Taking the Scenic Route

He did pretty well at school today.  He did the testing for the OT, and he will probably qualify for at least one pull-out a week of OT.  He also started the IQ testing.  Unfortunately, he started getting tired and he pooped.  I already went through 3 diapers that day and didn’t have any more on me, so I asked if I should take him home and bring him back to continue testing.  She said that he was too tired anyway and she didn’t want to continue testing, and the teacher happened to be walking by (the class was in PE) and said it wasn’t really worth it to bring him back and to just go home and let him rest.  As it turned out, it was good that was the arrangement.

Got home, noticed he felt a little warm to me, and Zach felt him and was alarmed.  Took his temperature.  It was 103.9.  Dang!  I must have a low degree fever myself because he didn’t feel THAT warm to me.  (I am also coughing and have sinus drainage and feel pretty crappy, but better than I have for a while).  So I called the doctor that Zach & I went to instead of his regular dr. in Newton.  He was fine with bringing him in (only a few blocks instead of 20 miles, and our car is cranky with a wimpy A/C).  He had an ear infection and his lungs were a little congested.  We got antibiotics. 

I like this doctor.  As usual, one of the first things I asked the receptionist before bringing him in was if the doctor was comfortable with autistic patients.  (I want to know up front, and the tone of voice usually tells me more than the words).  She had an enthusiastic yes, no problem at all.  She wasn’t kidding.  I found out during the course of the exam that his 18yo nephew has autism, so he was very familiar with not only the medical issues, but the possible quirks (like the difficulty in medicating him and not being able to hide medicines in anything).  At the end of the exam, after talking to him some, I knew I wanted to continue coming to him for the kids, and said that I would make another appointment to discuss some other issues, including getting him caught up on his vaxes, but I didn’t want to do that today.  He immediately reacted to the vax comments with “there is no way I would vaccinate him right now anyway”.  I smiled, and told him that I really appreciated that and it was a big deal to me because another doctor had tried to coerce me into getting him vaxed when he was sick and I was absolutely opposed to it.  My instincts kept getting confirmed, over and over, that this guy was going to be a good match to our family.

I feel sort of bad for the other doctor.   I really like her a lot and her staff has been wonderful (which can make or break a doctor’s office IMO), and truly, I would have never even looked for somebody else if our car wasn’t so icky and she took adults (because we need drs. for the grownups too, and a guy that does the whole family is just really nice).  I will go back to her if my initial impressions prove to be wrong, but I sorry to leave her practice.