Screening Over - Still Waiting For Answers

Yesterday I was very encouraged about the screening once they called to confirm the appointment. The lady confirming it told me that I would have answers as to what direction we'd be going in with Raquel. Not the case.

Elizabeth and I met with the psychologist who had just a couple boring toys and asked me a million questions. We were enclosed in a very small room, and I could tell quickly that Raquel was getting aggitated by being confined (which is the main reason I wanted Elizabeth there - to help when the behaviors started to come out). The psychologist made her observations and occasionally asked Elizabeth to elaborate on my answers. Elizabeth was instructed in the very beginning that she was not able to answer questions for me and that if she wanted her input, she'd ask for it. I could tell they were irritated she was there but I wasn't. Several times, she took her out of the room to calm her down so I could continue answering questions. The evaluation took a little over a hour.

At the end, Mike came to sit in on her analysis. Basically, she told us that she is not going to give Raquel a diagnosis until they do an additional evaluation at age 3. She said that she is definitely showing some signs of autism as well as an attention deficit disorder and a sensory processing disorder. Because one does not stand out more than the other, she said that she was "in the mix." She is writing up a report to be submitted to the main person at Regional, who is conveniently out of town. This person will then decide what changes are going to be made with Raquel's therapy (if any). I was told to call my service coordinator at Regional in a week if I haven't heard anything.

I did speak with Elizabeth afterwards regarding it all. She recommends that Raquel go in to the Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) program, but she isn't the one that makes the call. This is a pretty intense program but she thinks she will get the farthest on it. This would mean that therapy hours would increase from 20 per month to 50-60 per month. I would lose Elizabeth as a therapist as well as Wendy. I would still keep the same occupational, speech & physical therapists, but I'd be assigned 3 new behavior therapists. Hopefully I'll know what is going on very soon.