We had a big yard sale this year to earn money to get Keira officially diagnosed. It was amazing how much love and support we received for this. It's frustrating to have our insurance not cover anything to do with it, but it's also humbling to see how much support we got. We are happy to report that we got the money we needed to get a diagnosis. As many of you know we thought she had Aspergers (a form of Autism, on the high functioning end). Her official diagnosis was High Functioning to moderate Autism, so it was a little more severe then we originally thought. If you go back on the big post I wrote about this, you will see that we had the school do some testing on her and they had someone come in to give her the ADOS test (which is the official Autism test, they give kids on a national level to measure the amount of Autism the evaluator sees in the child). Anyhow, on her school test her score came back as a 4 (basically the higher the number, the more Autism they see). That person said she didn't qualify for an Autism diagnosis. The school and I, however had different opinions on that and she did get on the IEP under the autism umbrella. Through this process, we went through a place called the Autism Assessment and Treatment Center, I figured if there was any present, they would see it. They gave her the ADOS and she scored a 16 on that one. That is a HUGE difference to have one person score her at a 4 and the others at a 16! She said she had never in all her years seen were the ADOS is given and the child scoring a number to not qualify for Autism and have the school over ride it like our school did for Keira. She then said, that says something about the school, they are on top of it with this, which is so nice and reassuring to know. On top of her Autism diagnosis, they also diagnosed her with Anxiety (which wasn't a real surprise) and then Transient Tic Disorder (which was a surprise). We didn't see the tic disorder diagnosis coming. Then we had it explained to us, what it's all about and we could see exactly what they were talking about. Some of the things she does with this are continually popping her Jaw, yawning a lot, coughing a lot, blinking her eyes drastically, etc. These things can come and go, some days she will do it all throughout the day and some days it's not so much. With all of this, we at least know where we are at and where to go from here. We are just taking it one day at a time and learning as we go.
