A (Brief) Update

I’ve been attending some LAUNCH classes at The Children’s Hospital, which I feel fortunate to have locally. This is continually one of the top 10 facilities for children’s needs in the US, and though we had to wait a VERY long time to get seen there, my reflection on the matter is that it was worth the wait. The LAUNCH classes are mostly educational (with some direct Q&A) with our developmental child psychologist helping families understand the ins and outs of the entire autism spectrum. I’ve certainly learned a good bit about different treatments that are available, even if I’ve not yet decided to pursue one.

In other news, trusera contacted me about blogging for their website over the next few months to discuss Asperger’s Syndrome – today I’ve accepted their offer, so much of my time over the next few months will be spent authoring for them. You may even see some of the more well-written stories from this blog on there if I’m pinched for time.

And, reaching out for support – do you guys know about and/or use the Yahoo! Group called MASK? It’s official name is maskas99 and it is an invitation-only group, but it is very active and has a lot of input (though some of it is little more than drivel).

Sorry there’s not more time. AS is doing ok so far in kindergarten; we talk to his teacher frequently and we are pretty much aware of where he’s at socially, and we still work to improve it.

Cheers,
Patrick

A Completed Evaluation (finally) and its Diagnosis

I apologize for being vacant from the blog for awhile. Yes, all this time has been spent in limbo somewhere between waiting for appointments and attending them.

Last week, I had the pleasure of taking AS out of kindergarten for a day and escorting him to his evaluation at one of the top 10 children’s hospitals in the US. Those who’ve been through the cognitive and adaptive 4-hour exam with a child understand very well that this is not an easy task.

As expected, he performed brilliantly on the cognitive exam. The psychologist commented several times that he was performing well above his age range for the tasks he had. I was surprised, because most of the objects for the task were things he’d never seen before – like cubes that are different patterns on each side.

And, as expected, when it was time for social, adaptive play, he stumbled, and stumbled, and stumbled. The two parts of the exam were clearly night and day, and it was relatively easy for our psychologist to conclude that AS really does have Asperger’s Syndrome, or some form of high-functioning autism that is very near to it.

I believe at this point we are somewhat relieved to have officially learned this about AS. It does open up things for us which were closed until the diagnosis became official, so that is morbidly good.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll begin sharing some of our outreach options and how they do or don’t work for us with AS as they are applied. We were introduced to the CCB (community board) but because he has an IQ over 70 (it was approximated at 110 to 125, actually) we’re pretty much just hoping for some respite money or some advice.

You know, what I think is funny is how, once you hear that diagnosis for real, we all start questioning what properties of ASD we actually have ourselves. While I’m no hypochondriac, I do profess to small amounts of OCD and ADD at the same time; I also admit a little bit of adolescent aloofness, but then again, it’s an easy mold to slip into for the tweener who rides a wave of shifting insecurity.

We don’t blame anyone for this, nor should we. AS can’t succeed any better than before just because we find root cause after some exhaustive search of the entire family trees for 10 generations. The focus has to be on right now, on what’s next, on the near and not-so-near future; that is where we will succeed.

More to come; stay tuned.