Not a River in Egypt

Even as I sat in the Developmental Pediatrician's office I was still in denial.

Weeks before when I could sense the Neurologist was asking questions about autistic behaviors, I responded with, "He's not autistic, he's just weird!"

Six months before I was telling my friend Heidi about his tantrums and nest building behaviors and made some crack about Lukas being on the autistic spectrum. (She would tell me later that my comment stuck with her since usually people don’t joke about that kind of thing unless there was a reason).

Despite all of the evidence, I was still in denial as the Developmental Pediatrician explained the things she observed and where she thought he fell on the autistic spectrum (PDD-NOS).

I took a deep breath, ready to argue and then I saw him.

He sat at my feet arraigning a bin of toy cars in a perfectly straight line.
Bumper to bumper. Perfectly straight line.

And I knew the diagnosis was correct. But oh, it was hard to hear.

All we wanted (and prayed for) while on this wild goose chase of figuring out what was wrong with him – was something that wasn’t life shortening. The doctors kept throwing around scary diseases, most of which were fatal.

Autism wasn’t even on our radar (but looking back, it was…but you know that whole denial thing).