Quinn's Testing

On Tuesday Quinn finally did his Autism testing after months of waiting. 

First a recap of his first appointment. 

Two weeks ago we met with Dr. Hall at Northwest Neurobehavioral Health. I was super nervous going in expecting not to like or trust this doctor and not sure what he was going to say. We were pleasantly surprised to find out he's AWESOME. He has an office full of toys and Legos and all sorts of things the kids thought were amazing. He sat and talked to us and listened to us for a long time. We told him our concerns of all these doctors (five now, I believe!?) saying they feel there's something wrong with Quinn, then throwing out serious concerns - CP, Autism, Global Delays, etc., and doing nothing to follow up. We told him that we do NOT believe he is on the Autism Spectrum but that his delays are concerning enough we would like to rule it and anything else out right now if we can. We stressed that we were not in this just to have a diagnosis slapped on him for him to be able to continue receiving services, etc., and that we would rather have no diagnosis than a wrong one. He said he takes it very seriously as a diagnostician and we really believe he will take the time and thought that is necessary into this. We are so thankful for him! 

So we decided to proceed with the testing. We showed up Tuesday morning at 9:00 am. Paiton got to go have a very special girls day with her Grandma Kathy and Gigi (Great Grandma Doris). They got to go get their nails done! 

We were told his testing could take any amount of time up to 8 hours. When we got there it caught me really off guard when the doctor came out and took Quinn back and told Matt and I he needed him alone (unbiased) and we should go hang out and grab coffee somewhere together and come back in 2.5 hours. 

I'm really glad that Matt was there with me. If I were alone I would have sat in the waiting room for 2.5 hours! Matt decided we should go hang out and have some rare alone time and enjoy it! We went shopping and just had fun for a couple hours. It was stressful to leave Quinn with essentially a stranger and I kept thinking we would be on Dateline or something and people would say "What kind of parents just leave their two year old because someone says they should?!" Obviously, he was fine. :) 

We headed back at 11:30 to see if he was done. We could hear him and the doctor on the other side of the door. Dr. Hall told Quinn to "enter the secret code to open the door" and at the same time they both did the same series of beeps with their mouths. It was SO cute and showed me just how smart Quinn is! He was happy to see us and he had finished all of his testing in just 2.5 hours! Dr. Hall said he did amazing. He complimented us and said Quinn is so very sweet and has such good manners. He definitely does!  

We will find out the "actual" results of the testing on May 6 when we go back for our last meeting. All he could tell us so far was that he feels confident Quinn is NOT Autistic. He said his speech is above average for kids his age and his pacing is within normal ranges of kids his age. He said that he has a big delay in the way of how he wanders and explores and doesn't really pay attention sometimes (he's kind of a danger - he will walk off the edge of the pool into the water, walk off a curb into traffic, roll off the side of the couch - simply because he has no idea there are edges or a danger. He constantly walks into walls and bangs his head because he just doesn't notice things around him.) He told us he really thought he would find a lot of things "wrong" with him because of his huge gross motor skill delay. Not walking until after you're 2 is usually an indication of something much more going on. We still aren't sure yet what that might be. He did mention some problems with his cerebellum or spinal cord and was shocked when no one had mentioned these things to us yet with all the doctors he's seen. And of course CP is still a possibility, but probably a small one. He seems to think it may be more of a physical abnormality somewhere rather than a mental issue. If that makes sense at all. Now we have to wait until May 6 to see what ends up happening.  

We are eager to see what he says and both Matt and I are really glad we decided to go through with the testing. I hope it will be helpful and that we won't need to get CT scans or anything, but we won't know for awhile! Thanks for keeping Quinn in your thoughts everyone! We are sure are lucky to have such an awesome kid!!