Another Day, Another (potential) Diagnosis

A's SLP (I have included an acronym list at the bottom of this post..you may need to start referring to it for this and what looks to be many future posts) brought me some handouts on sensory integration (SID/SPD). She thinks A exhibits many proprioceptive behaviors (a lack of sensory input that causes the child to seek out stronger sensory input), which could be better addressed with OT.* Since we are switching our insurance from BC/BS (because they SUCK!) to Tricare, I called up the ES folks who are going to try and schedule an OT evaluation hopefully at some point in the next few months. As I am learning, I was actually fortunate to have forked over $1500 for A's speech and hearing evaluations through All Children's Hospital because they (being a private, for-profit organization) gave A thorough diagnostic testing and came up with an appropriate diagnosis fairly quickly. If you go through ES to being with, you will probably not be so lucky and may spend years waiting to get and appointment much less the proper diagnosis. Now that we are going to go through ES we already qualify for 2x/week speech therapy based on his initial diagnosis (which their independent evaluation confirmed); however, from this point forward we are back at square one for any other issues that might come up. If I were able to shell out the $$ for a private OT eval, we could probably get A in to see one in a fairly short time period, but since I can't afford any more medical bills we are going to have to put up with the system.

The good news is that A's ST is going well. He is very enamored with the word "no" and uses it almost constantly (I have never been more thrilled to hear a toddler say no!). His SLP gives us tons of information, tons of handouts and suggested therapy techniques. She has offered to start doing 1x/week with us at home and use the other session w/Hubs grandma, who is A's primary caregiver when I am at work and Hubs is in school. Although I would like to have all the sessions for us, I think she makes a good point that it is important for Grandma to be on the same page as us and using the same techniques to work on A's speech.

Various Acronyms for Your Reading Pleasure:
AOS - Apraxia of Speech
COS - Childhood Apraxia of Speech
SLP - Speech Language Pathologist
ST - Speech Therapist/Speech Therapy
OT - Occupational Therapist/Occupational Therapy
SID - Sensory Integration Disorder
SPD - Sensory Processing Disorder
ES - Early Steps (Florida's Early Intervention Program)
GF - gluten-free

Other Child News:

Wait, I have other children? You may not think so from reading this blog since I seem to be devoting much of my written time to A's journey, but I do in fact have a couple of other munchkins that I occasionally glance at from time to time ;) C & J have recently discovered computer games (I say recently only because I have only recently allowed C to start touching the home computer). So when Hubs settled down on the couch with his laptop last night it was no surprise that J immediately snuggled up to him and asked him to play a game with her.
"Sure," said Hubs," This game is called 'Help Daddy bet on the Dolphins.'"

*I may not want A to have any more issues than he already has, but this does explain a lot of his behavior, particularly his penchant for chewing on everything and his propensity to do every activity with the apparent intent of killing himself.