Friday morning, we had appointment to see the Neurologist Thanh Le in Newport Beach. Its location is hard to find so I ended up park in the business center near by and walk to his office. The building is so beautiful with water fountains and green landscape. His office is on the 2nd floor, William enjoyed riding the elevator as usual but he he cried and kicked when we approached the office door; once we got inside he refused to get off the stroller.
I filled out all the paperwork at home so it didn’t take long to check in. We waited for only 5 minutes then the lady took William to the scale to measure and weight him. 37 inches and 36 Lbs. About 10 more minutes waiting in room #1 for the neurologist Thanh Le. The doctor came in, said hi to me and started talking about Autism. He didn’t try to gain William’s attention or communicate with him but I know he was observing him while talking to me. About 10 minutes later he turned to William, gave him a little tape measurement so that William can play with and he has another one that he used to measure William’s head. Then he used some metal tool to knock lightly on William’s knees.
He said William met all the criteria of autistic. The most important thing is William didn’t look at him when he walked into the room (no eyes contact). Dr. said normal children would just look at the him and use eyes to observe. Normal children would point to this or that when they like some thing, but William would just take my hands and lead me to the things that he likes. Dr. Thanh explained that autistic children would not understand body language. If we say the same sentence in 3 different voices: normal, angry or happy. Normal children would understand that but autistic children only understand the words (if they can), not the differences in the way we say. He used Blind and Deaf person for examples a lot. He said we don’t yell at Deaf people because we know they can’t hear us. Autistic Spectrum Disorder, why they call it Spectrum? Because spectrum is a range. 1 end is Autism, in the middle is normal people and the other end is Politician. A Politician can talk about 1 small for 2 hours, while Autistic person doesn’t want to talk at all.
He said, ABA services is more important than speech therapy because William doesn’t have problem with speech at all, he can echo what we said. It’s just that he DOESN’T WANT to TALK! and it’s one of the characteristic of autism.
He also mentioned that in San Jose there’s a company that has a whole building for autistic people to work where they provide foods, shower and couches/beds facilities. The doctor was trying to say that there’s hope for my boy if I raise him in a right environment, he can find a job and work as normal person. But first need to teach him to talk so that he can communicate even just at the minimum level.
The meeting took about 30 minutes total, I think, and Dr. Le gave us a report right after that. And he said it’s recommended to see a neurologist every year.
Dr. Thanh Le has been a neurologist for 20 years so I trust his expertise in this field; and plus I really like the way he talked and explained things to me, very easy to understand; and his approach of waiting 10 minutes to interact with William to make sure William is getting used to his presence in the room is brilliant.
