Jeffrey

Today I (Brian) went with Jeffrey to his appointment with the clinical child psychologist, Dr Kauffman.  He has over 20 years of experience with children on the "autistic spectrum".  He has given Jeffrey a diagnosis of high-functioning autism v. Asperger's.  Asperger's is the least-severe form of autism; high-functioning autism is the next down the line.  If your child had to have a form of autism, you'd want them to have Asperger's because these kids don't have problems with speaking while those with autism do.  He can't tell right now which one Jeffrey has because Jeffrey doesn't voluntarily speak much for him.  The next year of development will tell...

For those of you like me who have only recently come to understand what it means to be autistic, I will give a very simple explanation.  Kids with autism have difficulty regulating their brains the way we do.  This results in problems with how they behave and how they process sensory and language information from the world around them.

The two main things with their behaviors are 1) inattention and hyperactivity, and 2) obsessions/compulsions.  For Jeffrey, inattention means he often seems "spaced-out" like he's not listening or paying attention, and it is difficult to keep him on task.  His obsessions/compulsions are seen when he spends hours spinning the wheels of his trains or opening and shutting doors.

The problems with processing sensory information mean that they often feel "overloaded" by all the lights, sounds, and actions around them.  While you and I can walk into a grocery store and "tune out" the various other sounds and happenings around us in order to focus on the task at hand, the child with autism experiences all of these things as an overwhelming barrage of information.  Often, when Jeffrey is overstimulated, he will spin around in circles, flap his hands (Ben does this too), or bang his head on things.  It's just his way of saying, "I need to chill right now".

Anyway, to wrap it up, we are getting official confirmation for things we have known for a long time now.  It feels sad on the one hand to have that sense of finality about it, but hopeful on the other because an official diagnosis opens the door to better understanding by all who love Jeffrey.  We will be able to get great support for him in Ohio; there is a special Academy specializing in meeting the special needs of these children that Jeffrey will be eligible starting in kindergarten.  Until then, we will be able to have him enrolled in a Pre-K program with these services as well.

So that's our story.  Please feel free to call or write us; we'd love to talk about it.  It's a time when we feel the need to draw close to our family members and help them understand.  We love you all.

Sincerely,

Brian.

Just To Make Things A Little More Clear

We are headed to Wright State University which is in Dayton, Ohio.  For those curious as to how we ranked the programs I'll give you the top 4.  1. University of Utah.  2.  Wright State University.  3. Medical University of South Carolina.  4.  Duke University.  We put Utah at the top of our list knowing it was a long shot just as an overall impression we feel they got of us, but put it at the top because if we did get it, we would be near family and it would be really nice to surprise them with it.  That being said, Wright State was actually our favorite program and we're very happy with how things turned out.  Sorry to everyone we wouldn't give our list to, we just didn't want all the Utah people to get let down.  Also, a few people may still think that Brian is going into OB/GYN.  He is not.  Brian has discovered a love/passion for the field of psychiatry, and is doing his psychiatry residency in Ohio.  Hope that clears up some common questions about our process, feel free to ask more if this isn't clear enough!  And thanks for entertaining our fun with all of the voting!

AND THE WINNER IS..................................

OOPS!  Forgot to delete the others!  WRIGHT STATE!  Dayton, OH!

Random List

Okay, for those of you who are just DYING to know what our top picks are......well....you're not going to find out. :P  BUT, I did decide to list all of the places that Brian interviewed at to help with the guessing.  Now before you try to psychoanalyze our list and try to figure out which ones were our top 3, keep in mind, I went to random.org to mix up the list, so it is, therefore, truly random.  ALSO keep in mind, that our minds changed on a DAILY basis for the last 3 weeks or so before we submitted that list.  With that said, go ahead and vote on our poll that I just put up on our page. :)  Happy guessing!!!!

WE MATCHED!

We just found out that we did in fact get accepted into a residency program today, so no scrambling or waiting until the next year for us, yay!  We will be finding out where we are moving on Thursday.  Any guesses?????