Deja vu

Here I am sitting in the front room of an older unassuming home in a trendy neighborhood of Calgary. Cars are turning up waves of water as they fly through the puddles left by the unrelenting rain. I watch droplets wind slowly down the window pane and drip from the frame outside. It seems like the perfect day to be here and this dreary weather mirrors my mood. "What am I doing here?" you ask. Well I am waiting for Camryn. She is having her ADOS today. For those of you not knee deep in the world of Autism lingo that stands for the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule...."What the heck does that even mean?" you might ask. Basically the ADOS is an Autism test usually administered by a psychologist. It's play based and is often paired with a detailed parent interview. This day has finally come.....again.

As somebody who works in the field of Autism myself I have seen many of these performed. This is actually my third time doing it as a parent.....keeping in mind that I have two children....not three as you may assume. So yes Camryn has been tested before. Two years ago in fact. In my opinion it was a train wreck in every sense of the term. It was heart wrenching, uncomfortable, and in the end I didn't have any confidence in the results anyway. Not that I was unwilling to accept the outcome. It was more that the outcome didn't fit with any of the evidence and nobody even bothered to explain why. We were just shuffled out the door and forgotten. Camryn continued to struggle with the same stuff she always had but now it seemed that nobody was even listening.

Keep in mind how hard it is to go through a process like this even in the best circumstances. It's somewhat like having your insides ripped out.....or at least how I would imagine that would feel. It can be very difficult to face the fact that your child may have a life long developmental condition. For me it was made even harder in that everything that could go wrong along the way did. It's devastating that my first concerns were way back when Camryn was only a few months old and now at 9 years of age I am still waiting for answers. All the programs and services she could have benefited from. The early intervention that the experts say is critical. We missed it all. I find comfort knowing that I did everything I could have. I asked for help and fought hard for what we did get. It wasn't me that dropped the ball but in the end it doesn't really matter because she missed so much help. We can never get those years back. It has been a difficult road to say the least. In many ways the journey has prepared me for this. I guess you'd call this a moment of truth in our lives.

Don't get me wrong Autism has it's gifts. Lots of them as a matter of fact. They are just harder to see when you are in the midst of a tantrum on the floor of the local grocery store or when another mother leans over and asks you why your child is flapping her hands madly at the swimming pool. You have to be tough to have a kid with Autism. It's not for the faint of heart or weak. In the end I couldn't have wished for two sweeter or more amazing kids. I never expected to be part of the wacky world of Autism professionally or personally but I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that I wouldn't have it any other way.

The results will come in a few weeks but here I sit today in this cold drafty house. After 9 long years I'm patiently waiting to find out if I have one foot in the pool or if I'm already swimming in it. I guess there are worse ways to spend a rainy Thursday morning. I could be having my legs waxed after all.