Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Updates

It's been almost a month since I've updated so I'm going to try to piece together enough cohesive thought to merit a new entry.

I'm undecided about the Adderall's effect on Maria. We had the initial dosage of 5mg increased to 10mg. She's still having the same trouble at school though, and if anything she's gotten more mouthy at home.

I got a new doctor that takes our new insurance. I told her that the citalopram isn't working as well as it had been, so she put me on Abilify too. That made me exhausted all the time, so she switched it to Welbutrin.

We've been working to get Joseph's ABA program set up. In fact, Kristy and Celia go to their first aide training session tonight. We're having trouble with the funding though. As I previously mentioned, we had planned to use a Medicaid funded program, Healthchek to pay our aides as home health aides. Unfortunately, because Joseph has Caresource instead of the Medicaid that people on disability have, this is causing a problem. Caresource can (and apparently usually does) refuse requests for HHA's for kids. We're applying for disability for Joseph (which we should have done months ago) and in the meantime we'll do what we can to get his program started.

His speech continues to develop, making noticeable progress every week. He's perfectly comfortable verbalizing choices, like cereal or oatmeal etc. He's even initiating appropriate speech sometimes. We're very excited and encouraged by this. But we're impatient and he can't learn fast enough to satisfy us. His mother and one of the aides at school think that he can actually read already. At the very least, he can recognize his classmates' written names.

His behavior seems to be getting worse at times though. In fact, I've got a big scabbed-over scratch on my nose that is very distracting to me, courtesy of a temper-tantrum. This afternoon, he was bouncing all over our bed and kept jumping on me. We rolled him up in a sheet, which he loved, and he sat still for the rest of the video he was watching. We'll have to experiment with this.

My father-in-law has accepted that Joseph is autistic. We visited over the weekend for his graduation, and I overheard him talking about Joseph's autism to several people, which was relieving. I don't exactly know why, but it was extremely frustrating for me to hear him denying Joseph's condition. I probably felt that if he didn't believe that Joseph's behavior was a result of autism, then it was my shortcomings as a parent.

That's it for now.

2 comments:

  1. Yeah man, I had an in-law who thought the same thing about autism, and basically blamed my inconsistent parenting for his behavior stuff. I still haven't forgiven him, actually. Thnaks for the updates, and good luck.

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  2. Goodluck Joseph and to your Family !!
    I know how hard it is to live with autism.
    I have 1 lil pirate here too.
    and school phone calls always gives me a nervous.

    Blowing you & your family some prayer from here (JAPAN)

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