Beyond Pissed

Imagine watching your child slowly climbing a flight of stairs. She is carefully holding on to the chilly metal railing and stepping one foot at a time. Suddenly, though, she falls and begins to scream. Blood is streaming down her leg, and the cut looks bad. You scoop her up and rush her to the hospital. When the doctor comes in you say "She fell on the stairs" but he says "No this isn't a stair injury. She did not fall." "But I saw her fall," you exclaim. "I was right there and she fell on the stairs." "Well...you are wrong because there is no way this could have happened by falling on stairs." Absurd, right?
In her new book, Jenny McCarthy uses a similar stair example to explain how parents feel when going to their pediatrician for autism and its cause, but I am going to take it a step further. When Evander and I went to visit Bubba (@ 3 months of age) in Guatemala we noticed some "different" behaviors but pushed them aside. The same happened at our second visit (@ 5 1/2 months), but we could no longer push it aside when he came home to us. By 9 months we began working with ECI (early childhood intervention) and by 15 months we were searching for more help. Something just wasn't right, and, as his parents, we knew he needed help.
Finally, after much determination and many doctor visits, we received our diagnosis of PDD-NOS in June from a child psychologist. This diagnosis was also confirmed by a developmental pediatrician in July. It was not the diagnosis that we were looking for, but it is what we got. We wish more than anything that Bubba was typical, but that is not the case, so we are dealing with it one therapy step at a time.
This is why I was beyond pissed this morning when his preschool director told me "I'm just going to tell you...he's not autistic." "Excuse me," I uttered. "I mean, really, he MAY have a very minor speech/language delay but that is it and it is minor if that" she continued. Immediately my blood pressure rose quite a few levels, but I planted myself in the doorway because she evidently wasn't finished. "We see no behaviors here. He shares and is such a good kid. I mean he is receiving so much one on one here," she went on, and this apparently gave her mini-me assistant director the go ahead to butt in. She began, "I've worked in McKinney PPCD and I can tell you that class size there is crazy and he might be in with more severe kids there. He does have some autistic tendencies but just tendencies and he's SO YOUNG, SO YOUNG!" At which point Miss Director exclaims, "Yeah, SO YOUNG!"
First let me say, hell yes he is young. Isn't early intervention the key to kicking ass and taking names with autism? I wasn't about to sit on the sidelines while my child continued to deteriorate and say, "Well, I think he's too young for a diagnosis." That's just not how I play the game.
Secondly, let me say that these two morons obviously didn't see Bubba before we started our biomedical treatments. They missed the months that I tried to comfort him as he screamed (not cried) for 18 hours (with little break) or played with him for hours just trying to get him to sit up on his own. They were not there to feed him baby food that I knew he would choke on (or even worse vomit) or to physically restrain him for over 30 minutes because he was a danger to himself and Baby. They must have missed him banging his head on the glass over and over again or continuously spinning in circles without getting dizzy, and I'm sure they missed the days that I spoke in sounds just hoping that he would babble one time.
Now, many of you know that I do not take kindly to these types of things and I usually go ape shit (for lack of a better term) on anyone who would even think of making a remark like this, but you will be proud to know that I kept my cool. I looked at my son, flapping his arms in the hallway, smiled at dumb and dumber, and took Bubba to the restroom. I knew I needed a moment to breathe or I would lose it. I stepped into the restroom, took 2 seconds to gather my composure and left.
I want to say that Evander and I do not find joy in the fact that Bubba is on the autism spectrum, and trust me when I say that going to therapies and doctors is not how I want to spend my days. He has come so far in the last 6 months, and I know he will continue to grow. We want nothing more than for Bubba to be considered typical, and maybe one day he will be, but do not tell me I didn't see my son fall. He fell and he is injured. Maybe one day his injury will heal and only a scar will be left in its place but DO NOT tell me I did not see my son fall. HE FELL!