Blessing in Disguise!!

            Some may view what I am going through with my youngest son as unfair....but I see it as a blessing. It is making me re-evaluate my life. It is making me stronger in my faith. I know that GOD gave me my son as a blessing and to make me take a step back and realize I need to take care of myself and get in the best health possible so I can be around to make sure my boys both succeed in life. I am realizing now that I was/somewhat still am being very selfish by not taking care of myself as well as I should be so I can be around in the future for my boys.

             Another Blessing in Disguise is Connections Therapy Center that I take Adrian to. I feel like they truly want what is best for my son. They are like extended family to us now. To see Adrian light up and go running to his speech therapist and give her a hug when we get there makes me SOOOOOOO happy. I can not say enough about Connections Therapy Center. To hear my son say his first "real" word there made my heart leap for joy and let me know that I made the right decision in getting him speech therapy as well as Occupational therapy there. I will post another blog later going into more detail about connections Therapy Center.

        Also Kennedy Kreiger has been such a big blessing and a big part of our life for the last 4-5 months. I have never been to a place with Adrian where I just felt like they knew what I was going through and how to help me get the help that I needed as I did at Kennedy Kreiger. If it wasn't for the C.A.R.D center there who knows when I would have finally got a diagnosis of autism for Adrian. I will go more into detail about Kennedy Kreiger and the services and therapies Adrian has received from Kennedy kreiger in another blog post. 

        To feel like my little guy is finally starting to be able to communicate more makes me feel SOOOOO full of joy. I am my sons' advocate and I will not back down until I know he is getting all the help he needs. 

My still on going Battle with the local infants and toddlers

           After having his speech evaluation in March 2012  I was told to contact our county infants and toddlers(early intervention) so that we could get him evaluated and start speech and Occupational therapy. I contacted them at the least 10 times to try to get a appointment to be set up and was told I needed to go online and fill out there "application" and that once I have done that I would receive a call by the end of the week to set up a appointment.  I filled out there forms and submitted them....and I waited until the end of the week and still never heard anything. So I waited for monday to come and still nothing. So I called and told them that I had filled out the forms and submitted them and I was wondering why I had not heard anything back. So the person on the phone told to hold on so she could check in there system to see if someone was working on it. She comes back on the phone and proceeds to tell me that they do not have it on file that I need to go back online and do it again. I ended re-filling out these forms 4 times. At that point I was SOOOOOO annoyed that I just gave up calling them and proceeded to call Kennedy Kreiger to get a appointment set up for a full evaluation for adrian.

            So fast forward to May 23rd 2012. Second day of evaluations for Adrian we are in the room with the clinical psychologist and she has asked if we had contacted the local infants and toddlers. So I explained to her what exactly was going on with them not doing what they are supposed to be doing. She then called one of there social workers and let him know so that he could contact them and tell them that they needed to contact me within 48 hours or they would be reported to there top supervisors. Well guess what not even 1 hour later they had already called me about setting up the initial meeting with them. Which would not be for another month. 

       Now June 25th 2012 the day of the initial meeting with the infants and toddlers. They started out not on a good note by being 45 minutes late. I gave them copies of all the evaluations I had already done through Kennedy Kreiger. They did there own "mini" evaluation. They then proceeded to tell me that no one would be coming to work with Adrian until August. That they would set it up for him to be seen 2 times a month. In which I knew was not enough for him. He wasn't saying any words or even really any sounds.  

Fast Forward to August 2012. The first meeting with his "provider".....She was almost 30 minutes late. She then proceeded to make excuses about everything. She never had even looked at his file to check out about anything. So I had to get the papers out and let her look at them. Adrian wanted nothing to do with this lady. He completely ignored her.  I was going to give her one more chance with adrian....since it was his first time meeting her. She told me that she would find out about a intensive needs group for adrian to be in that meets 3 times a week and would give me that information the next time she came. She also told me she was going to find out when his IEP(Individualized Education Plan) meeting would be. 

Now the next time she came which was about 2 weeks later was the first week in September.  She again was about 30-40 minutes late. He once again was not "meshing" with her at all. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with her. I asked her if she had found out about the intensive needs group for Adrian and she started making excuses as to why she had not found out about when the group would be meeting.  So she proceeded to try to get him to do a few more things with her in which he wanted nothing to do with. I then asked her if she had found out about his IEP meeting and once again she started with the excuses as to why she hadn't found out he date for when it would occur.

I am going to be contacting my "service coordinator" in the morning to find out about getting his "provider" changed. I am going to let her know all that has gone on. That I don't feel she is a good fit for my son. He needs someone that is not going to be pulling on him to get him to do things that she wants him to do. I know the way he is and I will be able to tell right away if he will work well with a person or not.

Learning that my son had autism

     We started by first trying to rule out other things. We took him to a pediatric ENT to rule out that he didn't have fluid in his ears since there was a family history on my side. Well the doctor checked his ear and said no his ears were clear. He then suggested that we see the audiologist as well as have a speech evaluation. We took him to the audiologist to check his hearing. Hearing test came back that his hearing was perfectly fine. We had to wait a couple weeks to get his speech evaluation. The day of his speech evaluation came and as he was working with her he was not paying attention to what she was wanting him to do. His speech evaluation finished and as the speech pathologist was talking to us she mentioned she thought he showed signs of autism. She felt he needed a full evaluation to find out for sure. My heart sank hearing that from her. I got to the car with my husband and son and I just lost it. I started going through a immediate grief/denial process about what we had. Just been told I tried to keep telling myself that she didn't know what she was talking about. I just didn't want to hear that something was wrong with my son.

      The day I got the official diagnosis of autism for my son was difficult at first. I remember going for his two days of evaluations and knowing in that the last appointment of the second day I would find out what they felt was going on and where to get started on helping him. When the clinical psychologist said he had autism my first initial feeling was to blame myself...thinking what did I do wrong when I was pregnant...if you are a mom you know the feeling. I felt like my world had just collapsed around me. As soon as I got past that official "shock" of his diagnosis. And once i stopped feeling bad for myself and for my son. Once I looked at my son and how innocent he was i knew i had to do everything in my power to get him the assistance that he needed. I was going to be his advocate and not back down until i got what i was told he needed from the people that did his evaluations. I was prepared to fight....I started researching everything and anything I could find about autism. I contacted our local infants and toddlers to try to get assistance with therapy....all those issues I will share in another blog post. I then started looking into private ones...I will post that process in another blog post as well.