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Old 01-13-2009, 05:16 PM   #45
Clodfobble
UNDER CONDITIONAL MITIGATION
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Austin, TX
Posts: 20,012
Well.

In case I had any doubts that we were doing the right thing by getting him evaluated, the last few days have been the absolute worst he's ever been. He's been completely insufferable and uncontrollable, instead of just a little "off" like he normally is. The hairtrigger emotional meltdowns with no cause (as opposed to the standard daily "going to bed" and "sitting down to eat" and "not getting to run in the parking lot" meltdowns) skyrocketed from once every few days to about 3-4 per day.

We spent an hour with the occupational therapist this morning, and she gave a general diagnosis of Sensory Processing Disorder (which is the topic of the book Griff recommended, points duly awarded,) with some other red flags (like the lyric-reciting, toy-car-spinning, and the fact that he has a very high vocabulary yet for the most part does not speak in sentences or use pronouns) that may indicate PDD-NOS after further evaluation, which is basically the catchall diagnosis for high-functioning autistic disorders that don't match up with Asperger's or one of the other common ones.

This is not really news to us of course, but it still makes me really sad.

On the one hand, we have caught it relatively early, which is great for treatment options, but it also means that we don't yet know what other idiosyncrasies may develop. As an example, he currently has no muscle tone in his lower face, presumably because he has tuned out those muscles because of constant over- and under-sensed oral inputs. Right now the only outward sign is slackness and drooling, but without improvement, it could lead to greater speech problems down the road, which would impair communication/self-esteem and possibly lead to the more recognizable Asperger's symptoms like non-sociability and poor communication skills. There are specific regimens we're supposed to use to get him to learn how to move and sense his mouth normally, like spray this incredibly sour liquid on his lips and pull on the insides of his cheeks in that typical "funny face" kids do. He thinks the sour stuff is great (it is painfully sour to most people) but really, really doesn't want me messing with his cheeks (which is exactly why I have to do it, but getting bitten is not fun.) Another thing I'm supposed to do is make all of his toys as heavy as possible, because it will help his muscles and movement if he gets more feedback from the things he is doing. In most cases this means drilling small holes and filling them with sand or rice. He freaked out about the weight belt at the therapist's office, so I'm also working on finding ways to make his clothes heavier, possibly by sewing little bean bags into the legs of his pants.

We will be going to the occupational therapist once a week for now. Twice a week is also an option, but our insurance only covers 60 visits for the lifetime of the patient, and we would burn through them pretty quickly at that rate. But that's per diagnosis, so the workaround for that is to leave him at a diagnosis of only SPD for now, and then upgrade him to PDD for another 60 visits, but really treat him for both the whole time.

Regardless, I really hope this week was just a bad week and not an indication of his new baseline. It was pretty damn rough.
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