Happy Anniversary??

Wow.  I blink and three weeks go by.  My apologies!  My children have been ill.  Sinus infections.  Ear infections.  Unresolved sinus infections!  I seem to spend all of my time taking someone to the doctor or running to pick up a prescription or fixing someone soup and crackers in between never ending loads of laundry.   Some weeks life is a blur.

It was when I had my son at the pediatrician for yet another ear infection that the doctor commented about just how far along my son has come in the ten years since she has been treating him.  My son, having been plagued with chronic ear infections since five months of age has been a frequent flier at the pediatrician's office.   Having a child like mine with autism means I usually travel with a muscle bound entourage that can assist with holding him down to have his ears looked at in order to confirm the ear infection diagnosis.  The staff has always cringed when my family entered the office.  Never a need to tell the receptionist our names.  We just smile and take our seats. 

But this time, my son who is now 12, sat very still and cooperated.  Granted, he talked through the entire examination.  But he allowed the doctor to look, to touch and to listen.  I was waiting for the world to end because this had never happened before!  After wards, when she was commenting on just how far he has come during those past ten years, I realized that it was this very time of year ten years ago that my son was diagnosed with autism.  My mind began to wander.

As I walked back to my car with my son I looked at him.  I mean, really looked at him.  He is 5 feet, 2 inches right now.  He's big.  He is strong.  And he never shuts up!  But I can still see that adorable little baby face with smiling blue eyes and dimples.  They are still present.  Not yet lost to puberty.  I began to remember him a decade ago. 

When my son was just two he did not speak.  He screamed.  He did not seem to understand what I was saying to him.  He could not follow simple directions.  He did however, do things that we felt were so unique and wondrous that surely he would grow up into something amazing! 

If he wanted something out of the refrigerator,  he would open the refrigerator door and then pull out all of the drawers in order to make a ladder to step up and fetch exactly what he needed from the refrigerator.  He could carry a full gallon of milk and bring it to you when he was thirsty.  He could assemble a puzzle in record time.  My son could not talk, however he was an artist.  The walls of his bedroom were covered with his crayon drawings of people.  All very different looking.  Some had glasses.  Some had facial hair.  Some had long hair and some had short hair.  Some were smiling and were happy.  Some were frowning and looked just as frustrated as my son clearly was.  But all of it was beautiful.  A treasure that I truly wish I had today.

These acts and behaviors, as we were informed by our pediatrician at the time, were not on the "normal" spectrum of pediatric development.  So, we were sent off to a specialist.  A pediatric neurologist.  This specialist wanted us to first be screened by a genetic team which cleared us of anything genetically abnormal.  So, after reviewing all of my son's records and reports he looked at us and said that he believed our son had autism.  My husband said nothing.  I held on tightly to my bouncy toddler and asked the neurologist if this meant my son was going to be bagging groceries for a living.  He answered me with such coldness that it still angers me to this day.  "I have many patient's that bag groceries for a living.  What's wrong with that?"  What's wrong with that?  Everything.

Looking at him today I see so much intelligence and potential it overwhelms me at times.  And there are those days where I think he will never get to college, let alone graduate high school!  My husband and I made a pact the day he was diagnosed, that we would raise our son to be the most independent and self reliant, educated human being that we could raise.  It is a constant battle.  Being the parent of an autistic child means you never have a day off.  You can never get sick.  You sleep with one eye and one ear open at night.  You hate, loathe and despise the term "Baby Steps"!  And you learn that the saying is really "One step forward, two steps backward".

But our son is the gift that God has given us.  He makes us laugh and cry.  Sometimes on a daily basis. And I have yet to meet a purer soul on the planet.  So bizarre as it may seem to celebrate a ten year anniversary of a life altering diagnosis such as this, I look at where we all were ten years ago and where we are now.  And my greatest hope is that in another ten years that I can share with you the trials and funny moments of an autistic young man's college life adventure!  So,  my son keep at it and I wish you a Happy Anniversary!