Kai had his first check-up with his new doctor yesterday. You may or may not remember that we were looking, and finally found a lovely lady out in the suburbs. She has a son with Down’s Syndrome. One of the receptionists has a kid with CP. Their office is conveniently located near a drive-through Starbucks, which is, in truth, a good enough reason to switch all by itself.
:::
Kai has been all kinds of awesome lately, talking a blue streak, answering questions.
“What’s this on the floor?” I asked him the other day.
“Sorry,” he said. “Egg is watery.”
He’d apparently cracked an egg on the floor. Which he told me about! Then apologized! Swoon!
“Where’s the rest of it?” I asked him.
“It’s inna garbage.”
This, ladies and gentlemen, is nothing short of a miracle.
And it keeps happening! Go ahead! Ask him anything you want.
Me: What are you going to play with Jovan today?
Kai: Tag
Me: Where’s our baby?
Kai: It’s in the kitchen.
Me: Kai, can you help Ryan?
Kai: You can do it, Baby!
So imagine how proud I was at the doctor’s office—our new doctor—when he answered all of her questions.
“What’s your favorite color?” she asked him.
“Purple!”
“I see. What’s your favorite animal in the zoo?”
“An elephant!” he said.
He was quiet for a moment.
“No,” he said. “Not an elephant. I like the crocodile.”
I was so impressed with his mad conversation skillz that I was barely paying attention to the fact that he was crawling all over the office, up the walls and onto the window sill, opening drawers and cabinets, turning on the water. He climbed up onto a shelf and lay down for a second, then got up and tried to escape the exam room.
This was all par for the course with us, as you probably know, and the real test of the new doctor. She handled it with considerable aplomb, though the fact that she had an iPad that Kai couldn’t use was questionable. She was able to examine him without me having to hold him down, however, and made sure to compliment him on that fact.
They continued their running conversation about what Kai was allowed to touch, and she and I had our own conversation, about diets and school and sleep.
Toward the end of the visit, she put her iPad down.
“I have to tell you that I’m really struck,” she began, and I knew what she was going to say. She was struck by his eye contact during the eye exam, by his (new) ability to answer questions, by his attentiveness.
“I’m struck by his level of activity.”
“You are?” I asked. His “level of activity” was no different than it ever is. He touches everything. He jumps on everything. He climbs on everything. He wants to manipulate and explore everything. This is my normal.
“Has anyone ever mentioned ADHD to you?” she asked.
OMG. Does the fun ever end?
In truth, someone has mentioned ADHD: the neuropsychologist who diagnosed Kai’s PDD. We were talking about long-range expectations for Kai.
“Some kids like Kai end up with a set of criteria consistent with Asperger’s,” he said. “And some of them outgrow some of their delays and end up with some quirky behavior and something like ADD.”
I told her this.
“I see a lot of kids,” she said. “And I see a lot of different kinds of kids. Kai is outside of the ordinary.”
She does see a lot of kids. Her whole practice centers around special needs. It’s why I went to see her. Well, that and the Starbucks. I think I mentioned the drive-through.
We agreed that we would fill out the assessment forms. Me, Kai’s teachers, Kai’s therapists. We’d just see what came of it.
“I’m glad you’re so open to the idea,” the doctor said.
I battle autism every day, an illness for which there is no cure, an illness that most people in the medical community don’t understand. They can’t figure out how you get it or how to prevent it or why it’s on the rise. They can’t treat it and will tell you to your face that the only hope is that you catch it early enough. They fire you as clients for not doing what they say, yet they can’t help you at three in the morning when your kid is wide awake from whatever gets switched on in his brain and won’t turn off for days and weeks. The few doctors who do offer ideas and solutions and theories are branded as quacks, their ideas dismissed as lies and junk science.
I smiled, because, dude. ADHD, really?
“There’s a pill for that,” I replied.
ADHD..Austism...PDD....even allergies, they're really much of the same thing. You still treat it with diet and supplements and run as far away as from those pills as fast as you can.
Posted by: Bonafide Dr. Hater | 03/16/2012 at 06:14 PM