Up To Date

One thing I forgot to do when we changed internet providers --- change information for my previous blog. Oh well, just have to start a new one.
Up to date: We have been on a journey of sorts in regards to John Brady since shortly before his second birthday. He wasn't talking, but we weren't real concerned -- considering he was born into a family already full of talkers, he probably just didn't "need" to talk. But our pediatrican wasn't going to let it go longer than 20 months, so when he still wasn't talking we began speech therapy. Shortly after his second birthday he said, "Mommy" for the first time. I can honestly say that I could find the date of Yancey Jr and Nancy Claire's first utterances of any form of Momma, but the memory of it isn't clearly etched into my mind. But that's not the case with John Brady....we had been working for a few months with a speech therapist when it happened. I still remember that he had indicated to her he wanted to go outside on the patio, so we opened the door and she carried him out. He turned around and pointed to me and she asked him, "Who is that, John Brady? Who else do you want to come outside?" And he looked at me and said it, "Mommy"......yep, when you wonder "if" they'll have words, you celebrate them much differently. And though there were typical speech issues, his vocabulary quickly expanded and as far as we could see it, we didn't have communication issues anymore.
But he began doing some other strange things, and had some other issues that concerned us. Individually they wouldn't amount to much, but when you put them altogether, especially now looking back, they were definitely significant. For instance, he was not just a picky eater....it went beyond that. There were foods that he would ONLY eat. I don't exaggerate when I say that months went by when the ONLY food he would eat were Oatmeal Creme Pies. Seriously. At that time his only words were "Mommy" "Eat" and "Pie"....so the poor child sat in a highchair eating Oatmeal pies all day long....it seemed to be the only way to keep him happy.
Then there were his "lotion" issues -- his favorite was Desitin, no, not Destin, Florida, Desitin diaper ointment. If he could get his hands on it, he smeared it all over his face and hands and arms. Sometimes his feet and legs, but rarely his torso. Often untimely, frequently frustrating, financially wasteful, and only funny in hindsight. If he was quiet, if you didn't have him in your view, you better worry. He must be into something.
We had to do a "baby-proof" like you've never seen the likes of.
Except, I forgot about under my sink in my bathroom area. The place where I stored all the tubes of red lipstick -- the ones that came as a Gift With Purchase, but the color I would never wear, but would never throw away for whatever reason. One day I did remember. Unfortunately, it was all over him, all in his hair, all on the carpet, the walls......I was so thankful that day for a Thermax.....I truly called my husband at work and said, "You better get on your knees right now and pray for your child!!"......I can laugh now, but I promise I was not laughing then.
So we began to wonder where the line of typical and atypical was drawn, and if we had crossed it.
And we would soon find out that we definitely fell on the "atypical" side of the line.
At that point, in addition to "developmental delay/speech delay", we were told that John Brady more than likely had "Sensory Processing Disorder". When we left that day, I can VERY clearly remember walking out of the building with a sick feeling but looking at my husband and saying: "At least they didn't tell us he has autism. That I couldn't handle." Yes, that's what I said. I won't ever forget it.
I also won't forget coming home to do some internet research on Sensory Processing Disorder. EVERY SINGLE article I read linked it to an Autism Spectrum Disorder. But there ARE people who have SPD that are not on the spectrum. And that's what I knew for John Brady.
I can even remember back then filling out online questionnaires and seeing their "diagnosis" as Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified. That didn't mean anything to me then. Now I know that it's an Autism Spectrum Disorder, sometimes called atypical autism.
But as time passed, I did begin to suspect something else was going on besides Sensory Processing Disorder. There were so many times that I really suspected he would end up "on the spectrum", but his verbal skills always pushed that idea away.
Until last year when there was another assessment done and it was shown that though he has verbal skills, he lacks some necessary communication skills. You can't imagine what it feels like to be told that your child really has no empathy; that his emotions are 90% based on how something affects him, not on how anyone else feels. Or that he can't read anyone else's emotions -- to him there's little difference between excited, happy, angry, sad, frustrated, scared, worried, etc. He has two emotions he is able to act on or verbalize: Extreme Joy or Extreme Anger. So that was another kick in the stomach.
There were so many little things here, and there, that put together, and when finally put on paper and into ratios and scales and such, it came out just a few months ago with an official diagnosis: Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified.
Okay, that's enough for tonight.....tomorrow I'll travel down the "road to diagnosis and help"....and since we're still traveling it......