And after that, it all changed

Yesterday ABC News reported on the difficulty of diagnosis and featured Jason Ross. Today’s ABC New looks at life after an autism diagnosis and interviews three mothers of autistic children to describe how families adjust after learning that a child is autistic. “‘There isn’t one stream that families find themselves in where they get carried along…….Life after diagnosis is normally a haphazard unfolding and everything is learning as you go,’” Dr. Jon Markey, a child psychiatrist at William Beaumont Hospitals is quoted as saying. Families—as Judith Ursitti, Kim Stagliano, and Jennifer Wood note—too experience “physical, emotional and financial meltdowns”; marriages are strained (one mother interviewed is divorced); parents become advocates.

“Scared, patriotic, worried, determined, tired, depressed, upset, anxious, terrified, hopeful; hopeful, happy, ready, tired, relieved, and, of course, nervous and anxious”—-that’s how the New York Times is reporting that voters in the US are feeling while awaiting results in the presidential election. At the risk of comparing our family matters to the political climate of the nation, I’d say that may of those words describe how I felt after Charlie was diagnosed and, most of all, “terrified” (because I had no idea what lay ahead) and “relieved” (because there was a way to talk about “what” Charlie “had”).

The diagnosis was just the start of a huge change in all lives and while it hasn’t been easy or without tears, stress and sorrow, life with Charlie—so different, so unexpected—has been, too, so good.

Soon as Charlie got on the bus, Jim and I went to vote..