Friday, November 20, 2009

#3 AMMON 4 YEARS OLD-DIAGNOSIS

Ammon was now four years old. There came the day when I realized he was NOT going to "grow out of" his odd behaviors, and would not survive come kindergarten time in a classroom. I knew I must do something. His pediatrician said he was fine, but I didn't believe him. In fairness to the pediatrician, I really didn't know what to tell him that was not normal about Ammon.

With a prayer in my heart, I could only rely on what I call the Holy Spirit. You might call it intuition.

A word kept popping into my mind, "Autism". I Googled autism, but decided that although there clearly was some connection there with Ammon's behaviour, "autism" was far more severe than Ammon's situation. I kept searching.

One day, I decided to Google "autism head circumference". BINGO! There were abstracts from doctors in Great Brittain that have found a correlation between rapid head circumference growth in the first year of life and something called "ASPERGERS"!!! As I found a description of Aspergers, the symptoms jumped off the page at me- There was a description of my son- in PRINT! This had to be it!

I called a neurologist and got an appointment. It was not for three months out. The neurologist spoke with me personally and said that he was sending a diagnosis packet in the mail for me to fill out. He said Ammon would not behave normally for him, and I knew him best. The papers came and were EXTENSIVE. I filled them out, rating and scoring Ammon in the various categories according to described severity.

Ammon scored in the "Severe" category in 3 of the 4 diagnostic criteria. He did show some impairment in the fourth, but I don't remember how much.

Although we had an appointment with the neurologist, I kept searching for help. Ammon's health was rapidly deteriorating for some reason, and I was very worried. Ammon had begun refusing ALL FOOD, and only would drink some milk. He was listless, skin and bones and had dark circles under his eyes. He mostly would lay on the floor, line up his toys and stare at them. After six weeks of this, I found a treatment I felt was going to work... and it DID! More next post.

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