What do you do when you suspect your child has autism? Where do you go, who do you call, who do you tell (or not tell)? You know little if nothing about it. You did not plan for this. There is no rule book. There is no map. You have to make it up as you go along. It's your own first-person shooter, with the world creating itself while you move through this alien landscape, not knowing if you're going to fall through the earth with each step you take or get a 1-Up and tread with confidence.
The first and only place I could think of to take Logan to was the Child Study Center in Ft Worth. The Child Study Center treats all kinds of developmental and behavioral complications in children, so I thought it was a good place to start. My husband dislikes this place for reasons I will not go into, but he also knew we had to do something, so he was on board with it. I called. I was told to fill out an over-the-phone application. I did. I was told the wait would be a month or so.
I did not wait a month. I waited months. Meanwhile, Logan was losing progress with each passing day. I called them back. Twice. Was told that the person I was going to see was out on maternity leave and something had happened, blah blah blah, which translated to: You got lost in the system.
We finally got an appointment with Dr. Julian S. Haber. Very good with the little ones, we were told. Excellent doctor. I was excited and happy and yes, naive. This man would fix all our problems. Right?
The first wake-up call came when we walked into his office and saw a set of books, lying flat on his desk, precisely lined up so that the person opposite the desk could read the titles and authors. Make that author, singular. They were all by him.
We were supposed to be impressed. Instead we were amused...by this obvious need for admiration, by his attempts at impressing any set of parents who walked through his doors, and by his obvious concern that he be thought highly of by anyone he dealt with. I was not impressed. Our amusement quickly turned to irritation when we spent a lot of time answering a lot of questions while our son was spirited away into another room to do who knew what. The ultimate caveat came when he left to "examine" our son and returned a scant ten minutes later. He informed us that our son had the following: mixed language disorder, ad/hd, sensory integration dysfunction,and possible severe autism. He was also the one that ordered the MRI, the ABR, and the EEG. He scribbled his prognosis on a piece of scrap paper and sent us on our way. We later found out he was retiring in six months' time.
It may seem like our visit to this doctor was fruitless and a waste of time. I don't really see it that way. We had no idea what to expect and although we didn't expect a wonder drug or something like that, we were looking for some answers. What he gave us were possibilities: it could be this, it might be that. He also wrote in his final prognosis that "parents did not seek help from ECI". I took exception to that. ECI is early childhood intervention, a program that will help a child younger than three who is experiencing developmental delay. We didn't seek help from ECI because we didn't know about ECI or that it was available. By the time Logan got in to the Child Study Center, he was already three...too old for ECI. Just the right age to begin with the public school system special ed department.
What our visit to Dr. Haber did do for us was open another door. The tests he ordered ruled out a lot of things that could have been causing Logan's problems. His prognosis gave us something we could take to our public school and say, "Look, this is what's going on with our son, here is something from a doctor, what can you do?" The questions he asked were necessary, and it wouldn't be the only time we answered them. It was a beginning. It was a first step. For providing that, I am grateful to Dr. Haber. I must confess, however, I still have not read any of his books.
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