Appointments

Coolest kid in the dentist's chair....

 They always give her a pair of sunglasses because she is a diva.  And because she complains loudly about the bright light in her face until they do.  She also insists on holding the spit sucker in her hand so she can suck her mouth out whenever she wants.  She has our dental team really well trained.

However, the dentist took one look in her mouth and announced, " I MUST STEP AWAY!" 
He had caught sight of a loose and dangling tooth, which is still hanging on by the tiniest of threads, and which she adamantly refused to let him pull out, even if he numbed it.  He said that if he looked at that tooth one more time, he may not be able to resist the urge to yank the silly thing out.  I kind of wish that he had just done it, and not said anything to her.  Sure, there may have been a few long moments of ear piercing shrieks, which probably would have traumatized all the other patients in the office, who would have been wondering what in the heck that mean old dentist was doing to that poor child.  But she likes him.  I think they could have moved past it.

The dentist was the afternoon appointment.  Our morning appointment was with Duncan's autism doctor.  She is the coolest doctor in Utah, I am sure of it.  She spent an hour and a half with us this morning.  Let me repeat that. The doctor.  The DOCTOR. Was in the room with us for AN HOUR AND A HALF, explaining all the ins and outs of Duncan's testing, and giving me concrete suggestions on what to do with those results.  Eleven years in the special ed system of public education, and nobody has ever done that in a way that actually made sense.  Find me another doctor that will take that kind of time with a patient during a regular office visit.  And then, when she found out we had a high deductible insurance plan, she said she would only bill the minimum charge, because she knew we would have to pay out of pocket for it. 

So, the lowdown condensed version of Duncan is this:  he is solidly in the normal range for intelligence, and most likely above normal.  He is moderately  impaired in verbal communication.  He understands and internalizes what you say to him, but he takes a LOT of time to process it, and a long time to verbally respond. And  he is definitely not a multi-tasker.  He can do one thing at a time really well, but, as the doctor put it using a computer analogy, he doesn't run programs simultaneously.  Sounds to me like he is just a  more extreme version of any  regular guy.

I feel much much better about where we head with him after high school now.  I feel like we have somebody solidly on our team now, that will back us up if we need her. Somebody who doesn't answer to the school district, or feed us the company line, but somebody who will be honest with us about his abilities and who really wants to help Duncan. I only wish we had found her about ten years ago.