The Results

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end"--Semisonic

I thought that quote would be appropriate, since today marked the end of a long journey and the beginning of another.

Today, Michael and I met with the psychologist for Gabriel. It has been an experience, starting with Bright Horizons calling us in to discuss odd behavior Gabe was exhibiting (so dubbed "Staring Episodes") nearly a year ago; meeting with all the specialists--the neurologist, the immunologist/allergist, and the ENT; Early Childhood Intervention specialist visits for Speech, Occupational, and Social/Developmental therapies; the worrying, the battery of tests, negative results on everything they ran....After all that work and stress and chasing, we finally have our answer.

We determined today that Gabriel is certainly "on the spectrum"--that he is Autistic.

This doesn't actually change that much. Gabe is still Gabe, and we love him just they way God made him. Basically all this does is explain WHY Gabe is the way that he is, and give us a more directed approach to how to raise him in respect to his special needs.

Michael had the full day off because he met the selling quota last month and this is a perk of that. He didn't seem particularly worried, but he never seems particularly worried about anything. I, on the other hand, was clutching at my last frayed nerve.

It is a weird compulsion for me, but I always dress up to go to doctor's appointments. I think I want them to think I am a good mother, and that they will somehow think less of me if I show up in the comfortable yoga pants that make up most of my wardrobe during pregnancy. But it took me a good long while to pick out exactly what I was going to wear--unintentionally dressed all of us in brown so we looked like a family of poop. (Just kidding--we looked quite nice, if I do say so myself).

We dropped Emerald off to spend the afternoon with Grannymom and DadDad so that we wouldn't have to worry about taking her to the appointment, which I am thankful for. It would have been a great deal more stress trying to control her. Then we got to the parking lot early and had a picnic lunch of sorts overlooking the park. None of us wanted to eat outside because of the wind, so we just had chips and sandwiches in the car. Gabriel seemed to like it a great deal.

I had been told that we would show up at 1.30 and fill out paperwork, and the appointment would start about 2 and last about 2-3 hours, depending on how everything went. Little did I know that the half hour before the appointment was actually fully needed to fill out the paperwork--they handed me a clipboard with a large stack of papers, and it took me and Michael nearly an hour to complete them. Felt like the danged TAKS test, only worse because there were so many questions that were difficult if not impossible to answer based on Gabriel's age and lack of communication.

While I worked on filling the paperwork out, Michael played with Gabriel in the waiting room. They had a nice little set up in there with toys and legos and books and stuff. Gabriel of course was destructor, wanting to dump everything out and throw things, plus he ran pretty much nonstop around the room. For some reason, he responded surprisingly well to the receptionist--he gave her a huge grin when she took his picture, and he kept running up to tap on her glass and giggle at her.

Tammy--our ECI specialist that works with Gabriel's social delays--met with us at the appointment basically as back up, since she had seen Gabriel and had worked with him and was able to answer some of the questions we didn't know how to answer or didn't understand. Dr. Driskell also asked if her intern and a Nurse Practioner student would be able to sit in and observe, which we didn't mind in the slightest.

First, they had us all in a room where Gabriel was prompted with different play activities. I had read about this, and I thought they were not going to allow me and Mike to be back there which made me uncomfortable, but they invited us back as long as we were willing to sit back and watch and not try to interfere at all. Of course we can do that. Part of this was to ensure that Gabriel was not acting like he was abused or neglected, which obviously he is not. Then they just wanted to watch him play and see how he handled himself in situations like this. It was good because it gave me an opportunity to finish filling out all the paperwork that they wanted.

After that, they sent Gabriel with the intern into an adjoining room and Michael and I (and Tammy) were interviewed. We answered a lot of questions all over the map about how he plays, how he is with other kids, how he communicates, skills he has and has not developed...that kind of thing.

At the end of all of it, Dr. Driskell said that she is positive Gabriel has a developmental disorder--she will have to evaluate all the information we have provided her with to determine exactly to what extent, or how severe, he is. But it is certainly either autism or Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS), probably on the mild side of things, but we will have to wait just a little while longer to see. It is not asperger's because the defining difference for Asperger's is that it does not present with a significant speech delay, which is one of the bigger concerns with Gabriel.

She did also say that there is a possibility because of how intelligent Gabriel is and how early we caught it and the countermeasures we have all ready taken (such as the ECI therapies) that when he is tested again in a few years, he will be "typical"--not autistic. It is not a certainty, just a possibility, but it is encouraging.

Basically what this boils down to is that we have a nearly definitive answer in sight, which means we can better target our approach to helping him. We can learn better ways to teach him, to understand his sensory, mental, and social needs, and how to discipline him more effectively. Our goal is to get him more engaged, get him more interested so that in the long run this will not handicap him or put him at a disadvantage.

You might be wondering how Michael and I are taking the news. Michael is as cool as a cucumber--seriously, he is 100% unfazed by this news. Which helped me out a lot. If I had gone to this appointment alone, I would have cried at the beginning, struggled through the interview, and had a complete and utter breakdown at the end. But rationally, I know this doesn't change much. I don't want to afix a label to him so early in life, but this enables us to be more proactive with helping and raising him. Emotionally, I am mildly stunned, but I will recover. I am coping. This is not something that is going to own our family--it's just something that is happening, and we have to have faith that God will help see us through.

It's sort of funny in a way--I have known since I was a little girl that God had called me to work with special needs kids. All throughout school I have been fascinated by them and volunteered to help them and work with them. Maybe this was preparation for having Gabe one day. Probably not, since the ones I worked with were usually more severe than he is, but it's an interesting theory.

Anyways, so that is my update. We will meet with Dr. Driskell again on July 12 to discuss the full extent of what we are looking at here, and to gather as much information as possible, and at that point I will write another blog post.

~Andie~