Parents meeting with Dr. C

We had an appointment with Dr. C yesterday at her office. It was just for Steve and I to talk with her, since I was too stunned to think the last time we had an appointment, and Steve wasn't even there. Jesse spent the morning at day care.

I think Steve feels better for going and asking questions and getting her take on things. Me? I'm leaning towards taking Jesse out of the province to see another specialist. Possibly. It's not that I don't like Dr. C. I do. She's really pretty great, actually, and she has a special needs child of her own, so she kinda gets it. But I don't think she quite understands where I'm coming from on the gut/brain link issue (though she didn't completely discount it).

She agreed that Jesse really does need to see an occupational therapist. That might be tricky though, since she heard a rumour that the OTs at children's rehab aren't even taking new patients, and even if they are, the waiting list is about 18 months long. IN-FREAKING-SANE! She's sending off a referral anyways, and stressing Jesse's previous orthopedic issues (heel cord contracture) that likely resulted from his sensory problems. She also thinks that OT may be able to help him with his speech, since they'd be able to address any issues he has with apraxia. She ALSO wants me to call up Jesse's PT and ask her to set up a joint appointment with an OT, which wouldn't entail such a long wait. Hopefully. Our other option is to go private, and Dr. C did give us the name of a private OT in the area who works with kids with development issues. That's definitely an options. I'm pretty certain we have coverage for that under Steve's insurance.

Overall it was a good appointment. Dr. C did stress that with the gains Jesse is making (especially now with speech) that she would like to re-test Jesse with the ADOS at age 3, with the hope that he would no longer fit the diagnosis. My fingers are crossed that we can get to that point in a year. If the past two weeks are any indication, it's a definite possibility!

Light bulb moment

I hope I don't have to pay Dr. Phil every time I use that, but it's the easiest way to describe how things clicked for me when I watched Dr. Temple Grandin's lecture. At about 00:02:43 she describes auditory issues in kids with ASDs. Even though auditory threshold ("hearing") is normal, their ability to hear auditory detail can be impaired. In addition to apraxia, I think that this may be part of why Jesse has such trouble with speech. One of the reasons I think this is because of his animal sounds. He makes the sounds for dog, cat, duck, and bear. But he drops the first part of each sound. Instead of "woof" it's "oof." So instead of "meow" it's "ow." Instead of "quack quack" it's "ack ack." Instead of "roar" it's "argh."

Here's a video to demonstrate what I mean. This was taken at the beginning of January of this year, just before Jesse's 2nd birthday.



The words that he has right now that start with a hard consonent sound (i.e. "mom," "da," "baby") are words that we've worked a lot on and enunciated the hell out of to try to get him to repeat. He has a lot of trouble acquiring words...a lot of trouble with consonant sounds. For example, he says "asu" for "thank-you."

Of course, I could be completely off the mark here and this might not be an issue at all. Either way, I hope that Jesse's new SLP can give us the tools to overcome whatever obstacles are in the way of Jesse being able to communicate with us.

And I thought I'd throw this in here...just because he's cute as hell: