Here's what's going on with Henry lately:
* When Henry went for a checkup recently, his primary care doctor said that his ears looked perfectly okay. No infection, no fluid behind the ear drums. Soooooo... Henry will not be referred to a new ear, nose, and throat specialist at this time. No ear tubes for now. Primary Care Doc said that we'll just wait and see if Henry gets recurring infections again during the next cold season, and if he does, THEN he'll make a referral to a specialist. There's no point in sending him to a new specialist right now because the specialist will look in his ears and won't see anything wrong. Henry might have even outgrown his ear problem and he may not need tubes at all. Only time will tell.
* Still waiting on the evaluation for autism. I spoke to someone about it recently and she said that based on a checklist that Husband and I filled out, Henry definitely has some "red flags" but he also has a lot of areas in his development that look normal. The fact that his potential autism symptoms have been slowly getting better (less autism-y) also complicates their ability to diagnose him. So the place that will be evaluating him is trying to get in touch with his school and talk to his teachers about their daily observations of Henry's behavior. I'm just waiting to hear back about whether they want to do more evaluations with him or not.
* Potential Father still hasn't provided the necessary paperwork for the DNA test to be processed. Still don't know for sure who Henry's dad is.
It seems like everything that needs to be done for Henry happens at a snail's pace. The ear tubes waited for so long that he doesn't need them anymore. The autism evaluation is taking forever. The DNA test still hasn't been run. His mom is doing pretty well working through her case plan, but she isn't doing everything perfectly-- it's too difficult to tell at this point if she'll be successful in completing all of her tasks and able to regain custody of Henry. There are all of these unanswered questions. I'm just glad he's too young to know what's going on-- imagine trying to explain this mess to a 10 year old.
I've never gotten the impression that he had any signs of autism. Hmm. It will be good to get his teachers' evaluation to see how he does in that environment.
ReplyDeletei agree. the only reason i didnt dismiss the idea completely when it was first suggested is that i know that there's a whole spectrum for autism disorder. at this point, i'm mostly just waiting for it to get ruled out, not expecting that he'll be diagnosed with it.
ReplyDeletenow, if someone said they thought he has ADD, i wouldn't bat an eye. one thing at a time, though.