Medical ...

Finally got my daughter to her pediatrician, who has a special research interest in developmental disorders. I have no idea why it didn't occur to me right off the bat; instead I was talking to a psychologist first.

Yes, he thinks it's Asperger's, preliminarily based on her eye contact avoidance, repetitive hand motions, and repetition of phrases. He's waiting for the school's workup, since they have a better opportunity for observation, and in the meantime he ordered a slew of tests. Diabetes, lipids, metabolic panel, CBC - and high resolution chromosome and fragile X DNA tests.

That seemed like an odd array, but I didn't get the chance to ask him about it, since he was squeezing us in between other patients. So I went web-hunting to see what he was up to, and it looks to me that he's trying to rule out some things like childhood disintegrative disorder, which appears to sometimes be caused by toxic lipid buildup, and fragile x, which can look like autism when partially expressed. I feel relieved that he's looking.

I worry about that CDD business; her thinking - or at least her communication - the past few days has been disorganized to the point where I started a creeping worry about childhood schizophrenia. A lot of what she was saying seemed to make no sense whatsoever - utterly random half-thoughts. She also appeared at one point to be talking to someone not there - not in the usual way, where she talks intensely to herself about whatever story, play, or fantasy she's inventing, but in a way where she was actually addressing someone. I asked her about it and she said she was talking to her cousin. "But she's not there," I pointed out, and Rosie appeared to be confused.

Do the intensity of autistic symptoms wax and wane in asperger's kids? I don't even know. Rosie has been especially asperger-y the past few days and I'm obsessing over trying to figure out what might have triggered it. Stress? emotions? Something she ate or didn't eat? What do I do?