I think it was when the CoA was in second grade that she was diagnosed with ADHD. I knew this almost from the first time I met her, but it took a while before official confirmation came along. It's important because schools need official diagnoses of mental conditions in order to make accommodations, and she needs a lot of them. As she grew older it seemed that the ADHD was no longer the only thing going on, but we could never get her health care providers to agree on a diagnosis. Her psychiatrists said it was only ADHD. Her psychologists (the last one just stopped returning our calls one day) grew frustrated in trying to nail down the exact situation. About the only thing they all agree on, including the counselors, is that she needs to be on medication. So last summer her grandparents footed the rather large bill for an extensive neurological screening at the University of Mississippi that suggested not only ADHD but other things as well and strongly urged us to get her to a neurologist. Last week she had her first neurologist appointment. They want her to get an MRI, and have suggested that they strongly suspect she has Asperger Syndrome, which, again, is something I've suggested many times and had her shrinks say no.
Today she had an appointment with her psychiatrist, and my wife told him about the neurologist's suspicions. His reply was along the lines of, "I thought you knew that already. I've been treating her for Asperger's for the past year." GAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! If we had that on an official document we might have been making progress at school since the accommodations for Asperger are different than those for ADHD. So now he's promised to have the appropriate paperwork ready by next week, and we'll see if the updated diagnosis does any good for this school year, but I rather doubt it since it's so late, but at least we're finally making some progress.
So how is your week going?
Marius the Incredulous
8 comments:
Do you mean AsPerger? If so, some fun up ahead: next month it will be called autism.
You are correct, Erwin. I'll change the spelling.
It's very frustrating when professionals won't confirm (or definitively deny, for that matter) suspicions that parents and even teachers have concerning mental disorders in children. Sometimes diagnoses are very clear to those of us who spend so much time with the kiddos. Hope she will get adequate treatment and support from her teachers.
I'm following a Coursera course on ADHD from Penn State. All I can say is "OMFSM, it is complex". And then there is my daughter.
And thank you, Marius, for catering to my OCD.
Often they don't confirm anything because they just don't know, so instead of saying they don't know, they don't say anything. Sad.
Hope CoA gets the right treatment and all the help she needs.
Sorry it was such a struggle to get here, but so glad you may finally be on the road to correct treatment.
I used to work at the medical school and the doctors would often say, "medicine is an art, not a science." I would then suggest that in that case they should be paid like artists instead of scientists, but they seemed to think that was just commie talk.
@Flurrious :-)
When people say that it is because, while in essence it is a science, like weather predictions, there are so many factors you simply have to make educated guesses based on experience of yourself and others. The trick is to avoid guessing as much as possible.
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