Back to the Beginning

We had known for a while that something was "different" but it took the kindly advice of our son's Speech Therapist to really open our eyes to what exactly was going on. Son A had been in speech and occupational therapy from age 4 to age 6. Due to frequent ear infections as an infant his speech was unclear and his balance was awful. We were also told he had sensory integration deficit and proprioception problems, but no one ever suggested what more could be done or what these really meant.

When he was 6 the Navy sent us to California where all therapy stopped. Since he was ahead of his class academically (he'd taught himself to read at 3 1/2) they didn't see the need for assistance. Besides that, they only had one therapist for the district which covered 8 schools in three counties. Thank goodness for understanding teachers that ignored his hopping in line and repetitive coughing. And so it was that therapy ceased and A regressed. Well, maybe regressed is too strong. I guess he just stopped progressing.

A turned 9 the Spring before we returned to Washington State, leaving the Navy and returning home to the Tri-Cities. Fourth grade wasn't horrible, but I could see him fitting in less and less. He was however back in speech. By the beginning of his fifth grade year I had begun fighting hard to get him help. He had been coughing since the age of 3 and nothing we had done had ever helped at all. He was having hysterical crying episodes at least once a week, his eye contact had gotten spottier, and he was not functioning motor wise at par with his peers.

His doctor and teacher suggested ADHD, for which he began medicated . After 3 months and 4 different meds he hallucinated at 6am one morning. Screaming, crying, piling furniture in front of his bedroom door to keep us out. It was very frightening. That's the day we stopped giving him medicine. It's also about the same time I stopped writing this blog.

We had him tested for food allergies and he came up positive for more than 25, not including all their sub-foods. It was at this same time that his that his Speech Therapist mentioned Asperger's Syndrome. Being computer crazy, I immediately looked it up online was overjoyed and somewhat overwhelmed by what I found. My son fit every one of the criteria... gross motor, eye contact, IQ, obsessiveness with a subject, it was all there. I was so excited! It had a name, I wasn't crazy and overprotective, something was really wrong! But it was Autism... why hadn't anyone mentioned Autism before? Why didn't I know more about Autism? How had I, and so many others, missed something that seemed so obvious to me.

It was February of 2006 before I was able to have him officially tested by a pediatric neuro-psychologist. And what she found stunned me even more. It wasn't just Asperger's, it was also Tourette's and tremors and low muscle tone on his left side and Sensory Integration Deficit and, and, and.... How had ALL of this been missed? We took him off all medication immediately and for the first time in 8 years he stopped coughing! Somthing he had been given Asthma meds, allergy meds, and a myriad of other things for turned out to be Tourette's.

A month later I left for 5th grade camp with him. I didn't realize until the second day of camp that I was not only still in denial but still in shock also. That was the day that his group went out to the woods to learn fire building. He spent the entire hour and a half 30 feet from the group hanging upside down over a log. Amazingly though, on the last night of camp they played a Jeopardy game and he answered every question about fire building correctly. He had heard it all, but he needed to be away from the group to process it. It was so hard for me to watch how truly separated he was from the other kids. I was amazed also, and extremely grateful, at how protective they were of him.

This was the beginning of the journey for us. A journey that has taken a few twists and is no where near finished, but has brought me closer to my children.