More excitement than I needed

[mdlbear]

If you're not morbidly fascinated with other people's mental and medical problems, you should probably skip this.

It starts out Sunday, when we heard from the Younger (almost 12) Daughter's math teacher that she's still failing this quarter, and doesn't seem to understand fractions at all. We'll get back to this, but some of the resulting consequences, like being excluded from the evening's gaming (with the older daughter and friends) resulted in a massive temper tantrum which included putting a plastic bag over head. Bad end to an otherwise pleasant birthday party.

So in the morning, we call up Kaiser and get her a shrink appointment for that afternoon. This one appears to be younger and more approachable than the previous one, so maybe some progress will be made. Eventually.

Meanwhile, flower_cat has called school and spoken to the math teacher. The Y.D. is still still not doing homework, but seems to have aced a test on fractions this morning. This strongly suggests mind-numbing boredom rather than lack of ability. The Cat waves the earlier diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome (from the previous shrink, who gave us no additional information; from what I can see it doesn't really fit) around and gets a few leads to potentially helpful people at the school. This set doesn't include the counseling staff, who are basically useless in this context.

Rant 1: Asperger Syndrom is, apparently, a mild form of autism. But the diagnostic criteria (see link) don't fit either of our kids (though they may conceivably fit me to a limited extent). Our kids' problem -- and this applied to our older daughter at this age as well -- seems more like a combination of extreme stubbornness, a nasty temper, and the fact that their brain seems to turn off when they're angry or stressed. Mere social ineptness is not, IMHO, Asperger's.

Moving right along, we come to this morning's followup audiology appointment. About 6 months ago I went in for a hearing test and it was found that my hearing is worse in my left ear than in my right -- what they called a "slight" rolloff around 6KHz. I don't consider more than 10dB "slight", but... Well, it's still there, but slightly different, so the doctor recommended an MRI scan to rule out the slight possibility that some kind of growth is pressing on the nerve.

Rant 2: The proper term for MRI is Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging; for some reason any reference to atomic nuclei worries people, even if it only has to do with using magnetic fields and microwaves to determine how their spin is affected by their chemical neighborhoods. Feh.

Meanwhile, somebody has apparently noticed that it's been a while since my last blood pressure test, so after my chat with the ENT doc I head over to the nurses' station to get my arm squeezed by a machine. By this time I've had a few minutes to contemplate the possible consequences (i.e., brain surgery) if the NMR scan does turn up something, so the damned machine reads even higher than it usually does. Well, I was planning to make an appointment for a checkup soon anyway, since my prescription for Flonase is on its last renewal.

Aside: Another contributing factor is the fact that I usually get my BP checked in the afternoon; early morning means that I've just had my usual three mugs of coffee. Note to self: schedule checkup for late afternoon.

Note to readers: we're not talking major, serious problems here, just a higher-than-usual density of things coming up that could become problems if left alone for too long. That reminds me -- I have to get my car worked on, too.

Comments

Waving around Asperger Syndrome...

[aerowolf.livejournal.com]

I fit the diagnostic criteria for AS much more than either Emmy or Chaos, from what I've seen. (The fact that they both like roleplaying should be a MAJOR anti-AS signal -- playing "let's pretend" is not something that AS folks normally like doing. And being in a group is something that is usually difficult for an AS person, which is something that neither of them seem to have issues with either.)

Mind-numbing boredom, though, is a symptom of something akin to ADD/ADHD. (since many of the diagnostic criteria are the same between ADD/ADHD and AS, except that ADD/ADHD specifically says 'symptoms do not occur during the course of a pervasive developmental disorder', it's fairly possible.)

Just some thoughts. :)

Re: Waving around Asperger Syndrome...

[mdlbear]

"Mind-numbing boredom, though, is a symptom of something akin to ADD/ADHD."

I think it's often called "intelligence".

Re: Waving around Asperger Syndrome...

[aerowolf.livejournal.com]

True. Though ADHD may be overdiagnosed, it /is/ a valid, honest medical condition. (Ask hakeber, aka Rebekah Groat... or sabachka, or phyxis, or any of a number of others. It's a condition that gets /worse/ with age, and makes a huge number of things much more difficult to deal with.) Another common symptom is bedwetting for a long period of time, longer than would normally be expected.

It is possible to apply vast amounts of intelligence to a problem that normally doesn't require it. I have to drink caffeine to do so (i.e., a stimulant) in my job -- otherwise I lose my focus, and my performance drops to where it was when I started flunking a lot of my classes at school.

I'd suggest finding a psych who specializes in these issues, and asking them to do a set of standard diagnostics -- a diagnosis of AS can't be made without parental-and-other-observer input, and ADHD has its own set of diagnostic tests that also require input. Anyone who makes a snap judgement without that input is a crackpot who only causes harm.

ADHD vs. simple boredom

[mdlbear]

chaoswolf was, at one point, diagnosed with ADHD, but she didn't respond to the usual drugs, so it quickly became clear that the diagnosis was incorrect.

ADHD and AS are both perfectly valid conditions, it's just that neither of our kids has either of them as far as I can tell. That's not to say that there isn't some other medical problem that nobody has identified yet.

Re: Waving around Asperger Syndrome...

[eleccham.livejournal.com]

Difference is, though, that someone with ADHD has a hard time focussing, unless it's hyperfocus mode. Someone who's just intelligent and is bored and stubborn about it (not unlike myself) is likely to meet many of the criteria for ADD/ADHD, but fewer of the diagnostic tests.

I don't know about now, but it certainly wasn't that many years ago that it was darned hard to find someone who would do the hard diagnostic tests (if they existed). They tried to diagnose me as ADD. Admittedly, that was quite a number of years ago, and it turns out that in fact I have fairly mild bipolar type II disorder, which they didn't really know much about, and in all honesty I'm really rather glad they didn't try and screw with then; they'd have been likely to've made it worse.

Of fractions and middle-school math teachers (esp. in California)

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

It's unpleasant to be caught between two problems, neither of which are the ones that supposedly official advisors are telling you. A child with a temper is a challenge to parenting just as is, extra diagnosis or not. It also sounds like the math teacher is not in the loop. Asperger's, my Moebius strip.