Wednesday, October 11, 2006

As you know, Connor has PDD, or Pervasive Developmental Disorder. This is a broad category that includes Autism, Asperger's, Angelman's among others. He is currently receiving services paid for by the County Early Intervention program. At the age of 3 it becomes the responsibility of the school board to take over these services...IF they concur that the services are needed. It's always a little nerve racking to walk into these meetings because what if for budgetary reasons they feel your child doesn't deserve the level of services you are currently getting? We have been fortunate up til now that Austin has always received whatever we ask for, and then some. WEll, now Connor is approaching 3 and it's his turn to go before the CPSE (Committee on Pre-School Education). Well, not him but his current therapists and I have to go and represent him. We were fortunate again that they agree Connor can stay at Schonowe through the end of this school year, at their expense. Whew, one less thing to worry about! We will meet again in the Spring to determine if he is eligible for summer education services and to plan for next fall.

The next step is Connor meets with the Developmental Ped on Friday. I am anxious for this. He is the one that gave Connor the diagnosis. Some people question his decision at the time, but I felt all his points were valid. However, Connor has come a LONG way in 6 months. Can't wait to see what the Dr has to say. Keep you posted.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey there JS,

I noticed your comments over at Dr. Clark's blog. We have some similar circumstances (I too have a boy with a "wait and watch" brain lesion and a bunch of other health stuff going on...)

Oodles of testing and some very scary hospitalizations. For awhile he was very sick.

Lots of special ed and IEPs and teams of school people saying something is wrong. Just no diagnosis. Also lots of bloodwork with various results of almost everything being normal but a few numbers way off...

Anyhow, I can only offer you good wishes and good will. But if it helps, you have caught the ear of one sympathetic mom.

Know what it is like to be the mom, trying to solve what lots of MD/PhDs can't figure out. I think it is very stressful and difficult not to have a diagnosis! As parents, you don't want to miss finding the treatment/medication/dietary supplement that might make things better. Plus, there isn't really a support group. I lie a lot to family and friends that everything is just ducky, then worry like hell late at night.

Also guilty of pestering MD bloggers that I think are sensible. I have researched so many rare and obscure possibilities that I feel like my head might explode.

Slowly getting to a point of realizing there might be no answers and I need to find a way to let go and go on...

Sorry for the length of this comment, really just wanted to say "hang in there!"

Yours truly,
TL