As I cursorily mentioned in “Had to euthanize Sally today”, Newt had an autism assessment on June 15th. We’ve spent the last year, very slowly having him reevaluated to see if his diagnosis has changed, and what services would be available to him with that change. We’ve known that he’s basically autistic; when he had his first evaluation, the Nurse Practitioner, that eventually gave him a PDD-NOS diagnosis, said that if he didn’t make adequate progress in 6 months, he’d likely be diagnosed with classic autism. In the winter, we took Newt back to Children’s Hospital-Seattle’s Neurodevelopmental Clinic, very reluctantly because our first experience left us with little confidence in the place. We had a completely different experience. Top notch doctor that ordered a litany of labwork and other assessments. One assessment she wanted was an ADOS, “the gold standard” in autism.
Newt’s ADOS was on June 15th, right after Sally died. It was 4 hours, and the Speech Language Pathologist we saw was wonderful. She appreciated the DVD we provided because it filled in the gaps, and displayed Newt in his own environment. She made a comment early on, “After reading the initial assessment, then watching the video, I was left wondering why the Nurse Practitioner did not give him a classic autism diagnosis.” I know…Us, too. But, whatever. What’s done is done, and the SLP’s recommendation to the neurologist is that Newt’s diagnosis be changed to classic autism. She also gave us a huge folder filled with resources. (By the way, it was Anita Wright that we saw. LOVE HER!)
We’re waiting to see the neurologist (late September, summers are always a 2-3 month wait, it seems), and the Opthamologist (late August). In the meantime, we’ve been touring developmental preschools to find one for Newt. When we took him out of the public developmental preschool last August, it was with the idea that we’d spend that year updating his paperwork, and maybe, just maybe, Drew’s insurance will cover some of the tuition at a private developmental preschool.
Well, we know now, it does. Actually, it did then, with a PDD-NOS diagnosis (and thankfully, I can not feel bad about not using that resource this last year, because we couldn’t afford it). We toured a place today that we really like. We liked what we knew about it from their website, for…ages (well, over a year). But, tuition is $4300.00 a month. Drew’s insurance will cover 80% of tuition, so 20% equals $860. A lot, but well worth it considering we’d be paying a minority-portion of the tuition and the ratio is around 1:2 where everyone is various levels of extremely educated in autism education and therapy. We told them today that we want to move forward in enrolling Newt, so we’re awaiting them to schedule an evaluation of Newt’s autism.
I was lamenting severing Newt’s time at this preschool next year, if Drew gets to go to seminary at Nashotah House, but he reminded me that they only educate preschool children. That made me feel a lot better! So, one more year of Microsoft benefits for Newt, so we’re going to maximize its usage. It’ll likely be just as exhausting as his last 6 months of early intervention, but Newt’s worth it.
Posted on July 28th, 2010 by Deedee
Filed under: Kids & Kid-related Ranting, Public Education, Special Needs | No Comments »
