Today was a good day.
First, Mr. Clod managed to take the whole day off from work, so he could stay with Minifobette while I took Minifob to his two separate doctors appointments. And while he was here, he did like 4 hours of work clearing overgrowth in the back yard.
Awesome.
But aside from not having to drag the girl-child along, the doctors appointments went really, really well. The first appointment was with an EarNose&Throat guy, because despite 20 days of Zithromax (total, not all in a row) we just can't seem to kill this strep infection. I was worried because 1.) Minifob's tonsils are not super-inflamed at this exact moment (the pediatrician who most recently saw them said, "certainly very large, but some people just have large tonsils..."
), 2.) as always, he has no fever, which usually gets us dismissed out of hand, and 3.) we've never seen this guy before, so he has no baseline to compare current OCD behaviors to the previous lack thereof. But this doctor was not only willing to take his behavioral history into account, he mentioned on his own that in his experience certain inflammatory diseases can lead to neurological symptoms, and that in fact, maybe it's coincidence, but he's removed tonsils from more Asperger's kids than he can even count. (Because of course the Aspie kids are far enough down the spectrum that they can actually speak up and say, "Hey, I'm in fucking pain here," but I digress.)
Anyway, long story short, he won't commit to removing the tonsils yet, but he'll do an adenoidectomy for sure. If, on the day of surgery, the tonsils look worse than they do now, he'll take them too. It's scheduled for the Monday after his 4th birthday party. I'm a little nervous about the anesthesia (though I've done my research on which are the best options for someone with his metabolic problems,) but overall I'm really excited that for once, there is a definitive solution to a problem: no more adenoids/tonsils, no more places for the strep to live, from now until forever. And if we do have to walk away with the tonsils still intact, at least we'll know that the hidden locale is eradicated, and any future infections will be in a place that a normal doctor can see the inflammation.
Then the second appointment was with the developmental optometrist. The joyful part there was he did the whole exam without any kind of complaint. He played the "eye games" and held the "camera" up to his face and stuck his chin in the focusing machine and even let the optometrist shine the refractor in his eyes. He downright enjoyed it, which I absolutely did not expect! End result is that he'll be getting glasses: first, to correct the astigmatism she found, but secondly, to give him a very slightly farsighted prescription for therapeutic purposes. The goal is that his eye muscles will have to deliberately relax in order to see through this ever-so-slightly "wrong" prescription, and she pointed me to a number of studies indicating that this can not only slow the onset of nearsightedness in children genetically predisposed to it, which he most certainly is, but it can also significantly reduce visual self-stimulation in children on the spectrum (poking the eyes, examining items peripherally or at an extremely close range, deliberately shining lights in the eyes, etc.) There are other tricks one can do with the lenses, such as giving them a prism shape that would warp the field of vision for a normal person, but for someone who is already seeing the world like a funhouse mirror, will make everything look normal. But we have to wait until he's able to take more detailed vision tests before we can determine if that's something that can help him.
But he looks so dang cute in his tiny wire frames!
