Julian Turns 3!

In two days, Julian Michael will be Three! It's so hard to believe.

With my Grand-fathers' passing, I haven't had the time to blog about Julian's last two appointments, one with the neurologist, Dr. Abdalla, and one with his pediatrician, Dr. Gigax.

At the neurologist, we received the results from his speech and hearing evaluation (Well, he didn't stay for the 'hearing' portion, he had a meltdown). He was diagnosed as Autistic, outer spectrum. We really didn't get alot more than that. I asked 'where do we go from here?" The doctor was adamit that we have to find out WHY. I'm a little torn. On one hand, this means more test and specialist for Julian, on the other, I'm not the 'accept and ignore' type of mom. I do want to know WHY. And let's be honest here, Julian is so used to most of this stuff.....he takes it in stride. Kids are truly adaptable, even Julian! This is is normal, and he's okay with it most of the time.

I still felt that we didn't really get any ANSWERS (yes, I'd still like to go into an office and get my WHAT WHEN WHY) I had Ryan call Dr. Gigax's office and make a pre-well check visit for Julian, hoping that we'd get a least a 'do-this-next or call-here from her, before his well-check (it's actually this wednesday). We went and talked to her, for TWO HOURS. She read through the results that Dr. Abdalla had us bring to her (since brining them would be quicker than him mailing them). She says that while technically, he scored borderline, thus the outer spectrum autism disorder discovery, she still feels he doesn't have Autism. She feels even stronger now, though with the results, that he has a genetic disorder/condition causing these symptoms, so her reccomendation was to continue to search for WHY. She gave me another hospital option, one about 3 hours from her called Northwestrn Children Hospital (she actually did her residency there) since I wasn't really comfortable with the University Hospital option AND they were not calling us back (STILL). We have a call into the Neurologist, to change the refferal, then they are going to make us an appointment for Julian there, to get a second opinion from their Neurologist, finally get that muscle biopsy, and schdual most test. I'll keep everyone up to date on that as we get more information. I talked to Dr. Gigax also about some of these 'diet' changes that are said to benefit children with Autism. Right now, we are choosing NOT to change Julian's diet, as all of his doctors feel that it's a genetic cause. She also felt that most of those treatments help mostly the bowl problems in these children, and we don't know WHAT Julian's bowl issues are, only that he has them. He goes back to her on Wednesday, and I haven't decided if I'm going to presure that talking about that option more then, or wait until we see the new doctors. Our friend Jenn had also mentioned the vaccines and wondered if I thought that could be the cause. We brought this up, shortly, with the doctor. She actually feels that we should push this gentic cause thing, and if we don't get anywhere, look into it. The thing is, Julian only received a couple boosters (what people are blaiming the Autism cause on mostly are the boosters, out of those accusing the vaccines) because he had such sever reactions to the original vaccines. We asked why the diagnosis if they didn't think that was really what was wrong. She explained that while they feel he has a cause with Autism as a symptom, the fact his he HAS the symptoms, and needs the resources (speech/behavioral thearpy). So for right now, this is how it needs to be, for Julian. I also asked if we could remove that diagnosis in the future if we find out the Cause, and she said absolutly, so I'm comfortable with that. Whatever it takes.

So we are still looking and searching.