Friday, April 18, 2008

Well that was a complete waste of time!

First off, when I made Shawn's neurology appointment, I specifically asked for Dr. Ferriera so when I rescheduled his appointment, I automatically assumed they would reschedule with the same doctor. I asked for Dr. Ferriera because of a friend's recommendation. Well, we saw Dr. Chung and I'm not very happy with our appointment. It was a complete waste of time in my opinion. Dr. Tappan asked me more questions then she did. I'm not sure if I was just expecting too much or if we just got a crappy doctor. She basically said that his ADHD did need attention (of course she didn't really give me any resources) and he does show signs of PDD which is a form of Autism. After asking me some questions, she said that if she would have seen him at 18 months, based on my answers she would have diagnosed him as Autistic. But since it seems like his "symptoms" are improving, she was hesitant to diagnose him as Autistic. I'm not trying to get him diagnosed him one way or the other but that statement made no sense to me. It is my understanding that there is no cure for Autism so if she thinks she would have diagnosed him Autistic at 18 months then wouldn't he still be considered autistic? Makes no sense to me and then I saw this article on ARI. After reading that, I'm just so over with the doctors. I don't really care if he's diagnosed or not, I just want to get him the help he needs. Hopefully, the diet will take care of it and we won't have to seek out anyone else to treat him. Oh, and she said that if it came to a point where we wanted to medicate him to just schedule another appointment with them. I don't think so!!!

I'm not sure what I was expecting. I guess I was expecting them to observe him playing, ask him some questions, ask me a bunch of questions and then go over what they thought he might have and the treatments for it, etc. I didn't get that and I'm not sure if I should have or not.

2 comments:

Working Mama said...

I'm so sorry the doctor was a waste of your time - that really sucks. I think you have the right attitude, let's just move forward with what we can do & go from there. I am really hoping you see good results from the diet. I was surprised how well my boys adjusted to our diet change - it is really hard, especially breakfast & lunch since you can't "just throw" something together. It all has to be thought out & prepared in advance. It will get easier. We have 1 week under our belts!
Andrea

Melodie said...

That really sucks! Maybe you should talk to some other moms of autistic children and get some advice on what to do next. There's go to be a local yahoo group, right?
In the mean time, I'd just go with the PDD diagnosis, and even the ADHD diagnosis, and look to the web for dietary advise on how to treat them. Of course, I'm sure your new diet plan probably covers all the bases.