Jackie's Page

February 2002 is here and I have some good things to share with you about how well Jackie is doing now. He turned five last year and is on his third year of pre-k. He is doing really good at school and since starting some new medications he is responding very well and his behavior is greatly improved. We have a lot of tests to do over the coming months and one is testing for two genetically identifiable syndromes, Prader-Willi and Fragile-X so I will update with results and updates regarding other testing we're having done. (The results are in and both were negative for those two genetic syndromes.)

We had a EEG done last year and it found he was having Petite Mall seizures (sometimes referred to as Absence Seizures) and we began some medications-some were not good for him-many of you with children like my son understand trial and error is a lot of what you go through when trying to find out what will work for your child. We luckily found one that seems to be helping him and have a follow up EEG and even a full sleep study is scheduled. With regard to his weight, he is over 80 pounds now and we are hoping his weight will get better over time-no doubt in my mind it is medication related and we dropped one in December that I think was giving him trouble and not worth continuing-the dr's agreed with me so we are onto something that really seems to be helpful for him finally.

I will make a new update page in a couple of months. For the longest time we really had no real progress to report. But he is saying a lot more words without anyone talking to him-he spontaneously sings now too! There is a lot of love in our household and despite the challenges of Autism & Seizure Disorder that we live with for now, I have much more hope for the future because of how motivated Jackie is to participate in the world around him. He uses around 200-250 words I would say and is very happy to get on the bus and when he gets home he is happy. Thank you for visiting Jackie's Update Page. Please feel free to e-mail me