Shocked again

Friday we had a visit with a child psychologist who we expected to give us the diagnosis of autism or possibly PDD. She took us back to her office and gave Avi one of those toys where you pull the beads along the wire tracks. He was pretty underwhelmed by it and started looking in the cupboards for something else. He eventually found a box full of cars and immediately turned to me, looked me in the eyes to make sure I saw and signed, "play." His smile was huge at his accomplishment of finding the cars. He kept signing the color of the cars or the word car or fire truck or whatever he found. The doctor kept her eye on him while talking to us about him and the things he did and does. She went over his entire medical history and his last visit and finally gave us her opinion. First she said, "He is very complex." She said that there are several things that he used to or now does that make her think it could be autism, but there are several more things that he does that do not fit autism. One of the things that she noted was he was teasing her, signing spontaneously, was very social and he maintained good eye contact with her. She also said his playing with cousins and neighbor children and other things we told her about would be very atypical for a child with autism. She said if she was hard pressed, very hard pressed she might give him the diagnosis of PDD, but she felt like it was almost certainly something else. She suggested to see a geneticist and a developmental peditrician and I asked about getting an MRI of his brain. She believes that the most likely cause of his hand flapping and not speaking is genetic. If the MRI results are in line with the hypoperfusion idea then we'll most likely persue treatments with the doctor that gave us that as a possibility. We still don't know what is going on but the main message has not changed, Avi is a great little boy.

So we left feeling elated. Everything we had hoped and prayed for happened. Not only was the diagnosis changed, but Avi changed in positive, meaningful ways. We feel so blessed to have even witnessed all of this. So we've started on a new journey. We thought we knew where we were headed, but we are off on a whole new direction.

This morning Avi peed in his little potty for the first time. This is just another step on his journey. Our sweet little preemie growing up and learning so much.