralina have strained the relationships with the Buchanans’ extended family. Some family members who think autism can be cured with a bit of strictness have been driven away.
     “One advantage with struggles,” Rose says, “is that it really brings you closer to your kids.”
     Rose and her husband Tracy are crazy about their kids and each other. Tracy recently got a job working at Shari’s and tends to work the night shift. After 26 years of marriage, they’ve decided to renew their vows.
     “We’re doing it in February,” Rose says.
     “Ah, I have to work that night,” Tracy jokes.
     Concerned that people don’t know nearly enough about autism, Rose just wants people to understand that it doesn’t make her children any less human.      She’s run into people who think it’s contagious.
     “It’s not like a cold, your kid can’t catch autism. It’s a disorder, not a virus.”
At night, Rose lies in bed with Anthony. He’s singing part of Psalm 150 to himself in a soft falsetto.
     “Let everything that has breath praise the lord. Praise the Lord.”
     Rose strokes his hair.
     As they lay in bed, Rose is talking about a time when a blood test revealed an unusual red blood cell count.
     “The doctor said, ‘It’s just weird,’” Rose said. “I said, ‘What can I say, I’ve got a weird kid.’”
     She looks at Anthony who’s holding onto his Trilana’s Siamese cat and staring a drawing of a train that’s tacked to the ceiling.
     “Don’t I? You’re a weird kid,” she says.
     Anthony laughs, “Yeah.”
     “You’re weird,” she says, looking at him and smiling. “But you’re a good kid. A real good kid.”
     “Yeah,” Anthony says as he smiles and lets go of the cat. “Yeah.”
     He laughs a little, rolls over on his pillow and quietly sings to himself, “Praise the Lord.”