3-4 YEARS LATER:

A Department of Education Speech Therapist disagreeing with Apraxia and a school system pushing Autism; we went on a formal diagnosis search. That is after eight years of professionals guessing at no expense to us; we took the poor guy to a Geneticist, Endocrinologist, Cardiologist, Otolaryngologist (ENT), 3 Audiologists, Psychologist, Speech Therapist, Social Worker, a Nutritionist, an Allergist, and a Developmental Pediatrician (I think that is all of them). We did genetic testing, a heart sonogram, thyroid testing, full scale Audiology including speech measures at least 5 times, kept a food diary, followed every recommended diet, completed a formal growth hormone test, and had one surgery all in one year (except for the diets, which were two years).

We were relieved to find that we had a relatively healthy son! He eats really well, produces enough growth hormone, his genes are perfect (could have known this by looking at his parents. . .lol), his heart beats, and he has an average IQ. The only issues that were unresolved were a heart murmur, unintelligible speech, and 40 dB low frequency hearing loss. WHEW!!

About $50,000 later (luckily most of it was not out of our pocket), our year of top quality health insurance was over and we were out of time to resolve our issues with Audiology (the hearing loss). But that is ok, insurance would not have covered it anyway. We were hot on the topic of Audiology, because as the school was in their push for Autism they allowed me to witness the testing they were performing. As I had watched the testing, I witnessed some things that said, ‘Hey, he is not hearing!!’ So I took him right in for a test. I was really perplexed when we compared his current results to his past results and they were the same. No one had ever brought it to our attention, so I went on a search to learn everything I could about hearing.