Visit to the neurologist

On Monday morning, I called our pediatrician's office. It had been a little over a week since EK's EEG so I thought I'd check to see if Dr. R had the results. His nurse called me back and read his notes to me. He recommended that we see a neurologist. There wasn't any seizure activity detected during the EEG, but there was some sort of abnormality.

I called the neurologist group at Cooks on Tuesday morning and they had an appointment for this morning. I took it since next week we'll return to our busy routine of therapy and preschool. I hate for her to miss either! The main reason for seeing the neurologist was for him to explain more about the EEG and what is going on.

I left the appointment rather disappointed. The abnormality that showed up was nothing too significant and could be due to her intense anxiety & sleep deprivation during the EEG or the fact that she's developmentally delayed. He said that we could do a 24 hour EEG, but that there wasn't a big probability of finding something different from the sleep-deprived EEG. He also mentioned we could do another MRI since her speech disappeared after her first MRI, but again, he didn't strongly encourage us to do so. We opted out of both the 24 hour EEG and the MRI for now. We may explore either in the future if she's still not progressing.

Needless to say, the appointment didn't go as I expected. As much as I didn't want there to be something serious, I was also hoping we might find a reason for her lack of progress. I'm just frustrated. I feel like something's not quite right, (besides the autism diagnosis) but I'm not sure what. Where do we go from here? How can we get her to start learning things, even small things like using PECS cards (pictures cards) to tell us what she wants or needs? Why can't she do simple things anymore (like imitate gestures or follow simple commands)? Why did she talk at 2 if she's not going to talk again? Just some questions that keep floating around in my head. I know that EK was placed specifically in our family by God and that autism is God's plan for EK and our family. There are days that it's harder to understand it all, especially when she doesn't seem to be making ANY progress when most kids with autism do make SOME progress. Like I said, I just wonder if we're missing something.

Sorry this post doesn't have better news. We'll update on EK as we figure more out. Right now, we're trying to figure out the best situation for her next school year. We're praying about it and discussing all our options. Even though we'll have another little one, I want to be sure that we're giving EK all the opportunities we can for her to improve and have a better life. I don't want to look back one day with regrets wishing that we had done more. You can pray that we'll have wisdom. Thanks in advance!