Diagnosis day

I am still in the early phases of our son's diagnosis. Last week I was full of acceptance and now I am back to disbelief and uncertainty.  These past two months have been emotional ups and downs, denial, anger.

I thought I was done flip-flopping.

Diagnosis day was April 26, 2011. My sweet little boy was officially diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) almost two months ago.

The appointment for this evaluation was made in November 2010 at the time of his initial EI evaluation, when he was about 20 months old. He had qualified for a CATCH ("Childhood Autism Team CHeck") team evaluation which I scheduled right away.

I remember being annoyed that the appointment was so far away.

How could we have early intervention for autism if we had to wait nearly half a year to have him evaluated?

And what are they talking about, AUTISM? He has a speech delay, that's all I want to address. What is this AUTISM business?

And then there was the limbo of not knowing that is so hard. And challenging. And difficult.

Our son's diagnosis was made by a team of evaluators including a developmental pediatrician, psychologist, and behavioral therapist.

Using the ADOS (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule) test, our son met the criteria for ASD. On the CARS (Childhood Autism Rating Scale) he scored 28 (with 30 being the cut-off for autism) and he also did not meet the criteria according to DSM-IV.

Taken together, and given that the ADOS is the current gold-standard for diagnosis, the evaluation team considered him on the mild end of the spectrum.  I vaguely recall them mentioning that a year ago he would have probably been diagnosed with PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified) but things, they are, apparently, a changin'.

We found out our sweetie's diagnosis on the same day as the evaluation.

It was a bit of a relief, to finally know something and to have a definite answer, but also surprisingly shocking. I am a strong person, but I could not help but cry at the news. In a room full of people who are all wanting to be supportive, I cried and it felt incredibly lonely.