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Nothing Is What It Seems – Follow Up
Tom has been making a flurry of phone calls and doctor’s appointments over the last several weeks. After two failed attempts to get Tim into the cardiologist for the echo cardiogram his doctor wanted, he finally went in last week and got it accomplished. And when I say failed attempts, I mean failure of epic proportions Tim just…
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Nothing Is What It Seems – Part One
Image by Detlef C Tim moved to a new residential program in June, as he would be aging out of his previous program when he turned 18 in July. We were happy to find one we liked with a program similar to the one he was used to, much, much closer to home. As with…
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RTFM
Tim is coming home this Sunday for a few days. This is his first home visit since his transfer to Allendale, thirty days ago. The honeymoon is already over at the RTC. Last week he hit a classmate, slammed a door so hard it hit a teacher’s aide, and threatened a housemate. Sigh. But what…
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Six Freaking Months
Tim had a bad day yesterday, and I fear we’re seeing the start of the usual Winter cycle. Apparently he asked for his PRN in the morning because his voices were “loud,” but by 3:30 in the afternoon, they’d worn off. He got in to it with a new staff member at his group home,…
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Dr. Kaplan, Narrow-Minded Purveyour of Vaguery, M.D.
There’s an article in Newsweek this week by a Dr. Stuart L. Kaplan, M.D. The jist of the article is that childhood Bipolar Disorder is a myth. It’s impossible. It doesn’t exist. Read the article here. I’ve copied the comment I left on the article below:When my son was 4, a Neuropsychologist diagnosed my son’s severely…
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HAWMC – Day Four: Absurd Headlines – Another Idiot
I wish I was making this one up. Again, a “doctor” that says, basically, we’re just lazy parents. Here’s his article (reprinted from the Metro West Daily News) and the comment I left on it.Childhood Bipolar Disorder or Just Childhood? By Dr. Jacob Azerrad On the Today show, a few days after the earthquake in…
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The Doctor Search
Someone asked me in the comments of a blog post I did on the CABF website how we found a psychiatrist who works well with us – that we feel a partnership with. It wasn’t easy. We started when Tim was four, with a neuropsychologist that said – and I quote – “I’d say he’s…
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The Brain Shell Game
With all the awareness that’s been raised over the past several years about autism, many people now realize that there are several forms of this organic brain disorder- gradations, if you will. Autism is a spectrum, including Pervasive Developmental Disability – Not Otherwise Specified (NOS) on one end, Asperger’s Syndrome somewhere in the middle, and…