3 years ago, I had enough people telling me my daughter was a little off, so I put in a referral through her doctor at Cherry Point. Within a few weeks I had gone in and spent an hour (sans kids) with a kiddie shrink, and Marian had spent over an hour being tested by him. I had a third appointment where the guy explained his findings and said he tentatively diagnosed her with Asperger's Syndrome.
Fast forward to 5 months ago. Marian was starting to have issues with school and I thought perhaps I should have her reevaluated. I took her to see the pediatrician, who said she needed to see a shrink. Since that's how it went last time, I said okay. When I made the appointment, I was told that they could not give a diagnosis, but that it was essentially a hoop I needed to jump through to get what I did need. That was annoying. I also had to find babysitting for the other children so I could take her, which is a pain all by itself, but we went.
My first issue with the lady was that she sat there and asked me about Marian right in front of her. Marian is not stupid. She can hear just fine. So as the woman was asking questions about her behavior, Marian's behavior was getting worse. Duh. I could see Marian getting more and more uptight as we talked about her. The woman (based on how Marian was acting in her office in that 40 minutes) said she'd be happy to see Marian weekly, but that she could not give a diagnosis. I don't think Marian needs to see a shrink. Certainly not one who was bad enough to make my child uncomfortable by talking about her in front of her and then judging her on that behavior. I evidently didn't even need to take her there in the first place, although she did say that what I really needed to do was to take her to Bethesda for a Developmental Pediatric Evaluation. Ug.
I was going to have to find babysitting for 3 children while I spent a hour each way traveling, and then another 2 hours with a doctor this time. I was not thrilled. I made the appointment though and Dan said he could take the morning off and take Marian. Yay! then we had the blizzard that shut down everything, so there was no appointment. Dan suggested I reschedule for the time when I was out of town and he would take her, since he'd be off work. So we did that.
Unfortunately, there were issues and they were very late to the appointment. I had not been asked to provide any information and I had not been given any information other than the building and floor numbers where it was to take place. I had assumed they would just do testing and not need much info. Dan called me as I was getting dropped off at the airport to say that the guy was asking lots of questions and he didn't know the answers. I did not have time to talk to him, but the 5 minutes I was on the phone were frustrating. I guess he was cross that Dan (through no fault of his own!) was late. He asked what I wanted out of this, and I said I wanted for my daughter to be successful in life and I wanted to know how to best help her with that. He told me I needed to take her to the child psychologist to do that. I was not happy. We had been there already and the woman had been no help at all.
He spent 30 minutes with her and did only part of his evaluation. Dan brought back a lovely report that the man had typed. I am very impressed (NOT!) that he could diagnose her with ADHD and OCD in that whole 30 minutes. Are you kidding me?! She's ADHD?! And OCD?! He came up with OCD because she rolls her pants up every morning. She does that because she hates long pants and I make her wear them to school. She only started rolling them recently. And I think the ADHD came from her difficulty in staying on task to do her homework.
I am just so disgusted by all of this. We do have another appointment with this guy next month so he can get all his testing stuff done, so I'm hoping he will do a better job with more information. He thinks the school needs to do psych testing or something, so I need to get that started with the school. I'm not sure where that will lead, but hopefully it will tell me if she has a learning disability that is preventing her from learning to read (as opposed to sheer stubbornness, which I suspect). He had also suggested she get her hearing and vision tested, and he said she had an "irregularly irregular" heartbeat, and wanted an EKG strip or some such thing. I am good with that. I called last week and said I needed referrals for those things. They told me that Marian would need to see her PCM to get referrals. I said fine, make me an appointment with her PCM.
Yesterday we went in for that appointment. Thankfully (for me, not for Dan!) Dan was sick yesterday and was home so I did not have to drag 5 children to this appointment. The doctor walked in and I told her what I needed. She said "I'm not her PCM." What?! Okay, I maybe should know who her PCM is, but I do not. I assumed they made the appointment with her PCM since they told me that was who she needed to see. I was also kind of relieved, because I really don't like that particular doctor. When she asks me 3 times if Marian has ever had her eyesight checked and 3 times I say "Yes, when she was about 2." I kind of lose confidence.
On the plus side, I did get what I needed. Marian has a referral to Audiology, she doesn't need one for the optometrist, and the doc was able to get us in for a heart monitoring thing. Marian was really good about getting hooked up to electrodes and she liked watching her heartbeat. No one said nothin' about any irregularity though, so I wonder about that. However, if I want to know after the Developmental Pediatric guy sees her, then I'll make an appointment with the doctor that I do like and trust.
So, I am annoyed that this is all such a production. I am really annoyed that there is such a lack communication and sharing of information. It is really frustrating to not be able to get done what I want. I just want my sweet girl to be successful in her life and to reach her full potential. I want to know if she is capable of doing the things I expect of her, or if she has a brain glitch that is going to require us to change how we deal with her. I'd like to be able to find that out in less than 5 months an in less than 5 appointments, but it looks like there are still more hoops to jump through. And hey, this is all government run health care, so I'm going to have to get use to it because it is not going to get any better.
