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By Melanie A. Gehl
It was March 1993 and we were anxiously awaiting the birth of our second child. Soon our second son was born. He was healthy, alert and very much full of life. He developed "normally" the first year of his life: sitting up, crawling etc. He also battled with a lot of ear infections. Because he was constantly on antibiotics, some of his immunizations were delayed. ( Please, parents, read up on the side affects of immunizations before you decide if they are best for your child and family.) When he received his 3rd and 4th round of shots, he had a bad reaction of a high temperature, high pitched screaming and a very swollen and sore leg. That was not the only thing that changed.
He no longer continued to develop; in fact, he started to regress. He no longer spoke any words that made sense to any of us, appeared to be deaf, did not respond to his name, and seemed to drift off into a world all of his own.
We went back and forth with an ENT (ear, nose, and throat) Doctor and finally came to the conclusion that ear tubes were necessary to help clear up the fluid in his inner ear. We were also relieved to find out that he was not hearing impaired.
The question was still there as to what happened to our little boy. Why was he acting this way? We went through the County Health Department and started receiving speech, occupational and physical therapy through their Birth to Three Program. Still no answers,
only more questions. He was very misunderstood and the therapists had no idea what was going on with our child.
When he turned three years old we were referred to the school district which was very willing to help us find out what was "wrong" with our child. They referred us to a children's specialist in Minneapolis, MN. We went hoping to find out some answers as to why a three year old was non-verbal and why he did not interact with us the way our first child did.
We did find out an explanation; we were told that our son had Autism. Little did we know how life changing that day was. Now that we had a diagnosis, we had no idea what it meant. I went through the whole thought process of wondering whether he'd ever be able to hold a conversation with me to driving, holding a relationship, a job, or if he'd ever be able to live on his own. You can only imagine the things that crowded my mind.
Some very good friends were with me that day and helped me to slow down and take one day at a time, and that is what we are currently doing. God takes care of us today and for all tomorrows. Today I can say that I am very thankful for having a child with Autism. I would never have asked for this, but it has changed our lives for the best.
What is Autism? We knew very little and quickly found out that most people we knew, knew very little as well. Most people only knew what they saw in a few movies who had people pretending to be Autistic. Autism is very common, in fact it is more common than Downs Syndrome. The people with Autism generally do not look much different from any one else. To the natural eye, one would see a "normal" person. That is one difficulty we have encountered. I am thankful that he can walk, jump, run and is just as coordinated as the rest of the boys in our family.
He has had many breakthroughs in his life. Before he said mommy or daddy, he recited his ABC's and counted endlessly. One day down by the lake with his aunt, grandmother and myself, he turned to his aunt and said "give me 5, on the side, up high, down low, too slow" we were all amazed. He soon began talking around age 4 saying single words and slowly developed a language with sentences. One of his strong points as well as others with Autism is numbers and letters.
There seems to be a lack of eye contact and touch can be very painful to people with...
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