Still waiting

So Babcia (Grandma) M. is back in town and staying with us for the holidays. It is very likely we will once again hold her hostage and help us through the next month or so as we traverse the path of getting the services Zach requires with his new diagnosis.

And that brings us to the report. It should arrive either today or tomorrow. I am dreading reading it, yet am in great anticipation of receiving it. The report contains the findings from Zach's evaluation at Yale. It should be an approximate 30 page report that includes details of his evaluation, their findings, and their recommendations for treatments.

Some of these items we already have begun to work on, as we were briefed while still in Connecticut. One thing we have taken initiative on is getting Zach into a pediatric neurologist to check out his arm tensing (most likely a self stimulatory behavior that many autistic kids have also referred to as a "stim") to determine if this is seizure activity. A study that I read recently has indicated that when there is regression in normal development, as was the case with Zach, their is a higher risk for epilepsy.

Another area we have scheduled Zach for is an ABR or auditory brainstem response hearing test. Since they were not able to 100% confirm that Zach had no hearing loss back in July using the normal sound booth testing, the folks at Yale recommended this. This ABR test, however, requires sedation, and has me feeling uneasy.

Recent research has shown that children with autism spectrum disorder process sounds slightly slower than other children, which may be linked to listening and language issues of children with an ASD. I don't believe that we will be able to get that detailed information from this particular test. But this is interesting, nonetheless. I would love to know why he does not respond to his name - something that can be so very frustrating to me. Will I ever know?

When is that report going to get here!