Rocky Road Ice Cream...AKA My Life?

Why, hello there!

If you are reading this blog, that means that you either know me somehow and care enough to read about what is on my mind...or you mistakenly wound up on this blog, but I have already caught your attention, so you might as well stay!

So, if you don't know me...

My name is Madeline. But I hate being called Madeline, unless you pronounce it (Mad-uh-line) instead of (Mad-uh-lin). Catch my drift? Really, i'll respond to pretty much anything accept Patty...and it happens way more often than it really should. But either way...people refer to me as Maddie. Note the blog title.

Speaking of the blog title...(if you haven't guessed, this is a topic transition...)

(...see...isn't it fun?! WHO KNOWS WHAT WILL BE NEXT!!)

Oh yeah...blog title. Moving on.

So, A Spectrum of Maddie is my blog (obviously...) that is kind of a play on words about the fact that I am on the...

AUTISM SPECTRUM 

(See what I did there? :))

For those of you who know me...more than half of you never believe me at first. Understandable. My own neurologist doesn't even believe it sometimes. Basically, the story goes...

...like this...(the fun never ends, does it??...I promise to not abuse the dramatic topic change sequence...too much.)

At age 2, my parents took me to a zillion quadrillion (aka...a lot of doctors, specialists, etc.) because they noticed that I was not developing in certain ways mentally and with basic motor skills. They thought I might be deaf for a period of time because I was not responding to my name (gee...maybe I just hated the name Madeline...those fools...). The doctors had all said to not worry and that there wasn't anything significantly wrong with me...but my parents were not convinced. They finally saw one doctor when I was 3 who diagnosed me with Pervasive Developmental Disorder, which is the big, general word for classifying an Autism Spectrum Disorder without knowing quite what specifically they could label me with. They didn't know enough about Autism in 1993 to really give me the full on Autism diagnosis, so they labeled me with PDD knowing I had Autistic tendencies (this is rarely done anymore, b-t-dubs). So...I was "different" in an Autistic like way, I suppose.

So...what did that mean for me and my family? (This first post is long, I apologize! Hopefully my dramatic topic change sequence is keeping you engaged...or it's really bugging the hell out of you.)

If I were to sum up my childhood years, it would basically boil down to this: I didn't really speak till the age of 4, and even then I had what you would call Echolalia: the automatic repetition of vocalizations made by another person. In Autistic children, they often repeat lines they hear in movies, commercials, or quotes from other people. A typical pediatric presentation of echolalia might be as follows: a child is asked "Do you want dinner?"; the child echoes back "Do you want dinner?", followed by a pause, and then a response, "Yes. What's for dinner?". For me, I would bring quotes from movies into real life context. Dad says "Maddie, time for bed now." and a Maddie response would be "1 little monkey jumping on the bed, one fell off and bumped his head!". In a cool way, it worked, but it wasn't the most socially acceptable behavior. 

Other than that, I had slow motorskills, a hard time paying attention to anything, rage, and a lack of understanding of social ques. 

I like to think of it as being in my own little world, and everyone else was just a random tourist in socks and sandles not understanding me and my native ways. They didn't understand me, so I saw no reason to try and understand them. This made things hard to my family, and I had difficult relationships with the people around me because I could not relate to them.

But I wanted to badly to try and relate to other people...

Most kids on the spectrum (that I have met in my time) have given up on trying to make relationships with people. They overcome many of the physical challenges that come with Autism, and they work really hard at mastering many things such as technology, art, music, animals (...learning about animals...), etc. But they become discouraged with...what shall we call them...able minded people? Perfect. Able minded people...because they don't understand what it is like to have a disability. And how can we blame them? Their initial ignorance is not their fault. It just makes it hard for the rest of us who want to converse and socialize with the rest of the world when people give you funny looks, or don't like to talk about the things you like to talk about. 

So what makes me different, you ask? (Maybe you didn't...but I'm going to tell you anyway. Bwahaha.)

My parents fought for me, which gave me the ability to fight for myself. I don't mean fight as in I went out and beat the crap out of everyone so I never had to deal with assholes ever again (although I thought about it many times...trust me). They fought for me to try and live the most normal life I could. They sent me multiple kinds of therapies, got me medication (so I wouldn't go beat the crap out of someone), speech therapy, physical therapy, a school IEP (Individual Education Program...I'll discuss that later), etc. And from the way I see it, it then showed me later on in my teen years how I could fight to just be myself without having to fit into some "societal standard of normal". 

You have no idea how grateful I am for the help my parents have given me. So many families in our country (especially in this economy) have children with disabilities and don't have the money to get the help that their kids need. My dad has been blessed enough in my life to have amazing health insurance...plus he worked his ass off for me traveling at his work so he could have enough money to support my family AND my needs. 

Even through all of those therapies and what not, the real development of my character and my success has been my drive to understand people. I will cover this some other time, because I realize how long this post is getting and how much more I want to talk about! 

Just know that this blog is going to not only be about my personal journey, but it will be about how I want to change the future for families with Autistic children...giving parents hope that things will be OK, even if the beginning is rocky (I get it...it's super rocky.) Later on, things will seem more like Rocky Road Icecream...different texture from what you were expecting, but all the more wonderful and interesting at the same time, with surprises around every corner

I just used the cheesiest metaphor ever...sounds like this blog post needs to end now.

Thank you for reading! 

Peace, Love, and...Rocky Road Ice cream? 

(Sure...let's go with that.)

-Maddie <3
A little different, but none the less awesome.

P.S- If you want to follow me on Facebook...
http://www.facebook.com/maddietdugan
There ya go :)