February 8th, 2005

I’m starting to come out of the fog I’ve been in for the past 24 hours. We got the results yesterday of Jakob’s ADOS and they weren’t what I was expecting. I really believed he would test on the autism spectrum but he didn’t. It was autism. The label is autism. To put it in perspective, his score could’ve been 0-22 with 0 being no autistic characteristics. A score of 7-12 would have been autism spectrum disorder. Jakob scored a 16. Autism. I have to admit I was shocked. So was Kenny. We really didn’t think it was full-blown autism. We were so sure that it wasn’t gonna turn out like this. But it did. Autism.

I was shocked that I was so shocked. I always said that it’s just a label and labels are more for other people than they are for me. I still believe that. But it bothers me. I haven’t put my finger on why it bothers me…but I’m working on figuring that out. It may be that it all just seems so much more real to me now. There’s a label on it…no more guessing what it might be. We know what it is…autism.

For the first few hours after we heard that word, I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. Thoughts were racing through my head at 100 miles per hour…What do I do next? What happens when we get old? What happens to Jakob when we die? Will he ever talk? Should I have another baby so he won’t be alone? What if we have another baby and he/she is autistic too? Or has something else wrong? How do we afford more therapy? What haven’t we tried to do to help him? What does he understand…does he know how much we love him? This must be my fault…what did I do to cause this? What did Kenny do? Was it his vaccinations? How do I tell my family? Will they understand…will Jakob ever understand??? How will other kids treat him? HOW DO I FIX THIS???

At the end of the day, after talking to a couple people who always say the right thing, I came to a conclusion that I already knew in my heart. Jakob is the same sweet, loving, adorable, funny little guy that he was before we got the label. He hasn’t changed a bit. He’s my precious little man that I wouldn’t trade for the world. I love him just the way he is. And I always will. So will his Daddy.

He’s made so much progress in the past 10 months…there’s no reason to believe that he won’t continue to progress. I’m certainly not gonna stop doing everything in my power to make sure he’s getting all the help he needs. And I’m sure gonna keep on loving on him as much as I can. That’s all I can do.

For right now, this is all I have the energy to write. I wish I could type as fast as I think. This journal would be 10 times the length if I could.

I’m heading home for a quick nap so I have as much energy as possible to love on him when I pick him up from school. I can’t wait to see him. I’ve really missed him today.

-Jenn