Rachel's
Story
New
Diagnosis
2004
Now you know all the ruckus couldn't JUST be
happening with Matt, Rachel had to be going
through her own stuff too.....fact of life.
Ok, let's
see, last I left off, she was on adderall and
doing fine and had a diagnosis of ADD.
Well, all
went well with her until she started 5th grade....
that was when I started to notice that she seemed
a lot more immature than the other kids. It
was like when she entered 5th grade, her social
skills stayed in 4th. She preferred
hanging around younger kids and was starting to
show some controlling traits.
As each
year went by, this all became more and more
obvious.....the controlling part of her that I had
started
to recognize, became more pronounced, she had less
and less friends as each school year went by.
"The Hygiene Fight"
Also, as
she grew, and hygiene demands grew, she refused to
practice good hygiene. I often had (and
still do) to resend her to the bath or shower to
rewash her hair, to retake a bath. She
was/is resent to brush her teeth at least twice
every morning and body odor became noticeable.
Now of course, we went through the "deodorant
lesson" again, the lecture of why it's so important
and the impact not using it correctly could
cause. The amazing part is, she just doesn't
care!
Hair, deodorant,
nails, teeth, bathing, are all a fight.
She'll just yell out that she doesn't care.
So at
present, I have bought her a small fortune of
personal bathing items to try and entice her to do
better in that area. As far as the body
odor, I seem to be constantly reminding her to
scrub her underarms and USE SOAP and I am now forcing her to put her deodorant on
in front of me so that I can make sure that 1)
she's actually doing it and 2) she's doing it
correctly. Though I'm often met with a
scream of "I'm not a baby!", leaving me
having to point out that though she's not a baby,
she DID either lie to me about bathing correctly
and using her deodorant, or she didn't use it
correctly.
"A Visit to Dr.
Wood"
Seems
others at the school started seeing the same
things I was and someone evidently made a comment
to the right person. We were offered
the chance to take her to Dr. Wood to either be
diagnosed, or have it ruled out. We
jumped on it!
In his
office, while I'm filling out the paperwork, Dr.
Wood took Rachel into the "play room"
for the "interview". I guess they
were in there around an hour before he came to get
us.
Rachel
was sent to another room, where she could occupy
herself and leave us to talk. Talk, we
did, for about 45 minutes, while we all discussed
and reviewed the findings.
Dr. Wood
asked us about our view on things, confirmed his
findings, got more info on them and so
on. When we pointed out her
controlling nature, he laughed and told us that
when Rachel came into the room, she took over and
tried to interview HIM! Yes,
he saw that side of her and much more, including a
possibility of depression, issues with food
textures and a fear of moving or noise making
objects.
To get
down to business, Rachel received a diagnosis of
Asperger's (mild case he said, that mainly hits
the social skills), suggested extensive
modifications at school, therapy (which she
receives already in one class, now to work on the
rest), a few suggestions of things to
work on in therapy.
Now I will
note, about the previous ADD diagnosis, I'm
unclear on what he meant, but he made note a
couple of times in his report that he feels that
some of her "distractibility", he felt
was due to her feelings about herself, perceptions
of her school life and the problems the asperger's
was causing. I'm not sure if that means he's
ruling out the ADD diagnosis or what. I'm
going to contact him next week and find out about
that one.
For us,
we need to take her to the Psychiatrist for a
visit, where we will discuss the possibility of
some meds for depression and Dr. Wood would also
like the effects of the Adderall XR on her
discussed as he's concerned about her not wanting
to eat very much. While he knows that
her lack of social skills, being uncomfortable in
the cafeteria and not wanting to eat and the
problems with food textures is playing a very
large part of this, he wants to make sure that the
meds aren't contributing and making it
worse. Will make a little note once that is
done and include what happened.
So this
is basically where we stand at the moment and
where this little story ends until we find out
more. Her ARD, which had been scheduled for
April 15th was canceled the day before, when Dr.
Wood's report came in with the Asperger's
diagnosis, which means a total rework of
everything. That meeting should be
rescheduled for early May.
**Update**
Rachel now has weekly
"in-home" training sessions like her
brother. It's a love/hate type
thing. She loves the attention, hates it
when her in-home trainer makes her work on problem
areas.
She's now in her last
week of summer school, where she joins her brother
and a few other kids in a weekly "social
skills" class, which she refers to as
"boring". hee hee
I'm in the process of
gathering informational sheets to give all her
teachers next year and am starting to "work
out" her portfolio so they can have a little
more insight into the "world of
Rachel".
I still haven't made it
to the psychiatrist with her yet.... seems after
all the "excitement" of the last school
year I've more or less "run away" from
anything like doctors and the likes during the
last month and a half. Unfortunately, time
is running out before the new school year and I
have to start making appointments this week.
Wish me luck.
Well, you know, we've
been wondering all this time, how we managed to
escape the autism with her too, after all, they
are fraternal twins...... guess now we
know. But it's not so bad. The
diagnosis has answered questions....now we know
why certain things are happening......and after
all, it's not like the autism road isn't one we
aren't already on anyway. Guess we just have
more company now.
Hope you enjoy my site..... thanks for coming on this little
journey with us!
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