The Diagnosis…

Let’s start at the beginning…

Things started out with us so amazed at this little noodle that was advanced in our eyes. He was mimicking at about 3-4 months and everything else was on schedule. We couldn’t be prouder.

But then we started losing all of those words and he was slowly falling behind.

The doc would tell me he wasn’t reaching certain expectations and suggested sending him to some study at UCSD. The word “autism” never really came up early on.

Honestly, I felt like this was just who Z was and who was I to say he had issues because he could not stack blocks (that he didn’t even own, by the way). I also blamed some of it on me being at work too much, on our lives being too busy to teach him these things.

As he reached 3 and 4, he started really falling behind. Our mothers would say something was “off”, my mom provided helpful materials on autism. We started our own research, but still were not 100% believing it.

We tried new doctors. One spent the whole time yelling at me for not having a helmet for him (he didn’t have a bike) and telling me he was behind because he couldn’t climb stairs (we didn’t have any). The next one told me not to worry since boys are usually slow. I finally pushed hard at this and at age 4 we were sent to a specialist.

We went with heavy hearts ready for anything. But not ready for what we got. This “specialist” spent about 2 minutes trying to get him to do puzzle toys (which he wouldn’t do) and quickly told us she could not diagnose him because she didn’t have a Masters Degree. No joke…

By now we were freaking out… I remember waiting in line at an ATM and Z was running around in circles squealing. Some guy looked at me and asked if Z was Autistic. I spluttered “no” and took off. I wasn’t ready to accept anything at this point.

Around this time I ended up getting laid off from work. One blow after another, but this was a blessing in disguise. Now I had more time to figure all of this out!

We decided to try and get Z diagnosed by the school district since it was preschool time. We met with a school psychiatrist who strongly felt he had autism, but could not “officially” diagnose him… Seriously???

At the same time we were just starting to work with the Regional Center and so we went to them. We had an intake person from hell. She told us the school would have to diagnose. Well, this was wrong and the school was out for summer break. I lost it more than once with this lady so Philip took over. He was able to finally get the Regional Center to diagnose him.

We met yet another psychiatrist who brought in this beat up old binder that looked like it was from the 70s. She tried to get Z to do all of these tasks that he wouldn’t do. After 2 hours, she tells us he has Autism. Well, by this point we knew this.. but what she said next hit us in the gut. She placed him on the severe end of the spectrum and said she wasn’t able to test his cognitive ability (so there was potential for him to be mentally retarded as well). While we knew he was autistic we always thought we was more on the high end, so this was hard to hear…

But from this point, we had our official diagnosis and could move on. We all moved in parallel lanes but all mourning in our own ways and for what we considered was “lost”.

I wouldn’t change anything about Z, but I would take away the autism if I could. I would take away the extra layer that separates him from our world. But regardless of all of that, we vowed to do everything in our power to give him the best life possible and to love him because of all his differences.

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