Another zoom meeting in 1 month after the last meeting with the Nurse Practitioner Ms. Elyse.
She followed up about the medication. I told her about his aggressive behaviors that I stopped giving it to him. She suggested another medicine; this time it’s a long acting one that will last from 6-8 hours. It’d give the same side affects like tummy ache and headaches and loss of appetite.
Zoom meeting at home. We talked about giving William medicine to help with his focus. She prescribed short acting medicine Methylphenidate HCL 5mg to have in the morning, which will last around 4-5 hours. Side effects would be tummy aches, headache for the first 3 days and loss of appetite. She suggested to give it on the weekend.
It was our first time to meet Ms. Elyse, the Nurse Practitioner. Due to the pandemic Covid-19, it was a zoom video meeting. She requested that we moved the camera so that she could see William’s whole body, not just the face. William as usual would not sit still: he kept moving around, jumped up and down on the couch. Ms. Elyse asked him some basic questions like his name, mom and dad names & phone numbers, our home address. William said “I don’t know” but with my help of telling him the first word, he’d finish the rest. He was sleepy (or bored?) that he ran into the bed room several times, I had to bring him back to the zoom meeting.
Ms. Elyse asked a lot of questions, most questions are similar to those in the intake application. Then she confirmed that William has Autism and ADHD. She suggested to meet William in person in 1 month to discuss about the medicine for ADHD if I’m interested. I said “Yes”.
She said to send William for blood tests: Genetics Chromosome and Fragile X (FMRT) w/ Reflex to Methylation Lavender.
She’s a very serious person, I don’t think I saw her smile at all during our zoom meeting.
First time William saw a neurologist was 3 years ago. After that Dr. Huy’s office recommended Center of Autism but the waiting time in average is 6 months; we sent in the application but they never call back. Then Covid-19 hit. I called about 3 months ago to follow up, the intake department said they got our application but they needed the latest IEP and tri-annual reports from school in order to transfer to scheduling department. So I contacted Jefferson school; it was so hard to reach anyone there: I left several messages and no one called back. One day I could get a hold of some one, she said because William just transferred to this school so they don’t have the reports; they faxed the request to William’s former school which is Lincoln school but they had not gotten any reply yet! So I called Lincoln school, Ms. Karen answered as always; she said she did not receive any request from Jefferson! I called Jefferson school again several times to ask if they can fax over the request 1 more time, no one answered!!
Ms. Karen was so nice to talk to Ms. Newman; Ms. Newman contacted me right away, however she said because William is no longer in this school so she cannot access William’s record anymore; but she still has the report ,so she sent to me! I was so happy that finally after 2 weeks of contacting Jefferson school with no hope, Ms. Newman came to rescue. Finally I had the reports to email it to Center of Autism.
No word from the Intake department, I started to question if I sent to wrong email; so I called again. The man said he got the report but it missing the evaluation from the school psychologist! So I emailed Ms. Newman, Ms. Newman contacted Ms. Emily, Lincoln school psychologist; she had a copy of William in her computer so she emailed to me right away. I can’t say how much I appreciated their time and willingness to help and response promptly. Happily I email the Intake department the requested report with the hope that now we could make appointment to see a neurologist. This time the Intake department replied back that they had all the reports they need, they would send our application to the scheduling department.
So I waited; no call from scheduling department; I emailed the Intake department, the man said “I forwarded your email the scheduling dept. they will contact you”. Few days passed by, still no word from anyone! So I called the Intake department (that’s the only number that I know), he transferred me to the scheduling department; I finally could make an appointment!
Frustrated? Of course! I could not believe it’d take so much time and effort to finally get an appointment with a neurologist. But now that we had one, William deserves to have all the treatments that he needs, that’s all that matters to me.
That would be a zoom meeting with Elyse R Schoenwald, NP for 1 hour on 3/16/2021.
They told me to go to MyChart from https://my.ucihealth.org website to sign up; they’re using this site to manage all the appointments and reports. It’s a very nice site.
Center for Autism & Neurodevelopmental Disorders (www.thecenter4autism.org)
2500 Red Hill Ave, Suite 100, Santa Ana, CA 92705
Phone: 1.949.267.0400
Fax: 1.949.221.0004
thecenter4autism@uci.edu
Intake Department: Phone: (949)267-0447 Email: VelasCP1@hs.uci.edu Fax: (949)221-0053