Thursday, April 15, 2010

Comorbidity

Comorbidity  - containing the word 'morbid' anyone would sense that it doesn't bode well - is a word to describe weight, heart-ache, struggles.
It defines other people's ignorance.
It allows the medical profession to post another label on someones forehead.
It means, in a nut shell, that some conditions/syndromes/disorders go hand-in-hand with others.

My son carries several diagnosis', as does his father, and his father before him, as learning difficulties seem to cluster together like those clique kids in the schoolyard, sometimes impossible to separate them.
Actually, like those clique kids the learning difficulties are almost defeatable on their own but when they mass together they entwine their fingers, arms, legs and wriggling little bodies like a litter of puppies until one is inseparable from the other.
Sometimes some traits aren't apparent until later in childhood; what may be briefly glimpsed in early childhood gets lost in the maelstrom of behaviours and can lie hidden for awhile.
Until something triggers it to be slapped under the microscope and suddenly, it's there!
Everything makes sense as the next piece of the puzzle falls into place.
Because, while some parents say their children aren't puzzles to be solved, Autism is a puzzle and the fact that it attracts so many comorbid disorders needs to be solved.
A tiny glimpse of a possible auditory processing issue with my son when he was 4, before it dived down deep into the folds and layers of behaviours and medications and integration therapy and tactile therapy and speech therapy and don't-poke-that-person-beside-you therapy, sandwiched in between assessments, school, meetings, discussions, tests, and more headbanging screaming (from me, at times, late at night when it's the most darkest when it all just gets too weighty) has resurfaced and its identification has been thanks to several events, one of them being my cousin's death and her funeral.

2 comments:

mommy~dearest said...

Just found your blog and wanted to drop a hello! I have a son with Autism and Tourette as well. Although, he's only 8. :)

Ro said...

Thanks, Mommy~Dearest, lovely to meet you :)