This is a continuation of the Guest Post from yesterday. Read the first part here.
We survived like this for months. This is when we realized we were not dealing with normal childhood issues. This wasn’t right. We couldn’t dry our son’s back after a bath because he would scream hysterically. We bought a very expensive towel and would lay him on it until his back was dry. We could only lay him on it, not rub, never rub.
About this time we started to notice our older son was starting to run, and run, and run, and run. He would run for hours each day. He would run into walls, doors, windows, anything hard. He loved to run as hard as possible into windows. We had to put baby gates in the windows because he almost popped one out of the frame. His other favorite past time was banging his head on the TV.
We finally found a neurologist, hoping he might help us. Then our eyes were opened. Two days before our appointment with the doctor, I began doing a little research online. I put in all his symptoms only to be sent to Autism websites. He didn’t have Autism, no way. I used to work with children with Autism, he was nothing like they were. But, I took the assessments and couldn’t deny what I was seeing. Finally, I told my husband to listen to something. I read him a lengthy description and then sat there. He said, “that’s ‘I’, that’s him to a T. What is that a description of?” I told him “Autism”. He about hit the floor. The more we read the more we had to face the facts, our son had Autism. I came to terms with it quite quickly. I was just so happy to know what was wrong with him that it actually felt good to have an answer. The neurologist confirmed our fears.
Read the final excerpt from Kari’s story tomorrow.
