Sucker Punch to the Gut

That is pretty much how I feel right now, like someone sucker punched my gut this morning.

For quite some time I have felt something is wrong with Cody. He often has emotional outbursts, can't control his emotions, hasn't been bringing home good test scores. This has been clear to me since he was in pre-school, but Iwas always told it was 'emotional immaturity', he would grow out of it. But he hasn't. So about 2 years ago we started him in therapy and he was doing a little better. We worked on coping skills, "Count to 10 and start again" "Is this a big deal or a little deal" "Take a deep breath" but really we were only putting a bandaide on the steady bleed of my son's emotions.

So today we went to see a child psychiatrist and we got a diagnosis. Attention Deficit- HyperActivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, and Asbergers (which for those who don't know is a high functioning form of Autism). While I has suspected these things, actually hearing them was a gut wrenching feeling. Hearing my son was austistic was something I did not process in her office, I smiled, nodded, told her I suspected as much, but deep down my stomach felt like it had a huge pit in it. I know things could be so much worse, I could have been getting a diagnosis of cancer for my child, or some other terrible disease, but no parent EVER wants A diagnosis, ANY diagnosis for their child.

After dropping Cody off at school I said to Randy, "I'm not sure if I am relieved we have a diagnosis and therefore a treatment, or if I want to cry because our son is not normal" His response "Who really is normal?" And while he is right, we all have 'something' life is hard enough, now for my son it will always be harder. He will always have to have meds to control his moods and anxiety, he will be labeled, he will in general have a harder time with things becuase his view of our world is a bit different.

Tonight we will start him on medication that I am hoping, praying will help him and I will do what I am trained to do as a nurse, research, research, research. The mom in me will cry today, get it out of my system and tomorrow I move one to being an advocate for my son.