Boxing With Shadows: Symptoms

Autism is diagnosed symptomatically. That is to say, there is not a medical test that you can perform on the brain to conclusively determine whether or not a person has Autism. Like ADD, or depression, and even mental illnesses such as bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia, the diagnosis can only be made upon the observation and documentation of certain symptoms.

Autism is a spectrum disorder, which simply means that the symptoms occur at varying degrees of intensity and in varying combinations in each individual. In other words, Autism is difficult to diagnose and quite easy to misdiagnose. Our son, Stovie, had some autistic symptoms and not others. For a complete list of symptoms of Autism click here.

There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of autism. One type is Purile Autism and this means that the child was born autistic. The other kind is an environmentally induced Autism (see Age of Autism). The idea that Autism is or can be environmentally induced is still considered to be quite controversial. Nevertheless, I believe that environmental factors are what caused Stovie’s autistic symptoms.

The symptoms that Stovie displayed were:
1. Failure to develop speech at a normal rate.
2. Stimming behavior (hand-flapping and repetitive motions and speech patterns).
3. Nonsensical speech or language.
4. Refusal to point. (Ok, this one is tricky because he pointed with his hand, but not his finger. It was a half-point. Not pointing is the only symptom unique to Autism.)
5. Walking on tip-toes. (Yes. This is really considered a symptom.) 

Stovie did not exhibit these symptoms:
1. Lack of empathy for others and/or failure to recognize emotions.
2. Sensory integration issues (extreme sensitivity to certain sights, sounds, textures or environments).
3. Bowel issues that commonly accompany Autism.
4. Lack of interest in being around people. (Although Stovie couldn’t talk to people, he loved snuggling and being around people.)
5. Detachment from his environment. (Although he could not engage his environment verbally, Stovie was very interested in what was going on around him.)

I am listing all of these symptoms because I think it’s important for families with autistic children to see the level of severity that we were dealing with. Stovie would have been considered very high-functioning, so his chances of recovery were higher than most. That does not make it any less of a miracle, but I think it is helpful to draw a baseline for comparison as I discuss treatment in my next post.

Ultimately, the fact that Stovie did NOT exhibit some pretty definitive symptoms gave me the initial thought that he could be treated with success. Outside of sheer faith, this was my starting point for pursuing a cure rather than treatment for coping with the Autisim.