When my son, Jonathan, was 12 months old, we began on a journey that would end up consuming our lives more than we ever imagined it would. That journey began with one question: “What if he is Autistic?”. That one question would take us on a two and a half year long journey full of more questions and cunfusion than answers and prosperity. That one question would bring forth more emotions than I ever thought possible. That one question came closer to being answered on June 6, 2008, my 23rd birthday.
After firing all of my sons doctors last summer, I started on a quest to find the best doctors around for him. We found a wonderful new ped for Jon and she actually WANTS to help our son. She diagnosed my Jon with Sensory Integration Dysfunction and Disruptive Behavior Disorder on our first visit with her. She then referred him to a wonderful private children’s psychologist for a behavioral and developmental assement. Well, we recently had our first visit with our new psychologist and we made some real progress for the first time in our journey. Our psychologist believes that Jon-Jon has PDDNOS, a form of high fuctioning Autism. He also believes that Jon will definitely be diagnosed with ADHD once he enters into school.
This journey has lead us down many paths, including some paths I wish we never had to go down. This path has taken an emotional toll on all of us. It was such a relief to finally have a doctor believe us. To finally have someone WANT to take the time to help us and our son felt like such a blessing. Our journey is far from over, but for the first time, this journey has made real progress. Our journey will now be filled with regular psychologist visits, lots more behavioral and occupational therapy and some major questions about what is best for our son and his education and his well being, amongst many other things that have yet to be forseen.
For now though, I sit here looking at my precious, shaggy-haired, quirky, little man and I can’t help but have tears in my eye. Tears of relief, tears of wonder, tears of sadness, tears of pride, tears of happiness and tears of love. I am so proud of my Jon-Jon. He’s an amazingly strong child and has overcame more in his life than most of us have. Jonathan’s journey has only just begun and yet he has quite a story to tell!
The following images are recently shot images of my precious boy. Images that profoundly speak to me. Images that show exactly who my boy is. Some of the images are from the beach and others are compiled from a few different adventures I have had with Jon the past few weeks. So here he is: my car loving, dinosaur collecting, toy lining, hyper-yet-shy, quirky, long haired, oh so funny, amazingly sweet Jon-Jon.
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