Medical Diagnosis

Spirit, Heart, and I have spent the last three weeks navigating the medical diagnosis process. It's basically the equivalent of the SAT test. Ask the same questions hundreds of times in a different way to see if the answers consistently point to what everyone is seeing. So two days ago we sat with a psychologist provided by the school district, and she pointed us to what we already knew. PDD-NOS (Pervasive Development Disorder Not Otherwise Specified) the autistic diagnosis equivalent eh...I don't know.

Here's what we know:

We know he has autism.

We know he is very high functioning.

Pretty much anything we thought we knew before. Interestingly enough you put yourself in this position that when the news drops you're like: "Okay, that's exactly what we thought it was." And yet through all the smiles, the quirky stories, and the familiarity of the situation, you're secretly hoping that the Psychologist in front of you is going to laugh a little then tell you that you are crazy. He is just a normal nine year old with some idiosyncrasies and he will outgrow it.

No such luck. I've never had some sort of a terminal cancer, never been given news that devastated me, the closest I've ever come was when I misheard my mother giving me some bad news about my cousin, and for about ten minutes I thought my Dad was dead. Yet as the smiling, understanding, charming woman sitting across the table from us indicated that our observations were correct, the lump in my throat got larger and larger. It doesn't matter how many times I played the situation out in my mind, when she confirmed what we already knew, my heart sank.

All I could think was, "what now?"

What now? Now we live by lists, we look for ways to control the environment around him we assist him in dealing with the constant attacks from everyday interactions.

I quote one of my son's favorite movies.

"We're about to go over a cliff aren't we?"

"Yep"

"Sharp rocks at the bottom?"

"Most likely."

"Bring it on."

So we're busy embracing the finality of Spirit's diagnosis.

Bring it on.