Today was a weird day.
It started off with a fantastic parent-teacher conference, in which the teacher confirmed what we've believed for awhile now, that Minifob will absolutely be ready to be mainstreamed by Kindergarten, most likely with minimal or no support. We haven't had him officially evaluated since the pediatric neurologist told us there was no need to come back late last year, but I'm feeling confident that we're going to lose the diagnosis entirely within another year or two. He has full conversations with me now, can relate stories about what happened to him at school that day, and will casually correct me when I get small details wrong. The teacher marveled at how far he's come in the last year and a half, "but he's one of my diet-vitamin kids, so it's not really that surprising." She's not legally allowed to tell me anything about any of the other kids, but of course I know the other biomedical moms in the class, and we all agreed to mention at these conferences that we'd like our kids to be mainstreamed together into the same classroom, so they'll start out with someone they know on the first day--and also so we can have our own little enclave of class party food trays, too.
But later in the morning, things went south as I spent no less than 45 minutes on the phone with the insurance company, arguing over a claim that we originally submitted back in July. By now, about half of their call center employees remember me when I call. This one had the decency to acknowledge that the error this go-round was clearly theirs, and made no sense whatsoever. The claim has returned to the mysterious people "in the back" for a second appeal, and I have updated my notes to reflect a new call back date in 21 days. So it goes.
Things continued sharply downhill after that, as Minifobette once again designated today to be a Day for Screaming. She's teething, and really coming into her own with regard to the autistic version of the Terrible Twos. I've actually been shocked at how many of Minifob's old traits have suddenly appeared in her, when up until now she's been the polar opposite of him in pretty much every way. She's turned violent and sleepless, and her language has taken a nosedive again too, but I'm really, really hoping that this is mostly due to the teething pain, and she'll come back around when it eases up. You know that numbing Orajel stuff you can put on babies' gums? It
infuriated her. I put it on once and she completely freaked out at the sensation, shoving her hands in and trying to claw off some imaginary thing at the back of her teeth. I hadn't clipped her fingernails recently, so she actually made herself bleed doing this. Fan-fucking-tastic.
Then unexpectedly this evening, I got a
FutureMe email that I wrote one year ago, inspired by
this thread. It served to again highlight how far Minifob has come... and again how Minifobette has just inched along. We've been treating the two of them for almost the same amount of time, more than half her life in her case, and she doesn't have very much to show for it. I've gone back and looked at Minifob's initial school evaluation from April of 2009, and I'm certain that Minifobette is still going to rank lower when it's her turn in another month or two. Of course there's no way to know how bad off she would have been without treatment, and the general rule
is that kids who have a severe regression (Minifobette) are significantly worse off than those who are weird from very early on (Minifob.) But I want two recovered kids, not just one. I guess with one in the bag, though, I'll have more time and resources to devote to the other, so there is that.