Dear Friends –
Today is World Autism Awareness Day. This day is special to my family because our son Sam was recently diagnosed with autism. We have spent the last few months in front of doctors and therapists only to have the final diagnosis come back a few weeks ago. As you can imagine this has been difficult news to process. As much as we would love to say Maggie being a micropreemie prepared us for this, it is a whole new ballgame. We have spent the last few weeks learning as much as we can about autism and trying to find the right team of professionals to get Sam the assistance and help he needs. We've learned that the internet has a lot of disinformation about autism and how it should be treated. However, we are lucky to live in the state and town we do because of the resources we have available to us. Sam already is getting 10 hours a week of intensive therapy to try and help his communication skills. We will add members to Sam's therapist team and we will eventually build up to close to 30 hours a week of therapy. It will be Sam's full time job as well as Sue's who will have to manage all the scheduling. Maggie and P.J. couldn't be better siblings and are often active participants in Sam's therapy.
So what does this all mean? Well aside from being busy, we'll now be the most ardent supporters of autism research out there. Like we have with the March of Dimes, we'll do walks to raise money. We may be worse at RSVPing to things, but honestly our life won't change that much, it will just be a little different. We'll still be doing the same play dates and attending the same parties, in fact we will try to do even more as the best thing for Sam is exposure to social interaction.
Don't be afraid to ask questions, admittedly we may not have all the answers just yet. However, there is something we do know, it's that we live less than 15 miles from the greatest medical community on Earth. If there are any breakthroughs in autism research or treatment, it will most likely come from the medical professionals in our area.
Ideally we would have communicated this news in person, but logistically and emotionally email just seemed to work better.
We hope to see you all soon,
Phil, Sue, Maggie, P.J. & Sam
If you would like to learn more about autism, we recommend the following websites:
http://www.autismconsortium.org/
http://www.childrenshospital.org/clinicalservices/Site1869/mainpageS1869P0.html
Sent from my iPhone
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