Friday, February 18, 2011

Anticipation and anxiety

When I was a kid, report card time was a terrifying time for me.  I never did well (thanks to an undiagnosed learning disability) and the results of the report card always ended up in having my ass whooped, being told I'm stupid and lazy and other uplifting things like that.  I'd be a mess and the teachers would always tell me that it's never as bad as I imagine it to be.  What they didn't get was... it was that bad.   It wasn't always physical.  My parents eventually gave up on me (and reminded me of that often) so all I had to suffer were the verbal affronts.

It took a long time for me to learn that in most situations, the anticipation of the event is always more stressful than the actual event.  I had to learn the "short term pain/long term gain" concept because I kept putting things off in anticipation of how horrible they may be when I had to actually deal with them.  I've gotten it down fairly well.

However, right now, I sit in anticipation of Dylan's developmental pediatrician appointment.  It's just shy of 1 week away.  Originally, we were going to see a doctor at a satellite office so we wouldn't have to pull Dylan out of school early or take off too much time but the doctor we originally saw at the main office changed gears on me after he received Dylan's teacher's assessment forms.  He felt that it would better to see him and the new doctor together because it may be hard to accept a diagnosis from a doctor we just met.

What does that mean?  I know what it means.  I also know I shouldn't care.  I know I should just continue with my mantra - "Dylan is Dylan and you can stick any labels on him that you want but it won't change the fact that he's Dylan".   This doctor wants to tell us that Dylan has autism.  He's be put on and pulled  off the spectrum so many times it's silly.  I know it doesn't change anything but still, there is this part of me that is scared.


2 comments:

  1. Oh I understand the anticipation versus reality phenomenon. As my sister the cancer survivor says, just do the next thing and the outcome will follow. Good luck.

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