And if you can do that, we all can…
So glad you finally have a diagnosis. Sorry it’s a tough one, and I hope the drugs aren’t too bad.
I even have my pants on correctly today! Im unstoppable!
I responded to an earlier rant of yours. This one makes me so happy!
The offer to help in any way can from over here in Australia still stands. I’m trained to help young people on the spectrum deal with emotional regulation and to help them express themselves using alternative communication devices and picture cards. Im pretty certain that these methods are used globally in English speaking countries.
There are different sign languages that deaf people use, ASL is vastly different to Auslan for example. However, if your boy needs to use PECS or a PODD* book for communication, I’m almost 100% certain its universal.
*PODD may be the wrong acronym, but i have holes in my brain, im trying my best here! 
My wife has had MS for at least a decade, and the latest drugs seem to control it excellently. They are absurdly expensive, but to their credit the drug companies have very generous discounts even for people who make low 6 figures like ourselves. Like from $60k/year to $2k/year. YMMV, but her neurologist seems to think the disease is very manageable.
The good news about UTIs is that doctors rarely think you are faking them. I have antibiotics and am on the mend!
Huzzah! I’m so glad it went well. I’m glad he’s getting the help he needs. Our district’s early childhood center was awesome and helped so much with our daughter, even though she was only there for 3 months before going to kindergarten. From here, the ADOS will be smooth sailing.
In case it helps you, our experience with the ADOS went like this - forms for us parents to fill out, structured and unstructured “play” for our daughter with observation by the evaluator, a lot of notes and an interview. Then a short debrief. During the “play” sessions, my daughter did her thing and the psychologist took her notes and it was obvious to everyone that she was autistic. And in our debrief, the psychologist said as much while saying she still had to score things.
Thank you for sharing, learning about people living well with treatment gives me comfort and confidence.
Im Australian and fortunately my medication was listed on our PBS in 2018. I will have to pay about $90 per year.
My only other expense has been hospital parking fees. After 3 MRI’S, 4 neurologist appointments, dozens of blood tests, and an ultrasound I’ve spent about $150 on parking. Everything else has been free.
Im so grateful for our healthcare system. I can’t imagine having to deal with your system.
No birdies, you are not going to nest above our front door (several nests a-building have been removed already) or for that matter, anywhere on our porch. The pooping and dive-bombing means you will have to raise a family elsewhere, and there’s a ton of suitable sites - use them!
Now I have to get out the bird tanglefoot and climb a ladder to deposit it where it will do the most good.
And while you’re at it, dirty boids, shaddup before 7 o’clock in the morning.
Bells, I’m glad have a diagnosis, even though it’s not one you wanted, and that you’re getting the treatment you need! National Health sounds lovely to me. We pay next to nothing for Mr. Legend’s outrageously expensive drugs, but it’s basically a charity fund from the manufacturer and we had to wade through all kinds of paperwork and spend hours on the phone to get it set up. When he changed to Medicare coverage, we had to do that process all over again, and as a fun New Year’s surprise, they sent us a bill for $20,000 (not a typo) because the program he was in expired and he had to apply for another one. We ended up owing nothing, but if we qualify for the program, pretty much everyone does. Why can’t they just cut to the chase and cut out all the stressful bureaucracy?
Spice_Weasel, I’m glad the evaluation went well! My daughter did a similar thing at her evaluation - she got a low score for “creativity” because by the time she got to the fourth picture she was asked to draw, she was bored by the test and balked. It sounds like your son’s evaluator was a lot more attuned to the whole child, and that’s wonderful.
My rant is about pollen. My yard is full of weeds (“They’ll hold the dust down,” I thought when they were an inch high, “What’s the harm in leaving them there?” And then they sprang up to two feet tall in a week) and I’ve resorted to wearing a mask while pulling them. I suspect the neighbors already thought (politely and quietly) that I’m a loon, but this will clinch it.
I’m having a similar conversation, but with the wasps. You have to nip those little fuckers in the bud.
What part of a wasp is the bud?
Me, too! I knocked down the nest from last year a few months ago and they are building back again. I knocked their first attempt down a few days ago and today I saw one up there giving it another go. I don’t want to kill them, I just want them to go elsewhere.
I’m imagining you suited up like a beekeeper to do your gardening and im all for it!
I can no longer deal with heat, I’m beginning at the gym on Monday. I tried to buy an ice vest but nowhere near me sells them. Ive bought myself 4 cooling scarves and a cooling towel.
You may look a bit loony in your garden. Im going to go to the gym dressed like a special needs rambo enthusiast!
The way your health care systems works over there boggles my mind. I have never met anyone from the US who likes the healthcare system either, not that its a huge pool of people, but heaps of people on Reddit hate it too.
Can anyone tell me why you guys haven’t had some enormous protests or rallys to demand a change?
We have ‘em all the time. Well, more accurately, we schedule them all the time. People never show up because The Bachelor is on.
/s
I’m beginning to think so. My MIL is visiting from out of state. She never doubted our conviction that he’s autistic but she said she really didn’t see it herself until this time around. All he wants to do with her is play with her iPad’s stopwatch.
I am really hoping for this part, the school district even asked me to try to get a verbal diagnosis from the psychologist that they can use in their own report. The way the timing worked out, both reports are being written concurrently.
Yes, I’ve heard of this before! I am not sure what the SLP will recommend but he starts working with a therapist next week. I’m also not sure if my son is too verbal to use that stuff. Most of his language is rote/memorized phrases but he communicates what he wants in one or two words. He is difficult to understand sometimes. Yet I’ve seen him using more complicated sentences, still not using pronouns but he might say “Make a circle!”
Oh, what a sucker punch. I’m glad you have a plan. There are indeed new, helpful treatments available, and I wish you the best in finding the one that works best for you. Thank you for your support.
I opened my chimney clean-out door just out of curiosity. I found a garbage-bag full of nest fixin’s - twigs, leaves, branches and the like. As I was pulling them out I peered in and saw the back of a…rat? Squirrel?
I shut the door.
Forward a couple days: I hire a chimney guy to come out to inspect the chimney. He finds that the chimney cap had been nudged aside, leaving half of the outlet open as an invitation to whatever wildlife is passing by.
As chimney man and I are conversing on the front porch, a strange car pulls into the driveway. “I live behind you, a couple of houses over. I was wondering when you were going to take care of your squirrel problem. I’ve been seeing them go down into your chimney for the past couple of years now.”
Anyway, chimney now sealed, nest cleared out, no further signs of critters.
Thanks, neighbor, for letting me know.
mmm
He couldn’t be bothered to tell you when it was first happening, but for some reason could be bothered two years later to drive over and tell you he’d known it was happening all along. Interesting.
“Remember: It’s a crisp new $50 bill… just say what I told you… and wait 15 minutes after I park the van. Got it?”
My window frames have a tiny slit at the bottom, which I assume is for drainage or something. Well I just noticed a honey bee crawl inside one. And after standing there for a bit I saw several more. So WTF? Is there a bee hive in my window frame or does it connect into my wall? I really don’t want to kill bees but I’m not willing to let them nest in my walls!
Could bee either. In either case you don’t actually want a nest in the structure of your house so the response is the same. Call an exterminator. And bee quick about it. You have no idea how long they’ve beeen in there, and the infestation could already bee extensive. The more extensive, the more expensive. Bee forewarned.