Christopher has been an “odd-bird” since he was born… nothing HUGE, no big glaring red flags, but over time little things that added up and finally concerned us enough to seek a diagnosis.  Right now he is at a neurology diagnosis and testing facility for day one of two days of tests and then he should have a diagnosis within the month of completing testing.

Some of our concerns were Christopher’s over development of some senses and underdevelopment of others.  As a baby he used to stare at bright lights and as he got older he started covering his ears at normal sounds that seemed overly consuming to him, like the toilet flushing or us raising our voices.  His only delay in milestones was his speech and he started seeing a speech therapist at age 3.  He then had a hard time potty learning and was still having accidents a few times a week until age 4, these increased at preschool because he avoided the sounds of the restroom and seemed scared.  Patterns and numbers came easily to him, he started counting WAY beyond the level of his peers early on and started reading before his fourth birthday, he also figured out to count well beyond 600, he also could count beyond 100 by 2s (odds & evens), 3s, 5s, and 10s.  His memorization skills were way ahead other children and even adults, noticing little things like what number was written on the sleeping mats of his classmates at nap time.  In preschool one of his teachers did her final project on Christopher because he was so bright, unique, and struggling so much with peer relations. 

When Christopher started Kindergarten, his teacher struggled with Christopher’s active mind and active body.  On the first day of testing for reading levels she told me that Christopher already knew 116 or the 120 sight words for the entire year, and she would have to devise a special curriculum just for Christopher.  She ended up sending him to a first grade classroom for certain lessons like reading and math. 

The summer before kindergarten, Christopher had spent the day with friends and I at Six Flags.  When he came home he was tired and uninterested in eating or drinking and very tired.  I thought nothing of it, because he had spent the entire day at a theme park in the sun.  That night he started vomiting and became very weak; he spent the night on a palette in the hallway by the bathroom because he was too tired to make it to his bed.  The next morning I took him to the ER for IV fluids because I was worried about dehydration, which is more dangerous at our altitude.  His doctor, an intern, was overly cautious and ordered an x-ray to rule out a bowel obstruction and then a MRI when the x-ray was clean.  The MRI showed his appendix was suspicious and was removed as a precaution.  When kept us scratching our heads and second guessing the diagnosis was the fact that Christopher was in very little pain.  Even in his recovery period, he never needed anything stronger than Tylenol.  This got me thinking back to the time when he was 18 months and broke his leg and seemed to have no pain, just a limp.  His broken leg was not discovered until 2 weeks after the break because the first doctor could find nothing wrong, and told us to give it a couple weeks before returning.  So this was the next red flag, which again was not glaring because Bobby also has a high tolerance for pain.

Anyways, this is getting long, I will finish this next time I have a break.  To be continued……

Take me to Part 2!