bravery

A few months ago I saw a 18-year-old with autism.  At first I was a little scared, since he towered above me and was obese. (Over 6 feet tall and BMI was like 35 or something).  I saw that he had progressively gained weight with each of his past visits, so I wanted to draw diabesity labs.  But since he had autism, he was very scared of needles.  Just at the last visit, it took a monumental effort to convince him to just get a vaccine.  After some coaxing by me and my attending, he finally agreed to do it.  We called Child Life to come help calm him down, but he then adamantly declared, "I don't need any help!!!!"

He successfully had his labs drawn for the first time in his life without incident.  He was extremely proud of himself.  His mom was very proud too.  I myself was very proud of him.  He then made statements like, "I feel half of my blood is gone," but was smiling all the time.  Several weeks later, I called the family to tell them the lab results, and his mom told me he had been asking about them everyday, so significant an event it was.