There is enough awareness being raised in this day and age that most of us know how crucial early intensive treatment is to having good long-term outcomes with autism. With that in mind, I assumed that once I mentioned my concerns to Matt's pediatrician the referrals and treatment plan would follow very quickly.
I emailed the M-CHAT results to my son's pediatrician that very night. A month later we talked about them at Matt's routine 3 year old check up. A month after that we finally got in with an occupational therapist for an evaluation. She was concerned that he might be on the spectrum, so scheduled us a follow up appointment to get a 2nd opinion from a speech therapist. That appointment was scheduled several weeks later (all this time, my son was not in any type of therapy, mind you). The speech therapist had the same concerns and recommended an appointment with the developmental pediatrician. The earliest appointment the developmental pediatrician had available was 4 months out (I later learned that this is not bad compared to some areas of the country where patients have to wait 8-9 months). We and our general pediatrician called the office several times, which is probably why when there was a cancellation, the developmental pediatrician offered the appointment to us - this allowed us to get in 3 months sooner than we would have.
The diagnosis was pretty clear cut and expected, our son was autistic. For us, the journey from the failed M-CHAT to an 'official' diagnosis was almost 4 months to the day, and this was significantly shorter than most people have to wait.
Okay, so now what? The doctor recommended 25 hrs per week of Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) therapy. He recommended we get an educational diagnosis of autism through the local school district so that we would qualify for our state's autism scholarship which we could use to pay for one of the private autism schools in the area if we were willing to opt out of the public school options. I later found out that getting an educational diagnosis of autism would have qualified him for this program even if he never received the medical diagnosis!
If I had to do it over, I would have set up an evaluation with our local school district the minute I had concerns. We could have gotten that educational diagnosis and started ABA therapy much much sooner! Instead, it was another month and a half waiting for that educational diagnosis and then I had to submit all the paperwork to the state to get approved for the autism scholarship.
My son was not yet 3 when we had our first concerns that he might be autistic. He was almost 3 1/2 when he had his first day of ABA therapy. There is something wrong with our system.
There's not just something wrong with our system, there's many things wrong with our system. The medical community should have told you that there was a way to do this that took less time. Here again is an example of a little boy being treated like a patient instead of a little boy. Don't beat yourself up Vange. Matt-Man is in very good hands!
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