The last two days have been very busy for us with doctor appointments.  Miriam's appointment was yesterday.  She is 2.5 and we have been highly suspecting that she is on the autistic spectrum for a while now.  We took her to our new family doctor (new since the move) yesterday and after asking a number of questions, the doctor was in agreement with us.  We will have an appointment with the Autism Clinic down in Columbus for the diagnosis.  Our son, Thomas (9) has High Functioning Autism/Asperger's, so we recognize a number of similarities from how he was at this age, yet they are also very different.  Early Childhood Intervention will be calling us next week to get us started up on free therapy for her.  We did that with Thomas and it really helped him.  Please pray that we can help her to become all that God intends for her to be.

Today we took Susanna (10.5mo) to Cincinnati Children's.  Her appointment with her Pediatric Geneticist went well.  We were delighted to learn that the high fat diet we've had her on has been effective and she's risen from 3% weight to 15%.  She's currently 18lb2oz.  Woo-hoo!!!  She's maintaining the 25% height and 75% head circumference.  They said they were so pleased to see a chubby Susanna.    They sent her over to the Allergist/Immunologist as she has been reacting to an increasing number of foods.  She'll barely start eating it and her right cheek will become bright red and puffy.  Anyone ever heard of anything like that?  They did skin testing on her and the foods all came out negative.  We'll get the results of the RAST blood allergy tests back in a week or two.  If those come out negative, they think she might be having a dermatological reaction to the food, not a food allergy.  In that case, she can probably go ahead and eat the foods.  That would be very helpful!  We could then test them one by one and see if she just stays red and puffed and then it goes away or if anything else (like rash, etc.) happens.  As long as it's not hurting her at all, I guess it's fine for her to get a bright red puffy cheek.  Weird.  They did some other blood work on her, too.  Oh, I almost forgot to mention, her blood pressure was great.  Thank You, Lord!

We'll be seeing Susanna's Family Doctor and her Gastroenterologist next in December, and her Geneticist again in February.  In the meantime, we need to also get her in to an Endocronologist for some tests.  I'll try to get that set up next week.  Susanna continues to be developmentally behind physically and her Geneticist is going to get Early Childhood Intervention set up to start working with her as well.  Thank you for all who continue to pray for her and our family!

Thank you also for the neat ideas for Christmas gifts I can make.  I'm getting excited about getting started on these various projects.  The holidays will be so nice this year.  We've spent quite a few alone as our families live far away.  This year, my mother-in-law and our neice will be able to visit us for Thanksgiving and my parents will be able to join us for Christmas.  Both will be so very special with our much loved family here!

I have a very exciting announcement, but will save it until my next post.  This one's long enough.   

Love, Dawn