The Princess's Medical Diagnostic

Today was the day we'd been waiting for: The Princess's medical diagnostic.

Last night before bed I went online and printed directions to get to the Pediatric Developmental Center in the Big Scary City.  According to the directions (and a couple of people I'd spoken with), it should take about an hour and twenty minutes to get there for our appointment at 10:30.

We decided to leave at 8:30 to be safe.

Good thing, too.  It was fairly easy to find, and we found parking almost immediately (insert any cheesy version of the Hallelujah Chorus here).  Still, it was almost exactly two hours from our door to theirs.  We arrived a couple of minutes early and sat in the waiting room for half an hour.

At one point I went up to the desk to ask one of the chickies if The Princess and I could use the restroom.  I said "excuse me" about three times with no response before I realized she was asleep.

Honestly.

A minute or so later, a woman poked her head out and said they'd be with us shortly.  She apologized for the wait and said she'd be back to grab us as soon as she could.

This tore Sleeping Beauty from her slumber, and I finally asked if we could use the potty.  She buzzed me through the door and I accompanied The Princess back, armed with a new Pull-Up...it'd been a two hour drive and we'd been in the waiting room for twenty-plus minutes by this point.  Hell, I'd come close to peeing myself...figured she'd need one.

She was dry.

And when I set her on the toilet, she grinned at me and started tinkling.  And tinkling.  And tinkling.  This kid had held it all the way from our house and she was so proud of herself!  When she finally finished I helped her down, pulled up her pants and Pull-Ups and let her flush.

Coming out of the potty, we ran into the nice lady who told us they were ready and apologized again for the wait.  After grabbing The Hubbs from the waiting room we all headed back for The Princess's evaluation.

I know they all told us their names, but I can't remember a single one at this point.  There was a doctor, a speech therapist, a psychologist and a developmental therapist.  They played with The Princess for about 45 minutes to an hour, then left the room to make their assessments.

Can I just say my daughter was a trouper?  She did everything they asked with hardly a whisper of a tantrum.  While they were doing their thing, we set her up with a snack.

Everyone filtered back in the room as they finished their parts, and we were informed that The Princess is autistic.  They are recommending the continuation of speech therapy twice a week, and adding occupational therapy twice a week (once alone and once with the speech therapy as a joint session), physical therapy once a week, and developmental therapy once a week, among other things.

They want us to meet with a social worker who can help us find programs in the area for kids like The Princess and to help us along with the process.

And there was some other stuff I didn't catch.

We have a folder with all sorts of information and web sites they recommended.  The full report will come in about a month, but the short answer is that The Princess could use more help than what she's currently getting. 

And we may decide to switch speech therapists while we're at it, to someone who specializes more in the PECS system and working with autistic kids.  They learn differently...they need teachers who know how to get through to them.  I really like Julie, but I've been wondering for some time now if it's not a barrier between the way Julie teaches and the way The Princess learns that's causing some, if not all, of the tantrums while she's here.

We'll see.

For now, we wait until The Princess's annual evaluation with Early Intervention to find out what our next step will be.  One thing I can say for sure...things are about to change around here.