Introduction

[Guest guest]

Hi, I'm Andi. I live in Oklahoma with my husband and five (soon to be eight) children. I have four boys and one girl. We homeschool our children mainly because of the problems my daughter had in public school.

We do not have a dx of asperger's. I have been doing some research and Hanna seems to fit so well. So much better than anything else I have been told. She was dx with Hypotonic Cerebral Palsey as a baby. That was just a blanket dx and the doctors told me that. At least they did something. The state she was born in told me to just put her in a home and forget about it unless I wanted to be carrying a 27 yr old woman around that was a vegetable. Not really nice. So I moved to a state that had a good Children with Special Needs program. They are the real reason she can walk, talk, and function right now even if they couldn't give me a specific dx.

She is 11 now and her dr. agrees with me that there is a problem with her dx. It just doesn't fit her. They are talking about sending her to a specialist in either Tulsa or OKC. She has a medical dx of Hyperactivity with OCD but the dr. says that isn't the whole problem. I brought up the fact that Hanna has some symptoms of autism, but not all of them. She is very vocal, actually too loud, and I don't think autistic children are like that. But she does remember numbers like crazy, won't look you in the eye about half the time she is talking to you, goes to her room and sits on her bed for hours, has fits that can beat out Mt St. Helena any day, etc... you know what I mean.

So the dr. prescribed risperidone. I only put her on half the dose though because her speech therapist was so against it I didn't know whether I should have her on it or not. Then Hanna went to her grandparents house and ran out so I just took her off when she came back instead of starting her on the second bottle. But last night I was researching her symptoms and Asperger's kept popping up so I started looking at it. Hanna fits it so well I don't know what else it could be. So I started her back on her meds last night and she is getting her full dosage now.

I know I am rambling, but I am at my wit's end. She is really driving me crazy. The fits are awful and she is bigger than me. She is almost bigger than my husband. She is 5'7 and a half and weighs 165lbs. She wears a women's size 14/16. When she has a fit it is a BIG fit! I don't think I can handle it anymore so I looked up asperger's on to find some kind of support. How do you handle this? The defiance, the emotions, the screaming, the silence, the tears, the ups and downs and ups and downs....?

I am glad I found y'all for Hanna's sake and mine.

Thanks for letting me join you,

Andi